Microsoft denies Mexico data center linked to water shortages, local illnesses, and power outages — stomach bugs and even hepatitis reported in region as 1.5 Gigawatt AI data center buildout looms

Local residents near a Mexico data center built by Microsoft last year have been complaining of a range of negative utility and health effects that they're attributing to the data center itself, according to the New York Times. They've highlighted several incidents of water shortages, power outages, and even stomach bugs, with some local schools forced to close temporarily.

Though causation does not imply causality and the individual incidents are isolated and not necessarily linked, the reports of problems have escalated in the last year since the data center complex in Queretaro was opened. The NYT report cites Dulce María Nicolás, a resident and mother of two from the nearby town of Las Cenizas, who claims water outages have lasted weeks and led to school cancellations. Víctor Bárcenas, who runs a local health clinic, claims that because of power outages he attributes to the data centers, one of his patients couldn't be treated locally and had to be rushed to a hospital over an hour away.

Bárcenas also claimed that a recent lack of clean water even led to a bout of hepatitis spreading rapidly over the summer of 2025.

In Viborillas, a town near the data centers, Elizabeth Sánchez and her neighbors now have such frequent water shortages that they pay regular fees for private water trucks. She also said that due to power outages, they'd had to throw out lots of spoiled food, and that a surge had recently damaged her daughter's computer.

Microsoft has denied claims that its data center is responsible: “We looked deeply and found no indication that our data centers have contributed to blackouts or water shortages in the region,” said Bowen Wallace, Microsoft corporate vice president for data centers in the Americas. “We will always prioritize the basic needs of the community.”

Mexico's national power company has attributed power outages to lightning strikes and stray animals, rather than data center overuse.

The local director of industrial development for the Querétaro region, where many of Mexico's data centers are located, Alejandro Sterling, downplayed concerns.

“Those are happy problems," he said. “Not for the people that suffer it, but for the development of the place.” He went on to describe data centers as "using" lots of water, rather than wasting it.

Sterling also claimed an ambitious growth plan was now playing out in Mexico, with the local area set to build out over 1.5 gigawatts of new data center infrastructure over the next five years. This giddy approach to AI hardware expansion has been aped elsewhere in the world, with Europe and the UK both announcing major data center projects in recent months.

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