Meta's Cheyenne AI Data Center Triggers Wastewater Crackdown Before Even Opening

Cheyenne suspends datacenter wastewater after rare bacterium traced to Meta's AI site

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Connecting the dots: Meta's massive data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, isn't even finished, but it's already become another illustration of why more people would rather live next to a nuclear power plant than one of these facilities. City officials say wastewater from the site introduced a rare bacterium into Cheyenne's reclaimed water system, forcing a cleanup and a wider pause on data center discharges. Cheyenne's Board of Public Utilities (BOPU) traced Cupriavidus gilardii to wastewater discharged by Goat Systems, a contractor working on Meta's $800 million, 715,000-square-foot data center south of the city. The facility, announced in 2024, is being built for Meta's AI workloads and is expected to come online in 2027. The good news is that the bacterium did not enter the city's drinking water. The affected system is Cheyenne's reuse water network, which treats water for irrigation at places such as parks and golf courses. That's still not exactly reassuring when the substance in question is a rare, metal-resistant bacterium that officials say can pose a risk to elderly and immunocompromised people through direct exposure. According to the BOPU, the bacterium was first detected during routine wastewater sampling in late February. Further testing by the Wyoming Public Health Laboratory identified it as Cupriavidus gilardii, a naturally occurring organism found in soil and groundwater. The board later traced the source to an industrial user and permanently terminated that user's discharge privileges. Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities The discharge came from a fill-and-flush operation at the Meta campus. The process involves running water through data center cooling pipes before the system is sealed and put into operation. Closed-loop cooling is often presented as a water-saving improvement over evaporative cooling, but the Cheyenne case shows that these systems can still create wastewater during commissioning. Goat Systems stopped discharging the wastewater after being notified, while Meta said its general contractor, Fortis, began hauling industrial wastewater offsite and that independent testing found no trace of the substance. Cheyenne has not only revoked Goat Systems' discharge privileges; it has also suspended discharges of data center fill-and-flush and closed-loop cooling wastewater from every data center connected to city services. Cheyenne's reuse water system was taken offline, and BOPU staff spent two months draining and disinfecting the network and Prairie View Pond. Affected irrigation systems were temporarily switched to potable water supplies to prevent the bacterium from spreading through the reuse network. The incident couldn't have come at a worse time for the industry. A report last year linked Amazon data centers in Oregon to contaminated groundwater, where nitrate levels were tied to reports of rare cancers and miscarriages among residents. It seems like there's an endless stream of reports about the growing outrage directed at data centers. Americans have opposed nearby AI facilities at higher rates than nuclear plants, Wisconsin residents voted to restrict future projects, Missouri voters ousted officials after a $6 billion data center approval, and SpaceX is offering discounted Starlink to Memphis residents while facing pollution complaints around xAI's Colossus site. The anger has grown so intense that some have even claimed the Chinese government is helping to incite it.

Wyoming tightens wastewater rules after Meta datacenter contractor flushed contaminated water

Meta said it was working with officials to be a "good neighbor" and that drinking water was not affected Officials in Wyoming said a contractor for Mark Zuckerberg's tech company, Meta, flushed bacteria-contaminated water into public sewers during construction of a controversial new AI datacenter. The incident prompted water authorities in Cheyenne to implement strict safety regulations on how wastewater from such projects is disposed of, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, which first reported the incident. Meta has ordered its general contractor, Fortis, to cooperate with the Cheyenne board of public utilities (BOPU) to ensure there is no repeat, the newspaper said, insisting it wanted to be "a good neighbor". The company, however, noted that contamination by the rare but naturally occurring Cupriavidus gilardii bacteria did not affect drinking water supplies, and that its contractor's own water testing by an independent environmental specialist found no trace of it. The incident comes amid growing nationwide backlash to the construction of resource-hungry datacenters, which opponents say place unbearable demands on local water and energy supplies. According to Data Center Map, the US has almost 4,500 datacenters, some consuming up to 300,000 gallons of water each day, equivalent to the demands of about 1,000 households. The Cheyenne contamination was discovered in February during routine testing of wastewater discharged into public sewers from the cooling system of the datacenter campus in the High Plains Business Park, the Tribune Eagle reported. Officials identified Goat Systems LLC, a Delaware-based contractor on the 800,000 sq ft facility known as Project Cosmo, as being responsible. The city permanently revoked Meta's authority to discharge waste into Cheyenne's water treatment facilities, where it is recycled and used for irrigation in parks and other public spaces. The city also adopted a new policy prohibiting wastewater discharges from datacenters using closed loop cooling systems and fill and flush systems, which involve circulating purified water to remove construction debris, flux residue, and pipe scale, Frank Strong, BOPU's engineering and water resource division manager, told the newspaper. Cupriavidus gilardii is a naturally occurring bacterium found in soil, regarded by health experts as an "opportunistic pathogen" harmful only to people with existing serious health conditions or weakened immune systems. A March 2026 study published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases found a patient who died of septic shock after contracting an infection from Cupriavidus gilardii during a cord blood transplantation procedure. The report said known cases of human infection were rare, with only seven reported to date. Among them was a 12-year-old American girl who died of sepsis after contracting an infection during a European vacation, according to a 2010 report in the National Library of Medicine. Strong said it was not known when the bacterium entered the water, only that it was present during routine fecal bacteria testing on the discharged water. "The concern we have with our reuse system is we put it into aerosol, where we spray it onto the grass, and that increases the potential for health issues," he said. The city's irrigation program had resumed now that the datacenter's wastewater was no longer being discharged, he said. In a statement sent to the Guardian, a Meta spokesperson said the company took action immediately when it became aware of problems with Project Cosmo. "When the board shared that it found a substance in the city's wastewater - not public drinking water - Fortis immediately stopped discharging industrial wastewater and began hauling it offsite," it said. "Fortis also began its own water testing with an independent environmental specialist, which has found no trace of the substance. "Meta is committed to being a good neighbor in Cheyenne, including through the protection of local water resources, and will continue encouraging collaboration between Fortis and the board until this situation is resolved." Erin Lamb, BOPU's administrative and public affairs coordinator, said in an email that the city will host a press conference "in the next week or so", and will not address media questions in the meantime. Public opposition to the Project Cosmo mega datacenter was already growing before the bacteria incident. The Cowboy State Daily reported in May on pushback to projects in Cheyenne and elsewhere in Wyoming, including environmental questions about the safety and integrity of so-called closed loop cooling systems used by Meta and their tech company rivals pushing the artificial intelligence revolution. The new regulations adopted by Cheyenne, Strong told the Tribune Eagle, requires companies using closed loop cooling systems to build and implement separate collection systems that direct water from cooling equipment or associated floor drains into storage tanks and offsite disposal, rather than flushing it into the city's sanitary sewer.

Meta's AI Data Center in Cheyenne Isn't Even Open Yet. It Has Already Triggered a Wastewater Crackdown

Meta's new AI data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming is still under construction. However, it has already forced the city's water utility to stop accepting some data center wastewater. The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities has halted industrial wastewater from data-center fill-and-flush and closed-loop cooling operations until further notice. Officials traced a rare bacterium in the city's wastewater system to Goat Systems LLC, the developer tied to Meta's Cheyenne project. The issue involved wastewater and reuse water, not Cheyenne's public drinking supply. But it shut down the city's reuse-water system for months, disrupted both wastewater reclamation facilities, and turned a construction-stage discharge into a warning for the AI buildout. "Water is not simply a volumetric number or sustainability topic," Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside, told Inc. "It's also a water discharge problem and an infrastructure issue."