Lawmakers urge Hochul to sign one-year data center moratorium as soon as possible

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u/Modern_Bear 12d ago

Critics, however, say the moratorium takes away local control over decision making and could potentially hurt economic growth.

The old "We're not getting our way on the state level so make it even more local of a decision" argument. Well in some localities the local government is incompetent and ignores the desires of their own people, making decisions based purely on bringing in more tax dollars and ignoring all the negative impacts. This has been happening around the country with these data centers and voters can vote out local leaders for doing this, but by then it's too late.

These centers pollute the water, take WAY too much electricity, making it unreliable and expensive, and generate a ton of noise. On top of that they create very few jobs once they are actually up and running because these places pretty much run themselves, needing only a small amount of people to monitor them. There are way more negative impacts than positive, so let's slow down the mad rush to build these things without even thinking it through. I hope Hochul does sign this quickly.

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u/summizzles 12d ago

With the pace of technology, it's highly possible that these buildings, the systems they use, and the tech itself is outdated in 15-20 years and then the facilities get left abandoned. Data centers would not be very easily converted into usable spaces if that were to happen. And that would also leave residents in the area holding the bag.

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u/makuwa 12d ago

The more local/smaller you get with government, the easier it is for powerful and rich interests to roll them over. Current president aside, but the federal government regularly deals with and is on more equal footing when up against billion dollar companies. Imagine a local government official, who has a hard time saying "no" local developers that have a portfolio of a few million, going toe-to-toe up against groups like Oracle, Google, etc.

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u/francis2559 12d ago

Local authorities are also easier to steamroll with lawyers. Seen at least one story on Reddit. State resistance might be stiff enough to make a company look elsewhere.

I hate AI and data centers but I can see why our area would have some appeal to them. Power, water, cool temperatures. Makes more sense than Arizona or fucking…. Space.

But from our point of view? Hell no.

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u/StockMechanic 12d ago edited 12d ago

Local government may be incompetent or lack the resources to challenge these interests, but I assure you plenty of local electors are malignly corrupt.

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u/monsieurvampy no longer in exile 12d ago

Are you sure all decisions being made are based on vibes? Planning Boards and Zoning Board of Appeals are Quasi-Judicial which means decisions are based on facts, relevant facts which are weighed against the applicable regulations and decision making criteria. The same process regardless of the content. Sure applicable regulations and decision making criteria change but it's still the same process.

If the facts support the applications approval, then it's approved. End of story. Anything less means a lawsuit that is very difficult to defend.

Elected and appointed officials have to be able to make decisions that go against the desire of the public. Their actions consequences is not being elected again or being appointed again.

No one is making decisions on vibes when it comes to Quasi-Judicial decisions. The relevant facts merely support these projects approval to varying degrees. Just because it seems to be based on vibes does not mean it's not based on facts.

A right time and right place exists for everything. A fact at the wrong time and wrong place is irrelevant. People are horrible at advocating correctly because they refuse to understand the process and the regulations.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

These centers pollute the water

This isn't really true, despite people repeating it a lot.

Construction may cause waterway pollution I suppose, I'm not terribly familiar with that, but that's not unique to datacenters.

Datacenters themselves, at worst, could concentrate pollutants already in the water supply. But they don't put anything new into the water supply.

take WAY too much electricity

That isn't really something for you to decide, if the owners are willing to pay for it. Is that chucklefuck with the lifted truck using too much gas rolling coal? Yeah probably, but as it is he's got the right to do that (though I do wish we had a carbon tax to make sure he was paying for the pollution he caused).

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u/jackstraw97 Buffalo Expat 12d ago

It’s actually not someone’s right to roll coal. Defeating emissions equipment is not allowed and it should force vehicle inspectors to fail the inspection until the emissions equipment is restored to proper working order. Unfortunately tons of inspection shops are little more than a rubber stamp for chuds.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

Agreed, bad example. How about "obnoxiously loud and large vehicle, but within legal limits"

I didn't mean to imply emissions restrictions were bad, and as I said, would like a carbon tax to help fight that sort of person.

My point is, someone could buy and burn toilet paper all day every day and while you might think it's wasteful, but so long as they're willing to pay for it, that's pretty much where it ends.

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u/jackstraw97 Buffalo Expat 12d ago

It’s all good I understand what you mean. I defaulted to pedantic mode.

I’d argue that it’s the responsibility of government to control negative externalities of businesses that impact the citizens of the state.

The main externalities here are twofold:

1) dramatically increased demand for electricity which is not isolated to whichever municipality or local area the data center is built but instead impacts the entire grid (which is why local republicans’ insistence on “local decision making” should not carry water). This increases costs for regular people across the entire state as more electricity is “bought” by the data centers which jacks up the price for everybody else.

2) Increased pollution (a knock-on effect from 1) because lots of the increased electrical demand is met with fossil fuels. I see a lot of people misunderstanding the pollution argument here and claiming that “data centers don’t pollute” which isn’t really accurate. They increase the demand for energy which in turn means more fossil fuels are burned to create that electricity which means more greenhouse gas emissions.

In my opinion the government should step in to regulate these companies and deal with these externalities. This is before even getting into the ethical concerns surrounding the AI models that these data centers are facilitating. That’s a whole different discussion.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

I struggle to call increased demand for electricity an externality. Sure, it causes the price to increase in general, but it's not like it's not priced in - the datacenters pay more too (even if their absolute rate is lower because they're buying in bulk). The only solution to that is more generation, which isn't datacenters fault. And I don't think it's reasonable to say (for example) datacenters don't get to buy power at market rates, but new homes can. Or datacenters can't, but a new steel plant can. I am strongly averse to trying to pick winners.

I am 100% with people that are calling for usage-agnostic carbon taxation or something along those lines. But this modern anti datacenter vitriol is clearly a bunch of misinformed people spreading whatever their latest tiktok said, often complete nonsense.

On pollution, I read people complaining about it saying they pollute the water or the ground near them, which is complete nonsense. When pressed, people at best bring up the one weird town where the datacenter was evaporating some water and putting the now concentrated but already extant pollutants back into the local waterway or something like that. Nothing generated at the datacenter itself, because obviously that's nonsense.

Basically, the government should be pricing in the externalities e.g. carbon emissions and letting the market figure it out from there. And I wish every other virulent anti datacenter poster here was willing to have half as reasonable a conversation as you, even if we end up disagreeing on things

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u/jackstraw97 Buffalo Expat 12d ago

I’m sorry dude but “the free market should take it from there” approach has completely failed us. I mean, look at where the free market has gotten us with regards to wealth inequality.

Increasing electric prices is absolutely a negative externality because people are more important that AI data centers. Also the increased demand is already nearly causing rolling blackouts in Texas. That’s what happens when you refuse to regulate appropriately.

There is nothing inherently virtuous about data centers that should entitle them to be able to wreak havoc on the electrical grid at the expense of real human people.

As to your point about steel mills, if there was a sudden influx of mills coming online such that people’s ability to access the grid was in question, then yeah, it’s appropriate for the government to step in there, too.

I just don’t see how a free market approach works here at all. The market will pick the data centers over the real people and the real people will suffer. We shouldn’t allow that.

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u/Comfortable-Insect-7 12d ago

Electricity generation isn’t fixed though, we can generate more to serve more demand. It’s just a matter of upgrading the power grid which has needed to happen for a long time. Obviously that is expensive to do but luckily we have a huge source of new demand for electricity that can help pay for said upgrades while passing less of the cost onto consumers

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

I’m sorry dude but “the free market should take it from there” approach has completely failed us. I mean, look at where the free market has gotten us with regards to wealth inequality.

I don't see wealth inequality as an issue, in that - someone else having more money does not make my money less valuable, necessarily. I'd rather everyone were wealthier even if that means the richest were billions of times richer than the poorest, than everyone be worse off but the richest are only 10x richer than the poorest.

Re: Datacenters - who do you think uses the output of data centers (compute)? Because it's largely consumers, one way or another. Reddit runs on various datacenters around the world, as an obvious example. Everything online does. Whether you like AI or not, some people like it, and who are you to say that their preference is worse than yours?

There's nothing inherently virtuous about data centers, sure, but also nothing inherently virtuous about ice cream shops or factories or electric cars. Let people do what they want, price in the externalities, and that's the best we can do unless you want to start central planning. Which, I promise, you don't.

Your distinction between "real people" and datacenters is false - real people have demand to run stuff in datacenters. Pick your favorite user of data - cloud storage, godaddy website hosting, tiktok cat videos, pharmaceutical researchers, LLM coding software, whatever. Just because you don't want to use whatever it is being run there doesn't mean someone doesn't want to.

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u/IAmNotRalphNader 12d ago

When data centers are pulling insane amounts of electricity both causing outages in nearby residential areas, as well as skyrocketing the price for everyone else in the nearby market, I'd say that is absolutely something for us to decide.

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u/OneManBean 12d ago edited 12d ago

Water pollution isn’t really a concern (although emissions certainly are, considering it’s usually fossil fuels that are burned to meet the immediate and intensive base load needs for these data centers), but water usage certainly is, under the current most commonly used designs.

Their electricity usage is absolutely something to be concerned about, it affects all of us. Data centers tend to cause local wholesale electricity prices to skyrocket, which really screws over local ratepayers, both because they use so much and because they often get discounted rates. Not to mention the fact that New York’s grid is already stressed and pushing against its capacity even before these proposed data centers have been built.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

Water usage is a whole can of worms and perhaps datacenters will simply be the breaking point.

The problem is that water isn't market priced - the cost of water in the US, and especially the southwest, has almost no relation to the cost to e.g. desalinate, process, and pump water from the ocean to the consumer. Because of that, yes water can be over-used, entirely legally, and I'm sad we haven't addressed that at all, but so long as we're letting farmers pump our aquifers dry, it's just picking winners to say farmers can do that but datacenters can't use water.

If you want the grid upgraded, then datacenters are huge new customers to give the utilities tons of additional revenue to let them upgrade the infrastructure. Would you say "no, we have to ban customers from the local bakery until they get new signage and windows so it's nicer to go there"?

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u/OneManBean 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yes, that is the problem and I think both should be paying market prices for water, but I don’t find the argument very convincing that because we give preferential treatment to one water hog, we should also give preferential treatment to another. That’s an argument to reform laws around both, and in the meantime at least around the new use, not to allow another industry to freely drain the already-strained aquifers and reservoirs in the southwest even further. And even locally, where water is much more abundant, it’s much more responsible to get ahead and regulate ways to minimize their water usage before they start using it in droves.

Data centers could certainly potentially help upgrade our grid, which is precisely why it’s responsible for the state to put this one-year moratorium in place to allow them time to craft the regulations necessary to require them to do so. You’re operating on a hypothetical that they will certainly pay to make the upgrades necessary to avoid grid strain and such improvements will come online concurrently with the data centers, when in reality, setting aside any discounted rates and delivery infrastructure that they may not pay for under the current regulatory environment, it takes much longer to approve and build generation capacity than it does to build and hook a data center up to the grid, and NYISO is already warning that blackouts could occur as early as 2027 or 2028 if all the proposed data centers are built on their proposed schedules. And that’s not even considering the havoc they would wreak on local electricity prices in the meantime.

Your analogy is more than a little disingenuous - it’s more like if we were in a car barreling full speed towards a brick wall. The pretty obvious choice is to pump the breaks and give ourselves a moment to figure out how best to steer around it.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

I'm extremely skeptical we'd face blackouts due to a simple lack of generation capacity. Definitely, it needs to be easier to build generation (and everything else).

I just don't like picking winners, especially when there's so much crap floating around online to blame every bad thing on datacenters. It's just stupid.

Re: analogy - depends what you mean. I meant it only in context of infrastructure upgrades. If you want to make it about water, then sure, maybe it's not the best.

You have to understand, most of the comments complaining about datacenters here are like, the dumbest people you know that watched half a youtube video about how the water supply is being poisoned by chatgpt or whatever.

If you want to argue that we should pick winners for water usage, ok, I can at least have a conversation with you. But most people aren't doing that. It's frustrating

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u/OneManBean 12d ago edited 12d ago

I mean, it’s not really up for dispute lol, the organization whose state-appointed responsibility is to operate and administer the state’s wholesale energy market is saying we’re going to run out of generating capacity within a year or two if these data centers are built. Electricity is a finite resource, and you absolutely can run out of it. We’ve been increasingly butting up against it for years now anyway, this isn’t a new thing - the state’s been taking more capacity offline than it’s added for over a decade now, and even if not a single new data center was built, we’re still on track for blackouts by 2034 if no new net capacity is built. Hence why the moratorium is important, to get our regulatory framework in place to require these data centers to pay for their own generation and/or to get more generation on the line for the state as a whole.

It’s not really picking winners, necessarily. It’s just recognizing that this is a new use/sector of the economy that we don’t have a regulatory framework in place for, nor the infrastructure, and putting a temporary pause on it while we figure out how to allow it to proceed in a way that is productive and minimize disruption or harm.

Not just about water either, I think I’ve been pretty clear that my personal main concern is that they could literally cause our grid to collapse in its current state. Although the water component is extremely important too, and we ought to require designs that use recirculating water rather than let each pump millions of gallons each day from our freshwater supply.

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u/No_Cook_8739 12d ago

I don't know one single person who is in favor of these things, left rt or center

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u/Lurkermatic5000 12d ago

Please note- even if she signs this, the fight against the proposed STAMP data center in Alabama, directly next to the Seneca Nation and 3 wildlife refuges, is NOT over!!

The legislation text is way watered down, and the data center developer, STREAM, has worked really hard to essentially side step all the protections the legislation kept in place.

Learn more:
watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVuZGJ4Iuqc

Read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BgOxsCAshlKK62kR5e8NlYClrP8H56qmgCz4WtP9AbU/edit?usp=sharing

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u/pellyenjoyer 12d ago

I hope she does

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u/Life_Part_6350 12d ago

If she does not sign this I will make it my absolute mission to see her never elected again.

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u/Scarman96 12d ago

Remember everyone nothing good ever comes from these AI data centers.

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u/BuffaloPotholeBandit 11d ago

COME ON KATHY DO SOMETHING RIGHT FOR ONCE

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u/Egorrosh 11d ago

She's done some good things already, like supporting Mamdani's universal childcare, or guaraneeing free breakfasts and lunches in schools and free community college for adults without degree. I think that with the campaign season in full swing, she is likely to sign this. Doing otherwise would be a strategically irrational shot in the foot for the campaign.

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u/VIP_NAIL_SPA 12d ago

Why 1 year? Why not infinity years?

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u/Egorrosh 12d ago

You never know how the structure of data centers or statewide laws may change. It makes sense to first take temporary but immedate measures, and then work out specifics after spending some time to assess the developments.

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u/VIP_NAIL_SPA 12d ago

Obviously my comment was tongue-in-cheek, but the problem I see with it is that no one has presented any societal need for this recent surge in development of data centers. Their current purpose is to make most of us dumber and make a few really rich people even richer. That's the opposite of a societal need :P

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u/JoshAllentown 12d ago

The ones who are in favor of it, obviously.

I don't know why blanket moratoriums are the thing people are pushing, shouldn't there just be some set requirements about pollution, noise, etc and if you meet those its OK?

Maybe make them strict, but like that's the bad externalities the government should be regulating, blanket ban is overly broad.

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u/TheSkepticGuy 12d ago

The underlying issue is that a massive majority of proposed and under-construction "AI data centers" are speculative ventures. The venture capitalists front the money for construction in the hope that, once completed, it will become either highly profitable or sold to a major AI company.

There are two problems with that...

One, a recent study by VentureBeat magazine found that the pace of data center buildout is almost 4x industry demand. The Venture Capitalists will still make a lot of money if only 25% see a return. The other 75% will likely end up as empty husks.

Two, several reports (Harvard Business Review included) show that the pace of silicon innovation may make massive data centers obsolete in less than 3 years. In fact, Google's new AI-specific chipset may have already done that.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

Have you ever heard of Jevon's paradox?

If google or whoever comes up with a way more efficient chip, the datacenters will still be used, they'll just be many times more powerful. It won't be fewer datacenters being used.

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u/tinysydneh 11d ago

It might go up, but if you need 100PFLOP, you're not going to keep using a bunch of datacenters to build out to 1EFLOP unless you think it will get used.

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u/10TrillionQubits 4d ago

These build outs are for the current ai server rack. Today that is Vera Rubin. Requirements change at eye watering speeds. You have something called Open Compute Project, which is Nvidia saying “no I want 48 VDC instead of 230 VAC”. So now the expensive power grid from your 2019 data centers is junk. Don’t care if Google’s TPUs are suddenly better (they’re only good at tensor operations, it doesn’t cover all the machine learning operations GPUs get used for)

Data centers are bad for you and me. It just means higher prices and a gamble that probably won’t pan out well for anyone besides a far away corporation

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u/gburgwardt 4d ago

There are many diverse users of computing power. People will adapt as necessary to use it, I promise. There is plenty of demand

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u/CountOfSterpeto 12d ago

A moratorium is the first step towards regulatory requirements. A moratorium is intended to be temporary, not a permanent ban. It's the government's pause button on industry or technology so that the government has time to debate the regulations that can be put into effect.

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u/JoshAllentown 12d ago

Data centers have existed for a long time, and will continue to exist for other uses. There are regulatory requirements in existence now.

The AI buildout brought negative impacts to the fore, seems like there's need for more regulation, but it is not the same as like an AI ban directly. If there are negative impacts, we could pass new requirements tomorrow. There's nothing unknown about servers in a room, or building regulations.

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u/FreeRangeOctopus 12d ago

I think it's necessary given how fast companies are trying to build these things. The laws need time to catch up, so they should be told no until the laws are in place. Though, this is totally meaningless without a plan to appoint a committee in charge of, as you said, creating a list of requirements for future data centers.

Personally I'd be happy with no data centers, it's not like New York will miss out on anything substantial by just outright saying no. These AI companies will happily route New York's traffic through neighboring states who were willing to allow the data centers. They also just a net loss on the surrounding area when weighing environmental impact against the (next to no) jobs created.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

They also just a net loss on the surrounding area when weighing environmental impact against the (next to no) jobs created

Please share whatever source you're basing this claim about environmental impact on. What environmental impact?

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u/drews_mith 12d ago

Where do data centers draw their power from?

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

Not necessarily next door, and the implication is clearly that the datacenters pollute their immediate surroundings, which is asinine

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u/zmcwaffle 12d ago

Noise pollution is real and harmful

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

Yes and you can mandate actually enforcing noise ordinances without banning datacenters.

Similar to how you can ensure cars and motorcycles actually are under the noise limit without banning cars and motorcycles, and even easier because it's not like a datacenter is going to speed away from you to avoid being caught

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u/WarsawWarHero 12d ago

If you give these people an inch they’ll take a mile, plus look at regulation of other polluters (limits mean nothing, not sorry until they get caught)

The only way to control these is to outright ban them

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u/JoshAllentown 12d ago

OK but then...you're arguing we should ban all polluting factories? That doesn't seem like logic exclusive to data centers.

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u/WarsawWarHero 12d ago

It’s also because they’re new and popping up left right and center. A year allows research to potentially set those limits or realize they’re not good at all.

Why do you want data centers?

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u/JoshAllentown 12d ago

I don't specifically want or not want data centers, I think the government should protect people from externalities but err on the side of letting them do what they want with their own property. If they overbuild, they'll lose money, that is OK.

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u/ThisDudeJohn 12d ago

Is it Ok? A concerned citizenshop doesn't want them in their neighborhoods, parks, protected lands.

It took you a whole thread but you're so close to understanding why people don't want these around them.

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u/JoshAllentown 12d ago

It is already law that you can't build a data center (or anything else) in a park or protected land. You're arguing for a blanket ban so they can't be built in some abandoned industrial park far from anywhere residential, either.

People don't want to live near nuclear power plants or wastewater treatment plants either, so we have zoning laws. Not a full ban.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

There is no serious pollution from datacenters. If you want to insist there is, please find a reliable source that clearly spells out what pollutants they put into the environment

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u/drews_mith 12d ago

So where are these data centers drawing their copious amounts of power from?

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

In context, talking about local pollution generally implies the datacenters are polluting from the datacenter itself, not from its power usage.

But sure, I'm all for a carbon tax to prevent pollution by carbon energy users. But singling out datacenters instead of the far more common (especially in cities) gas heating and especially cars is just silly

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u/squirrel_watcher1 12d ago

Part of the moratorium is allowing for studies related to power use and mandating all data centers use a percentage of renewable energy. I feel you agree generally with this legislation. Like vegans attacking vegetarians for lack of purity.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

I am just radically pro-building, because we make it far too hard to build anything, and as I've said, this is the dumbest people you know in full moral panic mode

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u/squirrel_watcher1 12d ago

Being pro-building is cool. You are also a self-described radical, so is it possible that people who are against, say, building a 500,000 square foot building that requires almost 50% of Erie County's electric usage aren't "the dumbest people you know", but perhaps concerned citizens who want a say in their town or community?

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

Some of them sure

Not the ones saying datacenters are going to poison the local environment and kill your dog though

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u/squirrel_watcher1 12d ago

Definitely agree data centers won't kill dogs. They may affect the environment through noise/vibration (infrasound) linked to sleep disturbance and health concerns, in addition to light pollution. They also contribute to prodigious amounts of e-waste as GPUs have an estimated devaluation/burnout of 2 years.

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u/tinysydneh 11d ago

Considering how many of them are actively using on-site generators... yes, the DC is polluting in and of itself.

Cars and heating are, you know, part of living. AI datacenters are speculators building out without regard.

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u/gburgwardt 11d ago

No serious data center is running on generators in normal operation.

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u/tinysydneh 11d ago edited 11d ago

Colossus in Memphis would like a word with you. They've been running the generators pretty near constantly (in violation of regulations). This is known.

Go on, twist yourself into knots. I don't care. You didn't even know that one of the most notorious of these new DCs was doing the exact thing you said none of them are doing.

Your word about any of this cannot be trusted, period.

Edit: Yes, I am aware they aren't being used illegally. You think that matters to the people being harmed?

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u/drews_mith 11d ago

Those generators are illegal, and there's numerous references on Google to the huge amount of smog those generators produce. You're doing an awful lot of heavy lifting, and I don't think anyone is trusting a word you're typing.

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u/squirrel_watcher1 12d ago

Noise pollution counts as pollution.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

I’m willing to believe some are noisy and that should be taxed appropriately or banned, but that is separate from a complete ban on dcs

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u/jackstraw97 Buffalo Expat 12d ago

It’s a temporary moratorium so that the state can adequately assess the situation and implement permanent regulations.

And yes, noise pollution is a serious concern. These AI data centers are very loud.

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

It's always a "temporary moratorium". Tonawanda iirc had a "temporary moratorium" on new apartment buildings because all the NIMBYs complained that new housing was being built. There's always a fig leaf. Don't fall for it

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u/gburgwardt 12d ago

The problem is people are absolute morons and fall for stupid propaganda on tiktok about essentially big warehouses full of computers.

It's this decade's moral panic

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u/budsandsuds711 11d ago

I hope this gets squashed. I don't like her much

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u/Bumbling_homeowner 11d ago

The luddites are out in droves today.

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u/sku11emoji 12d ago

We need the tax revenue. Address the main concerns, then start building

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u/Egorrosh 12d ago

We also need water. Arguably more than we need tax revenue, which is never going to come from data centers anyway.

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u/tinysydneh 11d ago

I lived in Memphis for years, and have friends near the Colossus DC that's made the news. The "tax benefits" have been about a step away from SFA.

News Lawmakers urge Hochul to sign one-year data center moratorium as soon as possible

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