By Eric "EJ" Johnson ,
1 hours ago
I’ve written about data centers fighting their way into New Jersey towns all summer. This one’s different. This time, the fear residents kept raising actually happened.
On the evening of September 11, roughly 5,500 gallons of diesel fuel spilled from a storage tank at Equinix’s data center on Hartz Way in Secaucus. The fuel flowed into Anderson Creek, a tributary of the Hackensack River. Equinix said staff detected the release, stopped it, and called in Clean Harbors to begin cleanup. The Secaucus Fire Department, the state DEP, and the Hudson Regional Health Commission were all notified.
Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli called it a “computer glitch.” “This data center’s been here since 2001, over 25 years,” he said. “We’ve never had a problem before this time.” A later investigation from Equinix pointed to something more specific: a failure of two valves used in the fuel’s filtration process.
This is New Jersey’s largest data center spill on record That’s not my characterization, that’s the actual history. A 2017 incident in Clifton involved 600 gallons. A 2022 Equinix spill in North Bergen released 1,800 gallons. This one is nearly three times wo...