---
title: "Erin Brockovich takes on the AI data-center boom over water"
description: "Erin Brockovich, the campaigner who took on a power company over poisoned groundwater and became the subject of a Hollywood film, has a new target: the wave of vast AI data centers spreading across America, and the strain they put on water and local communities."
category: "Business"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/business
author: "Thomas Berger"
published: 2026-06-29T12:08:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-29T12:08:00.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/erin-brockovich-ai-data-centers-water
tags: ["erin-brockovich", "data-centers", "water", "ai", "environment"]
---
# Erin Brockovich takes on the AI data-center boom over water

Erin Brockovich, the campaigner who took on a power company over poisoned groundwater and became the subject of a Hollywood film, has a new target: the wave of vast AI data centers spreading across America, and the strain they put on water and local communities.

Erin Brockovich made her name in the 1990s helping a California community take on the utility Pacific Gas & Electric over contaminated groundwater — a fight immortalized in the 2000 film starring Julia Roberts. Now she is turning that same combative instinct on big technology, warning over the rapid build-out of artificial-intelligence data centers. "We're up against forces that have all the money in the world," she told [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/29/were-up-against-forces-that-have-all-the-money-in-the-world-erin-brockovich-on-her-battle-against-ai-datacentres).

## The concern: water and power

The boom in AI has driven a rush to build enormous data centers, the warehouses of computer servers that power everything from chatbots to cloud services. They are hungry for two things in particular: electricity, and water to keep the machines cool. A single large facility can draw [millions of gallons of water a day](https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption), and US data centers' direct water use — measured in the [tens of billions of gallons](https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/land-lines-magazine/articles/land-water-impacts-data-centers/) a year — is forecast to climb steeply as the industry expands. Much of the water used for evaporative cooling is lost to the air rather than returned to local supplies.

## Communities push back

Those demands have sparked friction, especially in the dry American West. In Arizona, residents have packed meetings to oppose proposed projects amid worries about pressure on already-stretched desert aquifers, [as Al Jazeera reported](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/6/27/with-water-cuts-looming-in-arizona-in-us-locals-fight-data-centres). Brockovich's particular emphasis is transparency: she argues that residents too often learn of major developments only once decisions have effectively been made, leaving little room to weigh the trade-offs. She has set up a project inviting people across the country to report data-center plans in their areas.

## The industry's case

Technology companies counter that data centers are essential infrastructure for an AI era they say will reshape the economy, and that they are working hard to curb their thirst. Operators including Microsoft and Google point to gains in "water-use efficiency," through techniques such as recirculating cooling water and designing systems that use less of it, and several of the biggest firms have launched joint efforts to develop greener cooling and power. Supporters also note that data centers bring investment, tax revenue and construction work to the places that host them.

## An unresolved balance

The tension is unlikely to ease soon. Demand for computing power — and thus for the centers that supply it — is projected to keep rising sharply, [according to the Brookings Institution](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ai-data-centers-and-water/), raising the question of whether efficiency improvements can keep pace with growth. For Brockovich, the fight echoes earlier ones: a contest between local communities worried about their water and resources, and large, well-funded interests promising progress. For the companies, it is the price of building the backbone of a technology they consider indispensable. Both, for now, are talking past a problem neither has fully solved.