Americans’ data center fears are coming true—a New Jersey location just leaked 5,000 gallons of diesel

A New Jersey data center has leaked thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, and it’s the latest example of Americans’ fears about the environmental threats of the AI buildout materializing.

Secaucus, New Jersey, officials are cleaning up a 5,000-gallon oil spill from an Equinix data center storage tank that began leaking last week, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement released on Tuesday. The spill, which is now contained, flowed into an unnamed tributary of the Hackensack River, though it did not reach the river. A cleanup over the weekend removed “a significant portion of the fuel,” but the crew is still recovering fuel from the impacted areas of the creek. As of Monday, the crew cleaned up about 3,500 gallons of the spill.

The department said the spill did not have any observed impacts on local wildlife, and that no drinking water intakes were near the area of the spill.

Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli initially attributed the accident to a “computer glitch” and told local news outlets that the data center, which has been operating since 2001, had never experienced an issue before.

Equinix, which has operated the data center since that time, said in a statement to Fortune that the spill was a result of two broken valves used as part of the routine filtration process, and that the company is finalizing a full incident response report to prevent the recurrence of a similar accident.

“We regret that this occurred and the concern it has caused the community,” the statement said.

Data centers’ PR problem

As data center pushback continues to snowball, so, too, do concerns about the hazards associated with their buildout and operations, with some anxieties actualized in real time. For example, in July, officials in Cheyenne, Wyoming, identified a rare bacterium that had entered its waste water treatment facility that had come from a nearby Meta data center. 

There have been at least 10 data-center diesel spills in the last couple of decades, including two in New Jersey. In 2017, the Garden State saw 600 gallons of fuel from a data center enter the Clifton region’s storm drains. In 2022, an Equinix data center in North Bergen spilled 1,800 gallons of diesel. This latest incident marks the state’s largest data center-related spill—nearly three times more severe than its previous spill.

To be sure, these incidents pale in comparison to the magnitude of oil spills across other industries. There have been more than 4,900 total oil spills in the U.S. since 2010, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data, with 14% coming from diesel, and the vast majority were the result of crude oil spills from transportation, and drilling and extraction. The magnitude of those spills also far exceed those of data center-related spills, exceeding 134 million gallons, and averaging about 300,000 gallons. A 2008 leak at an AT&T plant in Bothell, Washington—the largest data center diesel spill—totalled 15,000 gallons. 

Data centers making up only a small fraction of fuel spills is illustrative of AI becoming the new face of the environmental bogeyman in the eyes of the American public. In 1970, Americans launched the largest environmental movement in history, with 20 million people taking to the streets on the first Earth Day, the anniversary of the Santa Barbara oil spill, which released more than 3 million gallons of crude into the Pacific Ocean. Today, AI is chief among Americans’ environmental worries, with 53% of Americans having concerns about the environmental impacts of AI, according to Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released on Wednesday. That compares to 28% who worry about the environmental risk of air travel, 28% for crypto, and 32% for meat production. To this day, meat production and aviation both have higher rates of carbon emissions compared to data centers.

Diesel supply in particular, however, may have struck chord with Americans, who are now paying a record $6.39 per gallon at the pump for the fuel amid the ongoing Iran war.

Michael Greenstone, director of the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute that collaborated on the survey, attributed some of the growing ire toward data centers, despite other industries producing comparable effect, to the relative newness of AI.

“We’re undertaking a massive experiment in real time, and I don’t think there’ll be any putting the milk back in the bottle,” he told the Associated Press. “Change is scary, and I think some of that is being reflected here.”

Data centers’ diesel problem

Diesel fuel plays a vital role in data center operations, as it is often the energy source of backup generators in case of a power outage, a growing concern amid data centers’ increasing reliance on a fragile grid system. Any halt in data center operations can mean a loss of revenue or a breach of a contract, according to a report from policy organization Better Data Center Project published in March. Unreliable data centers would be offline for about 28 hours a year, and the most reliable are only down for 26 minutes in that same span. Outages can cost companies $1 million per hour and have even been linked to cancelled flights and the rerouting of emergency vehicles to hospitals.

As a result, the buildout of these diesel fuel generators has soared along with the construction of data centers. The Better Data Center Project found that from 2018 to 2024, data center diesel generator capacity tripled from 20 gigawatts to 55 gigawatts. In Virginia alone, the state with the most data centers, more than 10,500 generator units for data centers were permitted by the end of last year, with the total power usage of about 20 million U.S. homes. Virginia has about 3.9 million homes in the entire state.

But because of the intensive cooling necessary for data center operations, their campuses are often located near large bodies of water, which increase the risks of environmental hazards, such as oil spills. Most diesel leaks are small and less than 200 gallons, the Better Data Center Project noted.

The organization recommended that diesel generators installed by data centers meet certain emission standards, as well as a broader movement away from diesel to battery-powered generators, as well as structural improvements to the grid that would mitigate the risk of outages in the first place.

“This field is evolving at a rapid pace and many aspects of data center development remain in flux,” Better Data Center Project said in its March report. “However, the magnitude of diesel generator capacity already permitted and installed means that some communities will experience harm even if generators are used only for testing, maintenance, and rare emergency outages.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com