The city of Cheyenne, Wyoming has suspended certain water discharges from a Meta data center after a contractor's work contaminated the local water system with a rare, metal-resistant bacterium, according to Tom's Hardware.
The problem traces back to a routine step in bringing a data center online. As Tom's Hardware explains, big computing facilities rely on "closed-loop" cooling systems — sealed networks of piping that circulate water to carry heat away from densely packed servers. Before such a loop runs, crews perform what's known as a "fill-and-flush": they fill the piping with water and flush it out to clear away construction debris.
In this case, that purge did not stay contained. According to Tom's Hardware, the flushed water carried a rare metal-resistant bacterium that spread into Cheyenne's water system. Because the city treats and reuses water, the contamination landed in its reuse supply.
In response, Tom's Hardware reports, Cheyenne has suspended both the data center's fill-and-flush operations and its closed-loop discharges. The report attributes the contamination to a Meta contractor rather than to Meta's own crews directly.
Why it matters: as tech giants race to build ever-larger data centers to power AI and cloud services, these facilities increasingly tap into and interact with local water supplies — and this incident shows how a single overlooked step in construction can put a community's drinking and reuse water at risk.