Erin Brockovich targets Silicon Valley data centers with new citizen-reporting platform

Nearly three decades after securing a $333 million settlement against PG&E for contaminating Hinkley’s groundwater, Erin Brockovich has turned her focus to the rapid rollout of AI data centers across the United States. Through her firm, Brockovich Research & Consulting, she unveiled Brockovich Data Center Reporting, a citizen-driven platform that gathers information on projects by tech giants such as Meta, Google and Microsoft.

Brockovich highlights the opaque purchase of vast land parcels, the massive energy and water requirements—particularly the evaporative loss of cooling water—and ancillary harms like constant noise, PFAS usage and electronic waste. She also questions the modest number of quality jobs these facilities generate relative to their footprint. While celebrated as a feminist and ecofeminist role model, Brockovich prefers to describe herself as a consumer-rights and women’s-health advocate, emphasizing that lived experience can rival formal expertise in exposing environmental injustice.