Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

Meta data center water discharges suspended after contaminating the city's reclamation water supply with bacterium — system offline for months for cleaning, closed-loop cooling system purge spread rare metal-resistant bacteria in Cheyenne’s water system | Tom's Hardware

Meta data center water discharges suspended after contaminating the city's reclamation water supply with bacterium — system offline for months for cleaning, closed-loop cooling system purge spread rare metal-resistant bacteria in Cheyenne’s water system

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Luke James

Published

4 July 2026

The city has revoked the Meta contractor's discharge privileges.

(Image credit: Getty / Bloomberg)

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The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities has stopped accepting industrial wastewater from data center fill-and-flush and closed-loop cooling operations after tracing a rare bacterium in the city's reclaimed water to Goat Systems LLC, the entity Meta uses to build its Cheyenne campus. In a notice reported by Cowboy State Daily , the Board said Goat Systems was in significant noncompliance for discharging water carrying Cupriavidus gilardii , a metal-resistant bacterium that interfered with two water reclamation plants and pushed the reuse system offline for months of cleanup. The Board revoked the contractor's fill-and-flush discharge privileges on March 24, and a wider suspension now covers every data center connected to city services.

Fill-and-flush is a commissioning step in which crews fill a cooling loop's piping with water, flush it to clear debris before the system is run, and then send the used water to drain. Goat Systems routed that flush water, which contained Cupriavidus gilardii , into Cheyenne's sanitary sewer, Frank Strong, the Board's engineering and water resource division manager, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle . Strong said the fill water had been purchased from the Board itself and that the origin of the bacterium remains unknown, but said that lab staff caught it in February during routine fecal-bacteria sampling. "This isn't something we normally test for," Strong told the paper.

Microsoft and Nvidia market sealed liquid loops as a near-zero-water alternative to evaporative cooling, an approach that is spreading quickly as AI data centers expand into more communities . Microsoft describes cooling systems that are filled once during construction and then recirculate the same water, while Nvidia's Rubin platform runs a coolant that is 75% water and 25% propylene glycol . That one-time fill, however, is the step that produces a discharge, and the flush water leaves the site before the loop is sealed.

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Strong went on to add that the Board's concern extends past the finding of the bacterium, because closed-loop systems can carry glycol and other chemicals that municipal treatment plants aren't built to process. Cheyenne sprays its reclaimed water on parks, golf courses, and other green spaces, and the Board worried the bacterium could become an aerosol hazard during irrigation. Cupriavidus gilardii isn't a regulated contaminant, yet the discharge disrupted treatment sufficiently to trigger pass-through and interference findings under the Cheyenne City Code and federal pretreatment rules.

Meta said that it's supporting its general contractor, Fortis, which stopped discharging and began hauling wastewater offsite, and that independent testing found no trace of the substance. Testing at the Dry Creek and Crow Creek facilities cleared in late June, and the reuse system is back online. Cheyenne City Councilman Pete Laybourn called the disclosure "a very, very unpleasant surprise." The Board hasn't said how the suspension affects other Cheyenne data centers still under construction.

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Contributor

Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.

5 Comments

Comment from the forums

• JWK3986 This is exactly the type of ecological disaster that could affect thousands of people, caused by executive decisions made by groups with no accountability to the people whose lives they could end or ruin that could be avoided by democratizing the means of production and the private sector. This is also what capital punishment should be used for: to protect society from the egos and ambitions of psychopathic executives. Reply

• marmastr Never trust the government to give you clean water. If Meta had compliance requirements for discharge they should have tested intake. The entire water supply could have always been contaminated. Reply

• salgado18 marmastr said: Never trust the government to give you clean water. If Meta had compliance requirements for discharge they should have tested intake. The entire water supply could have always been contaminated. If you will take the water, then throw it away, and you are big enough to have multiple eyes over you, trust no one, not just the government. Run compliance on anything that enters your facilites, log everything, watch over everyone. None of this should be a surprise, so the fact that they didn't test intake water is on them, not on the public services. Reply

• dbl219 marmastr said: Never trust the government to give you clean water. If Meta had compliance requirements for discharge they should have tested intake. The entire water supply could have always been contaminated. Er... that's one take, I guess. The way I read it was that the bacterium itself put two water reclamation plants offline. As in, their function was compromised. As in, they noticed the bacterium because of the damage to their systems. Which means if it had been present earlier, this would have happened earlier. Reply

• CelicaGT If these idiots actually looked into heat reclaimation systems some of this might actually make sense. Instead they're going the cheapest way possible at the detriment of the general population. These systems cost more to install but cost less in the long run. Heck, they could eve use lithium bromide chiller to cool the office space and save electricity but oh no, gotta hit that quarterly earning.. Morons. Reply

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