A Computer Glitch, 5,500 Gallons of Diesel: Equinix Spill Turns a New Jersey Marsh Into a Fuel Leak

The system meant to keep the servers online is the system that emptied fossil fuel into a protected wetland. On the evening of Friday 11 September, a diesel storage tank at Equinix's NY2 data centre in Secaucus, New Jersey, discharged thousands of gallons of fuel into Anderson Creek, a tidal tributary of the Hackensack River in the Meadowlands.

The reported cause was not a flood, a storm or an act of God. It was an automated fuelling system that kept calling for oil when it should have stopped — a "computer glitch."

What Happened

• The volume: The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) estimates around 5,000 gallons of diesel was discharged. Cleanup advocates and the town put the figure at at least 5,500 gallons of No. 2 diesel. The DEP says it is unclear exactly how much reached the creek.
• The site: Equinix's NY2 facility on Hartz Way, Secaucus — a data centre that has operated in the town for more than 25 years and is now mid-expansion. The tank feeds the site's backup generators.
• The cause: Hackensack Riverkeeper Bill Sheehan says he was told a computer glitch caused the release. "The computer was calling for oil," he said. Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli has pointed to the automated fuelling system and broken valves failing to shut off.
• The water: Fuel entered Anderson Creek, which runs past Harmon Cove and into the Hackensack River. The DEP says the creek is narrow enough at that point that crews could contain the fuel before it reached the main river — and that no drinking water intakes are nearby and no wildlife impacts have been reported.
• The cleanup: Equinix detected the release on Friday, stopped it, and notified agencies. The company hired contractors including Clean Harbors; booms were strung across the creek by Saturday and vacuum trucks were pulling a fuel-and-water mix out for treatment and disposal. By Monday, the mayor said 3,500 gallons had been recovered from the creek. The DEP expects work to continue for days.

The Irony Is the Story

Data centres are sold as weightless. The cloud, the "always on" internet, the AI assistant that answers instantly — none of it is supposed to have a smell.

Underneath, it is an industrial site with a fuel supply. Every data centre carries diesel generators and the tanks to feed them, sized to carry the full load of the building when the grid fails. That is the redundancy promise: the servers never stop. But a tank of diesel sitting beside a tidal creek is a physical fact — and on 11 September, an automated system on the wrong side of that promise turned a software fault into an environmental incident.

The facility's whole product is uptime. Its failure mode is a fuel spill into a marsh.

A Capillary System, Not a Pipe

Anderson Creek is part of the Anderson Creek Marsh, roughly 52 acres of tidal wetland along the Hackensack River — open water, exposed mudflats, and native marsh vegetation including smooth cordgrass. Diesel does not need to produce an immediate fish kill to do damage. No. 2 diesel contains toxic petroleum compounds that affect fish, shellfish, insects and worms, with eggs, larvae and bottom-of-the-food-chain organisms especially vulnerable. It can also injure cordgrass, which holds the sediment together and keeps the marsh functioning.

Sheehan has been blunt about what "contained in the creek" means:

"The tributaries are the capillary system of the whole ecosystem. All the water that runs off of our land goes into the creeks first, and then runs through the creeks out into the river."

He added that it is too early to know the full ecological cost — and that the timing is brutal. The Hackensack River was placed on the federal Superfund list in 2022 and is the focus of a major cleanup effort.

"It's a slap in the face to all the work that's been going on," Sheehan said.

Who Pays for It

Sheehan is calling on New Jersey to pursue a natural resource damages claim against Equinix — a mechanism that forces a polluter to fund environmental restoration rather than just clean up and walk away. He points to the precedent: a 1994 barge spill of 310,000 gallons of caustic soda into the Hackensack River produced a damages claim that helped fund a major restoration project at Lincoln Park in Jersey City.

"The money came from the polluter across the river that spilled their barge," he said. "This time it was a data center close to the river that spilled its oil. I think we should get a damage fund for that."

Mayor Gonnelli has backed the push: "I want to go after them as best we can." He has also said he assumes a fine may follow.

Equinix says it is working with agencies, local officials and community stakeholders on "a thorough remediation" and is conducting a full investigation to determine the root cause and prevent recurrence. The DEP is investigating; no fines or enforcement action have been announced.

The Wider Fight This Lands In

The spill did not happen in a vacuum — Secaucus is one of the most data-centre-dense towns in New Jersey.

• About 10 data centres operate in Secaucus, with two more under construction — the Equinix expansion on Hartz Way and a large CoreSite facility planned for County Road.
• Close to 100 New Jersey municipalities have banned new data centres this year in the absence of state legislation.
• The Climate Revolution Action Network (CRAN) used the spill to renew its call for a statewide moratorium: "No town can protect itself alone," said executive director Ben Dziobek, noting that Jersey City and Bayonne have banned data centres yet still share a polluted river with Secaucus.
• Governor Mikie Sherrill has proposed requiring data centres to report their water and electricity use — but the state has not moved to a ban.
• Last month, the DataOne data centre in Vineland was found running at least 45 unpermitted gas generators, sending emissions into neighbouring South Jersey communities.

The pattern is consistent: these are industrial facilities with fuel, generators, water demand and emissions, sited on land that communities never agreed to industrialise — and their impacts do not stop at a town boundary.

What Communities Should Do

1. Ask where the diesel is stored. For any data centre near a watercourse, demand the spill prevention plan, tank siting, and containment design — and whether tanks sit inside a floodplain.
2. Ask what happens when the automation fails. Automated fuelling and valve systems need fail-safes, secondary containment and manual shutdown. "Computer glitch" is not an acceptable root cause for a wetland.
3. Demand transparency on volume and recovery. Insist on public accounting: how much was discharged, how much was recovered, and independent monitoring of sediment and vegetation afterwards.
4. Push for natural resource damages, not just cleanup. Restoration funding set by the damage done — not by what the polluter chooses to spend.
5. Work beyond your own boundary. A town-level ban gives way to a state-level problem. Coordinate across municipalities and press for statewide rules, as campaigners in New Jersey are doing.

What's Next

Equinix's root-cause investigation and the DEP's enforcement review are the two things to watch. So is the natural resource damages question: if New Jersey pursues it, the spill becomes a template for what data centre operators owe a watershed — not just the cost of wiping it up.

Meanwhile the underlying question stands. The industry's answer to "what if the power goes out?" is a tank of diesel and a promise. New Jersey just learned what happens when the tank wins.

This article is based on reporting from Patch (Secaucus), CBS News New York, Gothamist/Times of India, InsiderNJ and NJ.com, plus background from the Hackensack Riverkeeper and Climate Revolution Action Network, September 2026. Data Centre Truth is monitoring data centre siting and environmental enforcement for communities in the UK and US.