Data Center

The East Fishkill Town Board unanimously voted to adopt a three-year freeze on data centers. A data center 10 times bigger than the largest existing data center in New York was proposed in the area by Treetop Development.

(Airs 06/18/26 @ 10 p.m.) The Legislative Gazette is a weekly program about New York State Government and politics. On this week’s Gazette: We’ll take a look at the failure of a number of bills this session to protect public health, we’ll speak with an expert about how data centers fit into New York’s energy grid and the role a moratorium could play, and we’ll follow a million-pound piece of living history that recently rumbled through New York on its way to Philadelphia.

(Airs 06/18/26 @ 10 p.m.) The Legislative Gazette is a weekly program about New York State Government and politics. On this week’s Gazette: We’ll take a look at the failure of a number of bills this session to protect public health, we’ll speak with an expert about how data centers fit into New York’s energy grid and the role a moratorium could play, and we’ll follow a million-pound piece of living history that recently rumbled through New York on its way to Philadelphia.

Following protests and lengthy debates, Holyoke’s city council approved sweeping changes to the city's zoning rules this week, aimed at barring new data centers from coming to town for the foreseeable future.

The debate over data centers is ramping up in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where the City Council is weighing a ban just as a developer eyes a particular parcel.

As opposition to plans for a data center in Albany grows, local and state officials are looking to pass regulations.

Data centers use vast amounts of water primarily for evaporative cooling, spraying it into the air or over coils to cool hot air generated by servers in order to keep the equipment from failing. The largest data centers can consume between 1 and 5 million gallons of water daily, with consumption rising during the summer.

Data centers currently consume nearly 5% of the electricity generated in the United States and estimates are that the amount will more than double over the next five years. They could consume up to 12% of our electricity by 2030.

Modern data centers have been around since the 1990s, but they were largely unknown to most of us over their first 20 years. From about 2010 until just a few years ago, cloud computing and various mobile and software services became commonplace. The number of data centers grew from hundreds to a couple of thousand. The current third era of data centers, running AI training and inference, has exploded the number of centers and, especially, the amount of power they consume. In 2005, data centers consumed 20 GW of power. Last year, that number exceeded 114 GW with an annual growth rate of over 17%.

WAMC's David Guistina in conversation with Colin Kinniburgh, Reporter at New York Focus, about a datacenter that received over $70 million in tax breaks to create one job.