‘This is not an anti-tech town’: backlash to datacenter in city once home to IBM
Summary
East Fishkill, New York, a town once central to IBM's chip manufacturing, is facing opposition to plans for a large artificial intelligence (AI) datacenter. Residents and local officials have put a temporary ban on new datacenters larger than 20 megawatts to study their effects on resources and the environment before any formal approval is given.Key Facts
- East Fishkill was home to a 460-acre IBM campus that researched and made semiconductor chips for nearly 50 years.
- A developer, Treetop Companies, plans a large AI datacenter spanning about 143 acres and requiring 1 gigawatt of power.
- The project has caused strong local backlash, including protests and calls for bans on large datacenters.
- Existing zoning laws do not allow large datacenters, and the town imposed a three-year moratorium on new datacenters larger than 20 megawatts until 2029.
- The ban aims to study potential impacts on water supply, electricity use, ecosystems, and community character.
- Treetop Companies filed a request with New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) to connect the datacenter to the electricity grid before submitting a local application.
- The proposed datacenter would consume more electricity than the whole city of Buffalo, which has about 275,000 people, while East Fishkill has about 30,000 residents.
- Local officials have said no formal application for the datacenter has yet been submitted to the town planning board.
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