A Meta contractor flushed a rare, potentially deadly bacterium into Cheyenne’s wastewater system. The Wyoming city has now suspended all data centre discharge, a fresh flashpoint in the fight over AI’s thirst for water.
Officials in Cheyenne, Wyoming, have stopped accepting industrial wastewater from data centres. The trigger was a contractor building Meta’s new AI campus, which flushed a rare bacterium into the city’s water system, the Guardian reported.
The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities named Goat Systems, a Meta contractor, as the source. The company discharged water carrying Cupriavidus gilardii, a rare and multidrug-resistant pathogen. It reached the city’s reuse system, which cleans water for irrigating parks and golf courses. It did not enter the drinking supply.
A rare bug in the pipes
Lab staff first spotted the bacterium in February during routine testing. Tracing it took months. “This isn’t something we normally test for,” Frank Strong of the utilities board told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, which first reported the incident. “We actually had to go through quite a process to figure out what it was.”
