“Something’s got to change,” she tells PEOPLE
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NEED TO KNOW
- Erin Brockovich, a famed environmental activist who inspired the 2000 film starring Julia Roberts, is now focusing on concerns around data centers
- In May, she launched a map tracking the facilities that are appearing in regions around the country in order to fuel AI and computing power
- “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is Hinkley on fricking steroids,’ ” says the 66-year-old advocate
Erin Brockovich is once again ready to fight. This time, she’s helping everyday Americans keep an eye on data centers that environmental activists like her say are threatening wildlife and water supplies while taxing energy grids.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is Hinkley on fricking steroids,’” Brockovich, 66, says in an interview featured in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, referring to the past work that made her famous.
In the 1990s, the mom of three helped win a historic settlement in a class-action lawsuit against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company after she discovered the drinking water in Hinkley, Calif., had been contaminated by hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen.
The feisty advocate became a cultural icon when she was portrayed by Julia Roberts in a 2000 film for which Roberts won an Oscar.
Three decades later, Brockovich has launched a data center map, brockovichdatacenter.com, to track the gigantic facilities that power artificial intelligence and computer power, which are cropping up across the United States and stirring controversy in the process.
Big Tech plans to spend trillions of dollars buying up and developing land for the state-of-the-art centers, particularly in rural areas, as demand surges.
The issue has sparked environmental debate and, in some places, moratoriums or bans on construction.
The tech companies say the reality is that they have to keep spreading to keep up with public need; and some local officials point to positive economic effects like construction jobs and new taxes while maintaining that the centers take steps to curb their disruption.
But Brockovich and others don’t buy it.
“This isn’t a Hinkley in one state,” she says. “This is Hinkley in multiple counties and cities, in every state.”
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Locals like Delsia Bare and her mother, Ida Huddleston — who made international headlines for saying they turned down a $26 million offer from an unnamed Fortune 100 company to buy half of their farm in Maysville, Ky. — have been galvanized over the issue.
They’re wary of the drain on natural resources and the potential for pollution that such centers bring to communities — more than 4,000 in the U.S. to date, experts say.
This spring, Brockovich says, she received 30 emails from separate individuals in the same town. The residents were alarmed by the “secrecy” around a new construction project, which they learned was to become a data center.
“They woke up and they’re like, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not a warehouse. What’s going on?’ ” says Brockovich. “They couldn’t get answers.”
Familiar with such patterns, Brockovich began to conduct her own research and was shocked by what she learned. The activist teamed up with other moms to launch the map to provide themselves — and concerned citizens — a “bird’s eye view,” she says.
“The first day it was up, the map went down twice,” says Brockovich of the tracker, which shows the locations of “major” data centers in the U.S. that are either operational or under construction, as well as highlights areas where community members have flagged concerns. “It was just getting overloaded.”
As of Thursday, July 9, there were 33 such working data centers, while 65 were under construction and 42 had been proposed, according to Brockovich’s website.
More than 8,000 locations had reported concerns nationwide.
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“We’re starting to see more reports of, the wildlife’s gone or the cattle aren’t breeding,” Brockovich says, “or more of the discolored water, the low water pressures, the rising utility bills.”
Brockovich, now a grandmother of five, sees it as her job to be a “cheerleader” for community members who are pushing back and speaking out.
“When they go in the map, they can see they’re not alone,” she says. “They’re empowered by that.”
“Something’s got to change. We just can’t keep going this way, and we can make change collectively when we all show up,” Brockovich says. “For the first time, I’m seeing that happen.”
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