Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Erin Brokovich takes on data centers

Erin Brokovich's latest cause is fighting for transparency from tech companies building data centers.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

In 2000, Erin Brokovich was famously portrayed by Julia Roberts in a film named for her, fighting for environmental justice in a denim miniskirt. The real Brokovich secured $330 million for residents of Hinkley, California over PG&E’s groundwater contamination. In the years following, she continued advocating for victims of environmental damage around the country.

If you haven’t heard from Brokovich in a while, you might not know about her current cause: the proliferation of data centers across the U.S. She’s running a project called Brokovich AI Data Center Reporting. My colleague Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez explored this work in a recent piece for Fortune.

Brokovich has a Substack newsletter where she is chronicling the project. And she says that more than water usage, noise, and rising utility bills, the biggest concern people have in communities where data centers are being built is transparency. Her project has received 4,000 submissions across 50 states, from Holly Ridge, Louisiana to the data-center hub of Loudon County, Virginia.

She’s pushing for companies to inform residents of their projects before they start, not when they’re already underway. “Transparency means notifying residents before decisions are made, not after. It means public hearings with real, complete information about energy consumption, water use, noise levels, and effects on local infrastructure,” she wrote recently. “It means elected officials who answer to their constituents first, not to the corporations seeking tax breaks and zoning variances.”

Brokovich is tackling this issue as companies seem to be realizing their data center projects might need some PR help, at the very least. Meta recently announced the $115 million launch of a “workforce academy” that will train people to build data centers, positioning these jobs as a desirable skilled trade. And Meta had already tapped the politically hyper-connected Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman, for a role that involves deploying more than $600 billion in AI infrastructure, data centers included. (Powell McCormick ranked No. 58 on the 2026 Most Powerful Women list in that job).

So while Meta and other businesses determine AI’s impact on the economy, Brokovich is busy evaluating its effects on everyday Americans and their communities. Read more about her work here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.

Read and share today’s online edition here.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

Trump's DOJ is investigating the Newsoms. California Gov. Gavin Newsom says the president is wielding the DOJ to punish a political enemy—mainly because Newsom is considering running for president. Part of the investigation is focused on Jennifer Siebel Newsom and the finances of her nonprofits, which include the California Partners Project and the Representation Project.

The Palantir x London showdown. In the U.K., the Met Police had been using Palantir's software as part of an effort to find predatory officers within the police force. Palantir's AI flags when naked images appear on officers' phones and tracks changing communication patterns with victims of domestic violence. The tech was implemented after a series of scandals over the Met Police's treatment of women and girls. But now a new controversy is brewing after London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked a £50 million contract with Palantir for wider use of the software.

A day in the life of Stella Li. The No. 2 exec at BYD, the Chinese EV-maker, tells Fortune she spends 70% of her time traveling (she's the architect of BYD's rapid international expansion). In every market, she's meeting government officials, hiring local execs, and shaping pricing and product strategy. In 2025, BYD passed Tesla as the world's top seller of EVs.

The dark side of OnlyFans. A BBC investigation embedded in a private Telegram group of 24,000 OnlyFans managers, or OFMs. It uncovered predatory and exploitative practices, where managers promise to help women earn more money and then turn violent or controlling. This latest investigation focused on the U.K., where OnlyFans is based, and concludes "the platform is not doing enough to protect creators from exploitation." OnlyFans says in a statement that "the allegation we 'turn a blind eye' [to these issues] is unfounded."