Cheyenne water officials have imposed sweeping new restrictions on industrial wastewater disposal following an incident in which a contractor working on Meta's massive artificial intelligence datacenter flushed bacteria-contaminated water into the city's public sewer system.
The contamination was discovered in February during routine testing of wastewater from the cooling system at Project Cosmo, an 800,000-square-foot facility in the High Plains Business Park. Testing identified Cupriavidus gilardii, a naturally occurring bacterium found in soil, in water being discharged into Cheyenne's treatment infrastructure. The city permanently revoked Meta's authority to discharge into the system, which recycles treated wastewater for irrigation in parks and other public spaces.
Goat Systems LLC, a Delaware-based contractor, was identified as responsible for the discharge. In response, Meta ordered its general contractor, Fortis, to halt the practice immediately and begin hauling wastewater offsite. The company said it wanted to be "a good neighbor" in Cheyenne.
The bacterium, while naturally occurring, can pose health risks to people with serious pre-existing conditions or compromised immune systems. Health experts classify it as an opportunistic pathogen. Known human infections are rare, with only seven cases documented in medical literature, though some have been fatal.
Frank Strong, the Cheyenne board of public utilities' engineering and water resource division manager, expressed particular concern about the city's irrigation program. "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 has since resumed normal irrigation operations now that the contaminated wastewater discharge has stopped.
Meta said in a statement that its contractor's independent water testing found no trace of the bacterium and emphasized that public drinking water supplies were not affected by the incident. The company characterized its response as swift and cooperative.
The contamination incident has intensified scrutiny of the Project Cosmo development, which was already facing community pushback over environmental concerns. The new Cheyenne regulations now prohibit datacenters from using closed loop cooling systems and fill and flush systems that discharge into the city's sanitary sewer. Instead, companies must build separate collection and storage systems that direct water to offsite disposal facilities.
The restrictions reflect broader national concerns about datacenters' resource demands. The United States currently operates nearly 4,500 datacenters, with some consuming as much as 300,000 gallons of water daily, equivalent to the water needs of roughly 1,000 households. Opponents of datacenter expansion cite these resource-intensive operations as placing unsustainable pressure on local water and energy infrastructure.
Author James Rodriguez: "This incident shows that rapid datacenter buildouts can outpace environmental safeguards, and it takes contamination in the sewer system to force cities to write adequate rules."
Comments