GENESEE COUNTY, N.Y. — Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed a bill that pauses the construction of large-scale data centers for up to a year, creating the nation’s first data center moratorium.
The state is pausing environmental permits to build a regulatory framework that aims to protect the energy grid and the environment as data centers seek to expand. As News10NBC has covered, data centers often house thousands of computer servers and require massive amounts of energy and a steady supply of water to keep cool, which has raised criticism.
Genesee County residents have spoken in opposition to a proposed $19 billion data center project in the Town of Alabama. Developers say the Stream Data Centers complex would create 125 permanent jobs, but residents say they’re concerned about how much water the 2.2 million square foot data center campus would use.
Is the proposed data center in Genesee County impacted?
In June, the New York State Legislature passed the moratorium on data centers. After the bill passed, News10NBC’s Emily Putnam spoke with Mark Masse, President & CEO of the Genesee County Economic Development Center, about how the moratorium could impact the project.
Masse said the project is continuing to move forward unless the moratorium is signed into law. He said the project is still undergoing the State Environmental Quality Review act process, or SEQR.
“Unless it gets signed into law, we’re continuing to move along with this project as we have been,” Masse said. “I would point out that a lot of the items that the legislature was looking for under the moratorium we are actively doing.”
Those items include a DEC environmental impact statement, which Masse said was completed in 2012, and a study on energy demand.
“This project will pay, if approved, for 100% for any of the electrical infrastructure needed for it, so that will not go back on to the rate payers, so you know, a lot of those qualifiers that they wanted as the basis for the moratorium, we are already doing as part of our normal review process as part of this project,” Masse said.
At the time of the interview, Gov. Hochul hadn’t publicly said whether she would sign the moratorium. News10NBC is working to track the impact on the data center project now that the governor has signed the bill into law.
More about the moratorium
The moratorium order will pause state permitting for new large data centers and direct state regulators to create standards that address environmental impacts, energy demand, water usage and other factors, the governor’s office said.
Tech companies and other backers have argued moves to block the construction of data centers hurt job growth for local communities and cede ground to China in a race to lead in the rapidly growing AI industry.
Earlier this year, Maine seemed poised to establish a similar moratorium. But the measure was vetoed by the state’s governor because it would have blocked a proposed data center in a town that has struggled following the closure of a local mill. Moratoriums have been proposed in at least a dozen states but have not gotten far, though some counties and municipalities have imposed their own temporary bans.
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