Meta is building a $13 billion AI data center in Alberta, Canada — shipping thousands of construction and operational jobs north of the border — while an existing Meta data center project in Wyoming contaminated local water with a rare, potentially deadly bacteria. American workers get a training brochure; Canadian workers get the paychecks.
The contrast lays bare the priorities of Mark Zuckerberg's empire. Meta announced Wednesday that its first Canadian data center, a 1-gigawatt facility in Sturgeon County, Alberta, will draw more than 13 billion Canadian dollars in investment, support over 3,000 construction jobs at peak, and create more than 300 permanent operational positions. The company also pledged roughly 60 million Canadian dollars for local infrastructure improvements and nonprofit grants, according to its press release.
Back in the United States, the picture looks different. In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a Meta data center project code-named "Project Cosmo" contaminated the local reclaimed water irrigation system with Cupriavidus gilardii, a rare soil and groundwater bacterium that can cause lung infections, sepsis, and death. The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities traced the contamination — discovered during routine sampling in February — to wastewater flushed into public sewers by Fortis Construction, Meta's contractor on the 715,000-square-foot site, according to the San Francisco Gate. A 12-year-old American girl with a bone marrow condition died from the same bacteria in 2010.
Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan told the SF Gate that Fortis stopped discharging wastewater after being notified and that Meta's own independent testing found no trace of the bacteria. The city confirmed drinking water was unaffected. But UC San Francisco infectious disease expert Monica Gandhi was blunt: "I would not want it around my drinking water. I wouldn't want it anywhere."
The Cheyenne utilities board forced Meta to adopt strict new wastewater discharge rules for certain data centers. The Wyoming project, valued at $800 million, promises just over 100 jobs — a fraction of what Alberta is getting.
In June, Meta launched a free program to train American workers for data center construction jobs — a gesture that rings hollow when the actual construction work and investment are heading to Canada. Meta also plans to begin manufacturing its own AI chip in September as part of a broader push to boost computing power by 2027, Reuters reported.
The infrastructure strain is real. AI data centers consume enormous volumes of electricity and water — up to 5 million gallons daily at large facilities, roughly the usage of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Seven in 10 Americans told Gallup they don't want AI data centers in their communities. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said June 30 he wants to "prohibit" new data centers in rural Texas, tying the fight to "East Texas values."
Meta says the Alberta facility will use 100% clean and renewable energy and a closed-loop cooling system with zero operational water use. Those are commitments made for Canada. In Wyoming, the water is already compromised.
Zuckerberg is happy to train Americans for jobs he has no intention of putting in their zip codes. The question is whether anyone in Washington will notice — or care — before the next billion-dollar project gets shipped across the border.