Erin Brockovich Launches Website to Track Data Center Locations and Community Concerns
Erin Brockovich Launches Website to Track Data Center Locations and Community Concerns
Erin Brockovich, a consumer advocate known for investigating environmental pollution, has created a public website called brockovichdatacenter.com where people can report data center facilities in their communities and raise concerns about them. Within the first month, the site received nearly 4,000 reports from across the United States. The largest single concern emerging from these reports is not about noise or high electricity bills, but rather a more fundamental question: people want to know what data centers are being built near them, according to reporting from TechCrunch.
Brockovich began collecting these reports in April 2026 by asking people in communities across the country to share their experiences and worries about data center projects. Her interactive map displays these community submissions rather than relying only on government or industry databases that might miss smaller facilities or installations tucked away in residential areas.
Where Reports Are Coming From
Texas has the highest number of submissions with 612 reports. Nearly half of those come from Sulfur Springs, a small town where a company called MSB Global is building one of the largest artificial intelligence data centers in the country. In just its first week, the platform collected more than 1,800 reports from 47 states.
When people report concerns, several issues appear repeatedly: power consumption that strains local electrical grids, water needed to cool the equipment, noise from cooling systems running around the clock, and waste from computer hardware that is regularly replaced. Water usage emerges as the top concern in most submissions, followed by electricity demand and impacts on community health.
How Many Data Centers Are Out There
Experts estimate that the United States has more than 4,200 active data centers, though this number likely misses smaller facilities or equipment scattered across cities and towns. Brockovich's website appears designed to catch facilities that official lists might overlook, especially those located near homes or mixed-use neighborhoods where local residents feel the impact most directly.
Demand for data centers is growing rapidly because of artificial intelligence, which requires vast amounts of computing power. As facilities get larger and more power-hungry, they become harder to keep quiet or out of sight. When data centers were planned in the past, companies focused mainly on finding land near power supplies and internet cables, and did not always talk much with nearby communities before construction began.
Lessons from the Past
This situation reminds some observers of what happened with cell phone towers in the 1990s and early 2000s, when communities around the country started tracking tower locations and organizing around health concerns. The cellular industry eventually responded by improving how it talked to local residents and streamlining how local approvals worked.
Data centers present a similar challenge now, but with an important difference. A cell tower is relatively small and can be moved; a data center is a massive building that will operate in the same place for decades, using enormous amounts of electricity and water the entire time. As AI facilities grow larger, these impacts become more visible and harder for nearby residents to ignore.
Environmental Questions and a Specific Example
Brockovich brings expertise in environmental health to the data center conversation, a subject where the industry has traditionally focused on energy efficiency rather than broader impacts on communities. Her past investigations uncovered hexavalent chromium, a toxic chemical, in drinking water at levels that exceeded safety standards.
This becomes relevant when data centers are built near old industrial sites, which sometimes have existing water contamination. Google, for instance, announced plans to convert an old power plant in Jackson County, Alabama, called Widows Creek into a data center facility. According to a 2011 environmental report, the area had groundwater contamination from the same toxic chemical at levels thousands of times higher than what California's safety standards allow. Google's project does not appear to be moving forward as originally planned.
What This Means for Communities and Industry
The website represents a shift in how communities approach data center siting. Traditionally, companies would negotiate directly with local government behind closed doors, and the public would learn about plans only during formal approval processes. Now, residents want visibility into what is being built and a real voice in decisions before work begins.
From a business perspective, this creates both challenges and opportunities for data center companies. Organized community tracking and reporting could make it harder to site new facilities and draw additional scrutiny from regulators about environmental impacts. On the other hand, companies that are transparent and communicate openly with neighbors early on might avoid conflicts and speed up the approval process.
The fact that this crowdsourced map attracted nearly 4,000 reports in a month tells us something important: communities are paying attention to data centers far more than the industry may have assumed. As AI demand pushes companies to build in smaller cities and towns rather than just established data center hubs, local residents in these areas will likely demand more information and more say in what gets built around them.
Whether this leads to real changes in how data centers are planned remains to be seen. But the volume of reports suggests that the era of data center projects happening quietly, out of public view, may be ending.
