Residents across the Pioneer Valley continue to rally against data centers, raising concerns about potential power bills, water usage and more. It’s leading to bans in some cities – both permanent and temporary. All the while, Massachusetts has been rolling out its own reforms.
There wasn’t much doubt that Westfield’s City Council would pass its second reading of its one-year data center moratorium last week.
But, concerned residents packed the chambers again just to be sure, listing off worries about what data centers could mean for utility bills, the sheer amount of water they would need for cooling purposes and their impact on the environment.
That, and frustrations with the data center project already permitted in the city.
“I hope you all unanimously vote for the moratorium, and I also want to say that, in 2021, when this thing first came out - I don't think the room was filled like this,” resident Donna Lisi said at the July 6 meeting. “But this is public sentiment we're all seeing here tonight - we know what it means.”
The moratorium vote was unanimous, with Mayor Michael McCabe reportedly signing off on it a day later. The 12-month pause isn’t expected to affect the massive Servistar Data Center project that’s largely been silent in recent years, though a June update from the mayor indicated the project is still progressing.
But, the $4 billion data center project and others like it are in a new political environment compared to only a few years ago – one in which enthusiasm has abated and Beacon Hill has less of an appetite for the tax incentives it previous approved.
Residents like Westfield’s Jessica Britton say it’s about time, given the power data centers require and how they seemingly collide with various carbon-zero goals like the state’s.
“It’s not just as state issue – it’s a national and a global issue: this all falls under the climate agenda issue – a lot of states have certain requirements … for how they’re going to hit their net carbon zero [goal] for 2050,” Britton said while holding a data center protest sign outside city hall before Monday’s meeting. “We really need to look at a pause on everything and see if this really does make sense … [and] really safe for us, for the animal life and for the whole ecosystem?”
Westfield is by no means the only community tackling the issue.
Nearby Holyoke passed what appears to be the state’s first outright data center ban and in Greenfield, according to The Greenfield Recorder, a similar one-year moratorium is in the works – initially appearing before the planning board though it now seems destined for the city council.
All the while, Gov. Maura Healey’s office has advanced its stabs at reform. Ahead of Westfield’s final moratorium vote, the governor’s office announced it would pause the acceptance of applications seeking data center tax incentives, while creating “guardrails” to ensure “projects do not drive up energy costs, strain local infrastructure or harm public health and the environment."
Among the move’s supporters is Holyoke and Westfield date Sen. John Velis, who went on to back an amendment to a senate energy bill effectively codifying the governor’s move.
“… this has been a very fluid topic, it's been changing - even in the past three months, six months, nine months,” he said in a phone interview with WAMC. “What's happening throughout the country is you're seeing a lot of data centers set up shop, making certain representations about what the cost of their operations will be and what's happening is that … the costs are far exceeding their initial representations, and in some instances, and this to me is horrifying – instead of them being on hook financially for that, it’s the residents of the respective communities.”
Amendment #162 would pass - Velis himself had filed a similar measure before backing that one.
WAMC notes that, in its update to the mayor’s office, Servistar stated it would be an “Independent Customer” of Westfield Gas & Electric,” and, without a “direct connection” to its distribution system, would have “no negative impact on existing customer electricity services or costs.”
When asked about how his own district has been tackling data center limitations or bans, the senator said the movement was a “cool” one, and sensible, given the amount of community input involved.
A member of the National Guard, Velis says ever since he returned from a recent deployment, he’s heard from a “countless” number of constituents on the matter.
It’s been a similar case for elected officials in Holyoke, where a ban remains in effect, though there was a carve out for the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, which has been in town for years and is largely used and supported by universities across the state for research.
As Ward 7 Councilor Meg Magrath-Smith tells WAMC, there is room for nuance.
“A lot of communities are looking to do a moratorium, or … like Holyoke, communities might consider a ban,” she said. “The state… I understand that they're concerned about Massachusetts growth and … the taxes that they can raise from new industries. I think any state or any municipality, for that matter, is concerned about those things - but any new industry also needs to be understood for its benefits and its risks.”
As chair of the Ordinance Committee, Magrath-Smith has been looking to get a data center study committee off the ground – one that would now have numerous community members on it and study the effects additional data centers could have on the city.
It’s not intended to undermine the ban, she says, but take a deep-dive into what data centers would mean for the city – and possibly justify code adjustments to a near-ban like the one in Mansfield, Mass., where a near-ban technically allows for far smaller centers.
Regardless, the council vice president says this is all new territory.
“I think part of the conversation in [the ordinance committee], from the very beginning, was that there may be some cases that may be appropriate for Holyoke - but we couldn't possibly say what those are right now without a lot more information and we need time to create an ordinance around that,” she said, recounting how the ban debate took shape over the past few months. “And so, the idea was to put the ban forward, do the work that is needed, and then potentially create an ordinance similar to, for example, what Mansfield has now done. And if members of the public are feeling frustrated about that, I think I would just encourage folks to understand that we're very much at the focal point of this work happening right now, in real-time, and there was not a single community that had an ordinance until late-April, and that was Mansfield.”
Magrath-Smith says the city council is likely to tackle the creation of a data center study committee sometime in August.
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Some audio for this story was provided by Westfield Community Programming Channel 15.
