Meta's 'Good Neighbour' Image Crumbles, Contractor's Rare Bacteria Dump Shut City's Reclaimed Water for Months

Meta's 'Good Neighbour' Image Crumbles, Contractor's Rare Bacteria Dump Shut City's Reclaimed Water for Months

Meta Platforms' promise to be a 'good neighbour' at its nearly $800 million data centre campus in Cheyenne, Wyoming is under scrutiny after wastewater from its construction contractor was linked to a rare, metal‑resistant bacterium that shut the city's reclaimed water programme for months and forced permanent tightening of industrial discharge rules. Routine monitoring in February detected Cupriavidus gilardii, an uncommon environmental bacteriu…

Cheyenne BOPU Traces Rare Bacteria Discharge To Meta Data Center Contractor

CHEYENNE — The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities has identified Goat Systems LLC, a contractor working on Meta’s in-progress data center campus in the High Plains Business Park, as the source of a discharge that introduced the bacteria Cupriavidus gilardii into the city’s wastewater treatment system. Frank Strong, BOPU’s engineering and water resource division manager, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on Thursday that the contamination was discov…

‘A very, very unpleasant surprise’: Meta forced to halt data center water discharges after polluting city's water reclamation system with resistant bacterium — shutdown and cleaning of two water reclamation plants expected to last months

Meta was the source of bacterium contamination that shut down Cheyenne water reclamation plants The water was used to fill-and-flush closed loop cooling systems at a Meta data center The city of Cheyenne has indefinitely suspended the treatment of reclaimed water from data center projects The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities has announced that the city will no longer be accepting industrial wastewater from its closed-loop data center cooling s…