Erin Brockovich launches data center transparency map amid AI backlash

Erin Brockovich has moved from groundwater contamination to the fast-growing fight over AI infrastructure, launching a national map that collects reports on data centers and the local impacts surrounding them. After asking for submissions in April, she said she received nearly 4,000 responses in the first month, a flood of complaints that turned her platform into a running inventory of communities raising alarms about power demand, water use, noise and secrecy.

The website describes its map as a “work in progress,” and Brockovich said the biggest issue is not noise, water or rising utility bills. It is transparency. Her criticism centers on a pattern she says leaves residents out of the loop until projects are already moving, with permits secured, developers hard to reach and local officials sometimes signing nondisclosure agreements before the public even knows a project is under consideration.

Texas has emerged as the clearest pressure point. Brockovich’s platform had received more than 2,700 reports by late May, and 612 came from Texas alone. Sulphur Springs accounted for 297 of those reports, a striking concentration in the north Texas city where MSB Global is building what has been described as one of the largest AI data center projects on the continent. The plan calls for 3 gigawatts across about 1,600 acres, and it has already triggered community pushback and lawsuits from the land’s previous owners and at least one resident.

The objections are rooted in scale. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute says larger data centers can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day, roughly the daily use of a town of up to 50,000 people. Brookings has put a typical facility at about 300,000 gallons a day and warned that water used for cooling could rise by 870% as more facilities come online. EESI says the United States has 5,426 data centers, yet a 2016 report found fewer than one-third of operators tracked water consumption.

Brockovich, 65, built her reputation in Hinkley, California, where her work on PG&E’s contamination case ended in a $333 million settlement. Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film Erin Brockovich later made her a household name and won Julia Roberts the Oscar for Best Actress in 2001. Now Brockovich is aiming that profile at a new public fight, one that has already pushed communities and elected officials to seek tighter rules, limits and disclosure around the data center buildout. Microsoft added to that shift in March 2026, when it said it would stop using nondisclosure agreements with local governments for its data center projects, citing transparency and public trust.