Lawmakers and activists are escalating their push for New York to pause construction of large-scale data centers in order to study their enormous power needs and set rules to spare consumers the costs.
A crowd gathered with signs in the state Capitol on Wednesday, May 13, to urge passage of a bill that would put a moratorium on new data centers for more than three years. Time is running short for approval, with just a dozen or so voting days left before the 2026 legislative session is scheduled to end on June 4.
Rally speakers pointed to a burst of new and planned data centers in New York and around the U.S. to serve the artificial intelligence boom, and to the strain that will put on electricity supplies.
“This is a horrible catastrophe,” said Roger Downs, conservation director for the Sierra Club’s Atlantic Chapter. “The rapid growth of A.I., crypto currency and data centers in New York is overwhelming our utilities, undermining our environment, harming public health and causing energy bills to skyrocket, because of the extraordinary power these facilities demand.”
“Our local governments are not equipped to do the environmental reviews of these projects, are not equipped to site them properly,” he added. “We need state and federal oversight.”
The push comes as data centers are emerging as a potent political issue, with local resistance to projects galvanized in places from suburban Rockland County to rural Genesee County, between Rochester and Buffalo. In the midst of an affordability crisis, the plans are stoking fears that these huge computer centers that run 24/7 will drive utility bills even higher, while creating few jobs.
The USA TODAY Network revealed last week that a developer was quietly testing plans for a 1,000-megawatt data center in Dutchess County that would use as much power as a city and far surpass any existing New York data centers. The state’s power grid operators are studying the feasibility of an operation that large, in conjunction with a slew of other data center proposals in the Hudson Valley.
That 1,000-megawatt prospect has caused a public outcry in East Fishkill, the town where it would be built. On Wednesday, May 13, East Fishkill Supervisor Nick D’Alessandro announced a proposal to extend a moratorium on development in industrial areas and expand it to include data centers. He said the town board will hold a public hearing on the proposal next week.
What would the New York data center moratorium bill do?
New York is one of 14 states that have so far taken up proposed halts or restrictions on data center construction, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Most of those proposals are still pending, and a few have been shot down. Maine lawmakers approved a moratorium until 2027 on data centers over 20 megawatts, but Gov. Janet Mills vetoed it for failing to exempt a project that she and the host community supported.
New York’s bill, sponsored by Assembly Member Anna Kelles and Sen. Liz Krueger, also would apply to data centers of 20 megawatts or larger, pausing all permits. It would require the state Department of Environmental Conservation to study the potential impact of data centers within 18 months and adopt new regulations within three years to mitigate those effects. The moratorium would expire three months after that three-year window for work by both the DEC and Public Service Commission.
The bill is pending in environmental committees in both the Assembly and Senate and faces stiff competition for legislators’ attention in the last weeks of their session, due to extremely drawn-out budget talks between Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders. Lawmakers have yet to vote on budget bills that were supposed to done by April 1, leaving a pile of legislation awaiting action in a narrowing window unless the session is extended.
What else did supporters say at the Albany rally?
Rally speakers included Ellen Schwartz from the Bi-State Data Center Crisis Coalition, a group that’s fighting a proposal by DataBank to expand its newly built data center in the Rockland County hamlet of Orangeburg.
She cited the risk of contaminating drinking water in nearby Lake Tappan reservoir with diesel fuel stored on site for the operation’s backup generators. And she raised the prospect of higher utility bills for area residents, criticizing Orange and Rockland Utilities for giving no information on infrastructure costs other than a terse “boilerplate” statement.
“There is no real community benefit being articulated,” Schwartz said. “The public is being asked to shoulder enormous risks, few jobs and limited ongoing tax revenue in return. There are dozens of communities across the state embroiled in similar battles. The bottom line is that decisions of this magnitude should not be left to hyperlocal planning boards alone. A statewide moratorium is the only responsible path forward.”
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA TODAY Network. Reach him at CMcKenna@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Inside the fight to halt data center projects in NY for three years
Reporting by Chris McKenna and Emily Barnes, New York State Team / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
