NJ’s largest data center spill ever, over a week later, still no fine

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 worse than either of those, easily the largest data center-related fuel spill the state has seen.

By the following Monday, crews had recovered about 3,500 of the estimated 5,000 to 5,500 gallons. The DEP says the spill never reached the Hackensack River itself, staying contained in the smaller creek, with no reported wildlife impact and no drinking water intakes nearby.

Not everyone is convinced that's the full picture. Hackensack Riverkeeper Bill Sheehan questioned how confident anyone can be about "no impact" this early. "The tributaries are the capillary system of the whole ecosystem," he said. "All the water that runs off of our land goes into the creeks first, and then runs through the creeks out into the river."

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Where things actually stand now

More than a week later, the state has not announced any fine or enforcement action against Equinix.

Sheehan wants New Jersey to pursue what's called a natural resource damages claim, the same legal path that followed a 1994 caustic soda spill in the same river, which ultimately funded a major restoration project at Lincoln Park in Jersey City. Whether the state pursues something similar here remains an open question.

The spill has also sharpened a broader argument already playing out across the state. Ben Dziobek of the Climate Revolution Action Network didn't mince words: "This is what happens when the data center industry is allowed to operate without any rules, and new ones are popping up all over New Jersey."

Mayor Gonnelli made a point that lands close to home for anyone who's followed this thread with me. Jersey City and Bayonne have both banned data centers outright. It didn't matter here. A spill upstream doesn't respect a town's zoning line.

That's the part worth sitting with. A town can vote to keep a data center out entirely, and still end up living downstream of one that got approved somewhere else.