July 17, 2026 Hello , It feels great to be back writing about strong woman who didn't give up when times got tough. My month off has been filled birthdays, weddings, graduations, get-togethers with my extended family and then my husband's family and a trip across the state to help my younger son move. Done with my vacation, now maybe I can relax.😆 When I saw Erin Brockovich in the news, of course, I thought of the movie. I didn't remember the history-making nature of the lawsuit, the first of its kind attempting to hold a corporation responsible for polluting the
environment. Julia Roberts won an Oscar portraying Erin Brockovich in the movie of the same name. It was a hit and she became a star, going on to become one of the top actresses in Hollywood. The real Erin Brockovich
also garnered some well-deserved fame after the movie, which told the true story of her David and Goliath effort to prove a natural gas and electric company poisoned the drinking water in a California town. Erin did a lot of the research for the lawsuit filed in 1992 on behalf of Hinkley, CA citizens. When the company settled in 1996, it payed the largest settlement in US history.
And it started a stream of citizens suing companies across the country for polluting land, water and air. Over the decades Erin's name has become a cultural touchstone, while the woman herself, somewhat under the radar, has remained an environmental and consumer rights activist. Recently, people started contacting her with their worries about data centers. Erin took up the baton and started asking the question: If Data Centers Are So Great, Why Are They Being Built in Secret?
The most powerful tech companies in the world play Goliath in the story of data centers in America, a story being written so fast it's almost impossible to keep up with. But Erin Brochovich didn't pay attention to the word impossible. Her mom gave her a dictionary and pointed out other words for her to learn, like stick-to-itiveness: a propensity to follow through in a determined manner. Erin had a learning disability, which made school frustrating. She'd be the first to raise her hand with
the answer, but on written assignments her dyslexia caused her to fail. "I was always told I could be nothing, because I couldn't learn in that [standard way]."
Erin Pattee
(later Brochovich), Lawrence, Kansas. circa 1970. Dogged, persistent, stubborn, these words created a roadmap Erin used to navigate the world. "Stubborn is my middle name." she told ABC News five years ago. "I am persistent and even to this day." Now, Erin has created a data base of information about data centers across the country (operational, under construction, proposed and community reported). She's determined the data center story will not be
written by Goliath. "I am watching as YOU, the communities show up and speak out. In the famous words of Mark Twain … “The secret of getting ahead is getting started,” so let’s go!" Erin was an unemployed, twice-divorced, single mom with three kids when she talked her way into a job as a file clerk for Attorney Edward Masry. She was working pro bono on a real estate case when she found a set of medical records she thought seemed suspicious. Her doggedness took hold and she began to dig for more information.
Tireless work led her to evidence that a chemical, hexavalent chromium, was poisoning the drinking water in Hinkley, California. “Everywhere I was going in this little community, somebody had asthma, a complaint of a chronic cough, recurring bronchitis, recurring rashes, unusual joint aches, nosebleeds,” Brockovich told “20/20”. “It didn't make sense, and so the more I ask questions ... the more I started to piece the puzzle together.” Along with Erin's stubbornness thrived an unshakable sense of right and wrong that she attributes to her father's influence. "When I was in high school I got in trouble for telling a lie...I had decided to skip school. lied about it I just got busted and so [Dad] grounded me for an entire school semester. It was awful." A few years later, Erin's dad wrote her a letter saying honesty is the "greatest gift you will have on this Earth and we want you to develop into an admired, honest and respected
woman." "The minute I stepped foot in Hinkley, it all came back.
Actress Julia Roberts playing Erin Brockovich in the 2000 movie. "Erin was like if Barbie and Wonder Woman were one person," says Roberta Walker, a Hinkley resident. "She likes to challenge people with her big
blond head of hair and her low cut bustiers and she's almost saying to them I dare you to underestimate me." Pacific Gas & Electric Company never
admitted fault when it settled with Roberta and other townspeople, and the $333 million paid out didn't go as far as people think. "It made it look like we won and we didn’t, says Roberta."I didn't receive a fraction of that much money [shown in the movie]. I wouldn't be working three jobs if we'd won. Roberta has had five stomach surgeries and three breast surgeries. Her two daughters needed hysterectomies and still suffer fibromyalgia. Her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the whole family has asthma. She blames it all plumes of vapor released over Hinkley by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, contaminating ground water with a chemical known to cause cancer.
Roberta Walker and Erin Brockovich, courtesy of Roberta Walker, date unknown. In the years since the settlement with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Erin has continued her efforts to make corporations pay for polluting the ground, air and water. She's won some advances in protecting communities and lost some, but none have had the magnitude shown by her crowdsource map of data centers. "On April 27, I put out a simple ask: if you have concerns about an AI data center near you, tell me about it. I expected some response. What I got was a flood."
"The RACE to build AI infrastructures
is unfolding town by town across America," says Brockovich's website. "In some places, data centers are welcomed. In others, they are delayed, contested or abandoned altogether. The MAP captures the real-world footprint of that race — revealing patterns of growth, conflict and uncertainty." On her substack, Erin wrote about the messages she's received since April
in which some words show up again and again, words like silenced, ignored, secretive, and not seen and not heard. People write about back-door deals and NDAs. They
describe showing up to planning meetings to discover decisions have already been made. They’re watching their utility bills climb and worrying about possible long-term impacts on their health and property values. Americans are pushing back. Erin says what people want most is transparency.
Erin Brockovich on her Instagram feed. The corporations that have the most to gain from data centers are spending lots of money on their messaging. Personally, I do not think they are above muddying the waters. NetChoice is a Washington, D.C.-based trade association whose members include Amazon, Google and Meta. On the groups website you will read how data centers are essential to operation of our smart phones and laptops. Without data centers, the tech tools we use every day would simply fail to function. The group's messaging emphasizes job creation, tax revenue, and broadband expansion, but doesn't emphasize transparency. There's no commitment to look at or address environmental impacts and nothing about people's rights to know what's being built next door before the permits are signed. Erin Brockovich's question is salient. If Data Centers Are So Great, Why Are They Being Built in Secret?
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Thanks to Marguerite who wrote to recommend a book about American nurses serving in the Vietnam War, Healing Wounds. I'm especially thrilled to promote the book because the author Diane Carlson Evans kindly wrote
the foreword for my book about American nurses captured POW in the Philippines during WWII. Like Erin Brockovich, Diane doggedly refused to give up her daunting quest for justice. After serving in Vietnam, she wanted nurses to be honored with a memorial in Washington D.C.
“Women didn’t have to enter military service," Diane said, "but we stepped up to serve believing we belonged with our brothers-in-arms and now we
belong with them at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. If they belong there, we belong there. We were there for them then. We mattered.” Marguerite says the book is compelling, the first half recounting the gritty and high-intensity experience of being a nurse in the midst of combat, the second half tells how Diane become an unlikely hero who ultimately serves her country
again as a formidable force to assure Vietnam Combat Nurses a place of honor in our nation's capitol.
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