Meta's US data centre triggers rare bacteria scare: How dangerous is Cupriavidus gilardii?

A massive Meta data centre under construction in Wyoming has unexpectedly become the centre of a public health and environmental investigation after officials traced a rare bacterium to wastewater discharged from the site. 

The discovery has not contaminated drinking water, authorities stress, but it has prompted new wastewater regulations and renewed scrutiny of the environmental footprint of the rapidly expanding data centre industry in the United States. 

How was the bacteria discovered? 

The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities (BOPU) detected Cupriavidus gilardii during routine sampling of its reclaimed water irrigation system in February. After several months of testing, investigators concluded that the source was wastewater linked to Meta's "Project Cosmo" data centre, a 715,000-square-foot facility being built in southeast Wyoming by contractor Fortis Construction. 

The contamination was found in reclaimed wastewater used for irrigation — not in the city's drinking water system. 

Following the investigation, Cheyenne permanently revoked the project's permission to discharge wastewater into municipal treatment facilities. The city has also introduced stricter regulations governing wastewater generated during data centre construction, particularly from closed-loop cooling and fill-and-flush systems that circulate purified water to clean newly installed pipes. 

Meta said it has directed its contractor to fully cooperate with local authorities to prevent a repeat of the incident. The company also said independent environmental testing commissioned by the contractor did not detect the bacterium and reiterated that public drinking water remained unaffected. 

What is Cupriavidus gilardii? 

Cupriavidus gilardii is a naturally occurring bacterium commonly found in soil and environmental water sources. It is considered an "opportunistic pathogen," meaning it rarely causes illness in healthy individuals but can become dangerous in people with weakened immune systems. 

Because infections are extremely uncommon, the bacterium has received relatively little public attention. However, medical experts consider it clinically significant due to its ability to cause severe infections in vulnerable patients and its resistance to several commonly used antibiotics. 

Who is most at risk? 

Most healthy people are unlikely to become ill after exposure. The greatest risk is for people with compromised immune systems, including cancer patients, organ transplant recipients, elderly individuals, and patients undergoing invasive medical procedures such as catheter or pacemaker implantation. 

In these patients, the bacterium has been linked to serious bloodstream infections, pneumonia, septic shock, cholecystitis and, in rare cases, fatal sepsis. 

Typical symptoms include persistent high fever, breathing difficulties, elevated white blood cell counts and increased inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein (CRP). 

Why do doctors worry about it? 

One of the biggest concerns surrounding C. gilardii is its remarkable resistance to antibiotics. The bacterium carries intrinsic antimicrobial resistance genes that make it naturally resistant to carbapenems — including meropenem and imipenem — which are often used as last-resort antibiotics. It also shows resistance to aminoglycosides and has demonstrated resistance to newer drugs such as cefiderocol in some cases. 

Treatment therefore requires careful laboratory testing, with some strains responding to antibiotics including cefepime, ciprofloxacin, minocycline or ceftazidime-avibactam. 

Adding to the challenge, standard laboratory tests may misidentify the organism. Accurate diagnosis often requires advanced molecular techniques such as 16S rRNA gene sequencing or metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS). 

How rare are human infections? 

Documented infections remain exceptionally uncommon. Only a handful of confirmed human infections have been reported worldwide. A March 2026 study in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases described a patient who died from septic shock after contracting the bacterium during a cord blood transplantation procedure. 

Earlier reports have also documented isolated fatal cases, including that of a 12-year-old American girl who developed sepsis while travelling in Europe. 

Despite these cases, experts continue to classify the bacterium as a low-virulence environmental organism that poses little threat to the general population. 

Why the incident matters beyond public health 

The Wyoming case comes as data centres face increasing criticism over their growing demand for water and electricity. 

Modern AI-ready data centres require enormous volumes of water to cool servers. Some facilities can consume as much as 300,000 gallons of water daily — roughly equivalent to the water needs of about 1,000 households. 

Although the bacterium itself did not enter Cheyenne's drinking water, the incident has highlighted how large-scale technology infrastructure projects can create unexpected environmental challenges, prompting regulators to tighten oversight of wastewater disposal as AI-driven data centre construction accelerates across the United States.