This aired on CNN — Laura Coates Live. And it is the most powerful single television appearance in the entire data center fight.
Consumer advocate and environmentalist Erin Brockovich joined the fight against AI data centers as communities nationwide raise concerns about secrecy, environmental damage, and quality of life.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/30/us/video/erin-brockovich-joins-fight-against-ai-data-centers-its-shocking-lcl
Brockovich tells Laura Coates that “the size of these places is unbelievable” and says the rapid expansion of the projects across the country is “shocking.”
The size is unbelievable. The expansion is shocking.
Those are not words from an abstract policy debate. Those are words from the woman who drove to Hinkley, California and looked at what a corporation was doing to a community and decided she was going to do something about it. Who spent years being told she was wrong. Who helped win a $333 million settlement that changed American corporate accountability forever.
She looked at AI data centers — the size of them, the speed of them, the secrecy of them — and said: it is unbelievable. It is shocking.
And then she built a map. And 6,615 Americans filled it with their stories in 30 days.
Here is what Erin Brockovich said on CNN that every American needs to hear:
She called the secrecy surrounding data center approvals the most troubling part of the entire phenomenon. Not the water. Not the electricity. The secrecy. The fact that communities find out after the deal is done. After the NDA is signed. After the permit is approved.
After the bulldozers are already warming up.
She has seen this before. She knows what it looks like when an industry moves fast and in secret and counts on communities not finding out until it is too late.
She is not going to let it happen again.
And this week — with 71% of Americans opposed, with working class communities fighting at five times the rate of wealthy ones, with Kentucky voting out data center supporters, with Blue Island packing a council chamber tonight, with Nashville Zoo’s legal challenge filed today and 332,000 signatures still climbing