A Meta contractor spilled a rare, potentially deadly virus into Cheyenne’s wastewater system. The city of Wyoming has now temporarily suspended all data center emissions, a new point in the fight against AI’s water drought.
Officials in Cheyenne, Wyoming, have stopped accepting industrial wastewater from data centers. The trigger was a contractor building a new Meta AI campus, which introduced a rare virus into the city’s water system, the Guardian reported.
The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities named Goat Systems, a contractor for Meta, as the source. The company released water carrying Cupriavidus gilardii, a rare and multi-drug resistant bacterium. It has reached the city’s reuse system, which cleans water to irrigate parks and golf courses. It didn’t go into the pub.
A rare bug in pipes
Lab workers first spotted the virus in February during a routine test. Pursuing it took months. “This is not something we normally check,” Frank Strong of the utility board told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, which first reported the incident. “We actually had to go through a difficult process to find out what it was.”
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Cupriavidus gilardii rarely infects humans. If it does, it can be dangerous. Another review put its fatality rate at 31 percent of all 32 known cases since 2009. The board revoked Goat Systems’ issuance rights in March. This month it went ahead and halted all data center releases for filling and switching and closing the loop until it works out how to prevent a repeat.
Fill-and-clean is a one-time step. Crews flooded the data center’s cooling pipes with water to remove debris before the site regained power. Meta says the finished campus will use a closed system that recycles the same fluid.
Meta identifies its contractor
Meta says it is working with the general contractor, Fortis, to resolve the issue. “When the board reported that it found something in the city’s wastewater, not public drinking water, Fortis immediately stopped releasing industrial wastewater and started releasing it,” said a spokesperson for Business Insider. Fortis conducted its own tests and says it found no trace of the substance.
The $800m campus, known at the time of planning as Project Cosmo, covers approximately 800,000 square meters in the south of the city. Meta announced in 2024 and says it aims to be “water-rich” by 2030, recovering more water than it uses.
Why is it important
Cleaning was difficult. The board drained and disinfected the entire recycling system, and converted the affected irrigation to drinking water for now. “It’s a very unpleasant surprise,” said city councilman Pete Laybourn.
Cheyenne snow is small, but fits a large pattern. Residents elsewhere are fighting new sites because of rising electricity and noise bills. People packed planning meetings to block them, and pressured lawmakers to make big tech bear the cost. Some areas have reached a standstill. Majors Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have floated an AI data center.
By the end of 2025, more than 1,400 45 homes have been built or approved in all states. One rare bug in Wyoming shows just how fast local interest can be.
