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.