Erin Brockovich takes aim at data center secrecy

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has a new mission: to bring more transparency to the construction of data centers and the impact those data centers have on neighboring communities.

Brockovich – played by Julia Roberts in the film depicting her legal case against Pacific Gas & Electric – has launched a website containing a map of data centers across the United States.

The site describes the map as a “work in progress” and includes data centers reported by members of the surrounding community. In the Substack post, Brockovich said that after she put out a call for reports on data center-related issues in April, she received nearly 4,000 requests in the first month alone.

“The single most common concern — more than noise, more than water use, more than high utility bills — is the one word that keeps coming up in submission after submission: Transparency“, she wrote.

Brockovich added that she is not making a “blanket argument against data centers” or artificial intelligence, but rather against “the pattern our map documents: projects announced after permits had already been obtained, developers who didn’t return calls, and local officials who signed nondisclosure agreements before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.”