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Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has a new mission: Bringing more transparency to data center construction and the impact those data centers have on nearby communities.<\/p>\n
Brockovich \u2014 who was famously played by Julia Roberts<\/a> in a film dramatizing her legal case against Pacific Gas & Electric \u2014 recently launched a website with a map<\/a> of data centers across the United States.<\/p>\n The website describes the map as \u201cwork in progress\u201d that includes data centers reported by members of the surrounding community. In a Substack post<\/a>, Brockovich said that after putting out a call for reports of data center-related issues in April, she received nearly 4,000 submissions in the first month alone.<\/p>\n \u201cThe single most common concern \u2014 more than noise, more than water usage, more than rising utility bills \u2014 is the one word that keeps appearing in submission after submission: transparency<\/strong>,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Brockovich added that she\u2019s not making a \u201cmaking a blanket argument against data centers\u201d or AI, but rather against \u201cthe pattern our map documents: projects announced after permits are already secured, developers who don\u2019t return calls, local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n