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The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities detected the rare bacterium Cupriavidus gilardii during routine testing of its reclaimed-water system. After investigating, officials traced the contamination to wastewater coming from the construction site of Meta’s massive “Project Cosmo” data center, being built by contractor Fortis Construction.
Cupriavidus gilardii is an environmental bacterium found in soil and water. It generally poses little danger to healthy people, but documented cases show it can cause serious infections in people with weakened immune systems, which made its appearance in a municipal water system concerning.
The city responded by permanently revoking authorization for construction wastewater from the site to enter the reclaimed-water system. Officials then spent roughly two months disinfecting the affected infrastructure before irrigation service resumed in late June. Meta said the discharges had stopped and that it was cooperating with local authorities.
The incident is especially notable because data centers are already facing scrutiny over their environmental footprint. Meta itself classifies its Cheyenne data-center location as being in a high water-risk area of the Platte River watershed.
So the accurate version is not that a functioning Meta data center “infected the local drinking water.” It was construction wastewater from a Meta data-center project that officials traced to bacterial contamination in Cheyenne’s separate reclaimed-water system.
For communities welcoming enormous AI and cloud infrastructure projects, it is another reminder that their impact doesn’t begin when the servers switch on.
Cupriavidus gilardii is an environmental bacterium found in soil and water. It generally poses little danger to healthy people, but documented cases show it can cause serious infections in people with weakened immune systems, which made its appearance in a municipal water system concerning.
The city responded by permanently revoking authorization for construction wastewater from the site to enter the reclaimed-water system. Officials then spent roughly two months disinfecting the affected infrastructure before irrigation service resumed in late June. Meta said the discharges had stopped and that it was cooperating with local authorities.
The incident is especially notable because data centers are already facing scrutiny over their environmental footprint. Meta itself classifies its Cheyenne data-center location as being in a high water-risk area of the Platte River watershed.
So the accurate version is not that a functioning Meta data center “infected the local drinking water.” It was construction wastewater from a Meta data-center project that officials traced to bacterial contamination in Cheyenne’s separate reclaimed-water system.
For communities welcoming enormous AI and cloud infrastructure projects, it is another reminder that their impact doesn’t begin when the servers switch on.

