To the Editor:

For decades the League of Women Voters has urged vigilance in protecting air and water quality. Our official position states: “The League of Women Voters of the United States believes that natural resources should be managed as interrelated parts of life-supporting ecosystems. Resources should be conserved and protected to assure their future availability. Pollution of these resources should be controlled in order to preserve the physical, chemical and biological integrity of ecosystems and to protect public health.”

Data centers, especially the hyperscale data centers supporting AI, can have potentially serious adverse environmental consequences.  They use enormous amounts of electricity, much of which is still generated using natural gas, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions; data centers also use great volumes of water for cooling which, if returned to its original source much warmer, affects fishing, agriculture and wildlife.  Frequent replacement of the supercomputers employed generates “e-waste”; and the noise from fans running 24/7 affects neighbors’ health and quality of life. 

Clearly, we need to perform thorough environmental and economic impact reviews of the potential risk factors associated with the construction of more data centers across our state. We need these reviews in order to reach a sober determination of how best to co-habit with this hungry technology without making New York unaffordable, uninhabitable for human beings and wildlife, and thereby undermining property use, property values and thus New York’s tax base.  

Such reviews take time. The LWVNYS therefore believes it is essential to pass the proposed three-year moratorium on issuing new permits for data centers currently under consideration in Albany. A moratorium would give the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Public Service Commission time to study and issue appropriate reports in order to develop policies and implement regulations to minimize adverse impacts from further data center development.

A Resolution recently passed by the SLC Board of Legislators Operations Committee regarding local jurisdiction over the siting of data center notes their adverse effects. (It can be found on the SLC County Government website where it is item D under Old/New Business in the Meeting Minutes for May 11.)  To take effect, the Resolution must be voted on again at the next Full Board Meeting, which is on June 1. 

The League urges readers to contact their County Legislator regarding this Resolution, and to ask their state representatives to support a moratorium.

Kathleen Stein, President, LWVSLC

 Canton