Erin Brockovich's crusade against data centers is going crowd-sourced

Erin Brockovich has started a registry for people living near data centers to report environmental concerns.

Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group via Getty Images

• Erin Brockovich wants people to report data centers in their backyards.
• The environmental activist said there is a lack of transparency in the country's data center construction.
• People experiencing data center problems firsthand are the best source of information, she said.

Erin Brockovich is getting Americans to report data centers in their backyards.

The renowned environmental activist, whose work inspired the Julia Roberts film "Erin Brockovich," launched a registry of US data centers in April, inviting nearby residents to report how the projects are affecting their communities.

Speaking in an interview with podcaster Theo Von, released on Sunday, Brockovich talked about how she woke up one day to find 30 emails from people talking about the issues living around data centers.

"So I created what's called brockovichdatacenter.com, where people, if they were having issues with data centers in their backyard, could self-report," she said.

"This is a place where people who I believe are living, breathing, and experiencing these issues are the best source of information," Brockovich added.

According to her May Substack post, she launched the registry on April 27. She said on the podcast that within 72 hours of launching the registry, the website crashed twice because of the volume of reports.

Brockovich said the reports shared a common thread: Residents had not been informed about the data center projects by their city councils and often woke up to find construction underway.

The website now shows that over 8,200 people have reported data centers near them, and 41% are worried about how it could affect their water supply. Other major concerns included electricity supply and how the centers could harm residents' health and nearby wildlife.

This is not the first time the activist has spoken publicly about her fight against data centers. In a May episode of "The Jim Acosta Show," she said local government officials often keep their residents in the dark about these mega-construction projects because they have signed non-disclosure agreements with companies behind them.

"There's a lot of secrecy and NDAs at a very proposal stage," Brockovich said.

Business Insider's extensive coverage of data centers shows that more than 1,400 centers were built or approved for construction across the country at the end of 2025, with Virginia, West Texas, and Wisconsin emerging as hot spots.

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