Wisconsin woman says Meta’s $1B data center turned her creek cloudy like milk — water tests found extremely high aluminum. What now?

Many communities aren't happy when they hear a data center is being built nearby — and for good reason. In May 2025, Maily Kocinski noticed some irregularities in her local creek (3) in Wisconsin. She lives in a small town called Beaver Dam, less than two miles from a Meta (NASDAQ: META) data center that's in the process of being built (4).

She had the water from the creek tested, and it was positive for heavy metals.

Kocinski isn't the only person who's been negatively impacted by data centers. But government legislation on data centers hasn't yet caught up with their concerns.

Here's what could happen moving forward to keep communities like Beaver Dam safe.

Kocinski's story is part of a larger problem

Kocinski says she first noticed issues with the creek when it went completely dry — something she had never seen before. After that, the water would sometimes surge and erode the bends of the creek; other times, it would look milky or smell like chemicals.

Kocinski says that the U.S. Geological Survey reported high levels of aluminum in the creek, "consistent with heavy construction site activity, such as even rinsing out concrete trucks." She paid hundreds of dollars out of her own pocket to have this water tested.

Other communities have faced negative impacts from nearby data centers, even after construction is over. For example, one woman living in Loudoun County, Virginia told Business Insider the sound from data centers was keeping her up at night (5) — all the way back in 2023. Northern Virginia, where Loudoun County is situated, is a hub for data centers. Data Center Map says there are 598 data centers in Virginia (6), making up nearly 15% of all data centers in the U.S.

Data centers have also been at the center of environmental problems across the U.S. One study found that data centers made the area around them warmer (7) by up to 9 degrees Celsius. And xAI, an AI company owned by Elon Musk, was threatened with a lawsuit by the NAACP for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act (8) and polluting the South Memphis area, a predominantly Black area that already deals with higher-than-average pollution.

Indeed, the World Resources Institute says that many data centers are built in marginalized communities (9), such as communities already above the median for environmental pollution, low-income communities, and Black communities.

What governments are doing to protect communities from data centers

Before 2026, there wasn't much movement to protect local communities and the environment from data centers. In fact, the federal government has promoted increasing how many data centers are built in the US.

A July 2025 Executive Order from President Donald J. Trump, Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure (10), says "It will be a priority of my Administration to facilitate the rapid and efficient buildout of this infrastructure by easing Federal regulatory burdens." It cites a desire for the US to lead "critical manufacturing processes and technologies that are essential to national security, economic prosperity, and scientific leadership" as the reason.

In response to the Executive order, the EPA published (11) that it is "committed to executing President Trump's directive" by "cutting overly burdensome red tape" and "streamlining reviews under the Clean Air Act." Doing so could make things worse for the communities the data centers are built around.