Equinix releases incident report into Secaucus fuel spill, local officials share update
According to the report, debris became lodged in two valves at the company's Secaucus data center, causing a diesel fuel overflow. The company said the spill continued for approximately four hours.
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More than four weeks after a diesel spill released over 5,000 gallons of fuel into a tributary of the Hackensack River, Secaucus officials are providing new details about what investigators have learned and what cleanup efforts remain underway.
Mayor Michael Gonnelli, members of the Secaucus Town Council, residents and representatives of Equinix discussed the Sept. 11 spill and its impact on the community at a meeting on Tuesday.
Equinix released a message to residents and an internal incident report outlining preliminary findings from its investigation earlier this week. According to the report, debris became lodged in two valves at the company's Secaucus data center, causing a diesel fuel overflow. The company said the spill continued for approximately four hours.
According to town officials, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is overseeing cleanup efforts and ensuring remediation meets state standards. Council members also said no damage to wildlife or vegetation has been identified as a result of the spill and cleanup contractors hired by Equinix continue to remove residual oil and debris from the affected drainage channel.
Still, some residents expressed concerns about the long-term impact of data center development in Secaucus.
"There's been a conscientious effort on the part of Equinix to let us know what happened, to find out what the cause was and to fix it. Fine, that's not the future," said LaRue. "We don't know what's going to happen with the other data centers in the future."
Town officials said neither the data center involved in the spill nor the two facilities currently under construction in Secaucus are intended for artificial intelligence operations. However, the Town Council announced plans to adopt an ordinance that would prohibit generative AI-focused data centers in the future.
"I'm drafting an ordinance to specifically ban the AI generative data centers," said Town Attorney Nick Strasser. "The technology is very specific from one type of data center to the other, and we're going to make sure the definitions are very clear."
Equinix said its investigation into the source of the debris that caused the valve malfunction remains ongoing. The company also acknowledged that an on-duty engineer failed to recognize or respond to alerts related to the spill while it was occurring. A company spokesperson confirmed to News 12 that the employee is no longer with the company.
