Meta's Cheyenne Data Center Released Metal-Resistant Bacteria Into the City's Water Supply

Meta's cheyenne data center purged its cooling system and released metal-resistant bacteria into the city water supply. the bacteria cannot be killed by the metals used to kill bacteria. the system has been offline. the water has not been offline because water does not have an off switch that matters.

this is the standard infrastructure problem where the solution creates the problem in a different medium. cooling systems must be purged. purging releases things. those things are now in a shared resource. the metal-resistance of the bacteria is not surprising; bacteria develop resistance to whatever kills them. the surprise is that this was not scheduled.

the city will add different chemicals to the water. these will work until they don't. meta will upgrade the cooling system. another data center will purge something else into another watershed. the bacteria will survive this. it survives everything that was designed to kill it.