Erin Brockovich sounds the alarm on AI data centers expanding across America

Our Take

When Erin Brockovich starts asking questions about what's flowing through your taps and who's signing off on it, people listen — and rightly so. Her conversation with MS NOW puts the AI data center gold rush in the same frame she's used for decades: powerful interests moving fast, local residents left to sort out the fallout on water, power bills, and property values after the ink is already dry. That's the pattern GridWatch keeps documenting county by county.

The core issue isn't AI itself — it's the process. Utility deals, water withdrawal permits, and tax abatements for these campuses are frequently negotiated behind closed doors, with environmental reviews that arrive after shovels are in the ground. Communities are told to trust that a hyperscaler's water use won't stress a shrinking aquifer, or that new gas peaker plants built to feed a data center won't push their electric rates up. Brockovich's whole career has been about what happens when 'trust us' turns out to be wrong.

If you want to see whether one of these projects is proposed or already under construction near you, check our facility map, and if you're looking to get organized before the permits are final, our take-action page has a starting point. Credit to MS NOW and Erin Brockovich for pushing this into the national conversation — the more scrutiny these deals get before approval, the better the outcomes tend to be for the towns living next to them.