Hochul touts data center moratorium in LI visit, defers on battery plant shutdown

Gov. Kathy Hochul in Babylon Wednesday touted her one-year pause on large-scale data centers as protective of utility ratepayers, natural resources and local control — as Island officials assess an East Hampton battery storage plant's impact on water wells and North Shore groups press for more control over a pending high-voltage cable through their community.

In a panel session at Babylon Town Hall, Hochul defended her executive order earlier this month that put an up to 12-month pause on hyperscale data centers that would use more than 50 megawatts of power. The state will take the year to study the impacts and develop a regulatory framework for the projects that assure they don’t raise energy costs, damage natural resources or impact communities that don’t want them.

"As a former local official, my initial default position is to defer to locals on these decisions," Hochul told attendees at her panel, which included local and state lawmakers and conservation groups. The question for communities, she added, will be: "Do you want this? It is up to localities to make that determination. Full stop, nothing goes anywhere unless the locality wants it."

Her visit to Long Island coincided with heightened criticism of some state-backed energy projects. On Monday, Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine called for owners of an East Hampton battery storage plant to shut down the facility after recent tests found  high levels of a forever chemical, prompting the closure of vital public drinking water wells and heightening a water crisis in the Hamptons.

The battery plant, contracted to the state controlled Long Island Power Authority, is the subject of a federal lawsuit by the Suffolk County Water Authority which links the toxic plume to a thermal-runaway fire at the battery plant in 2023. Most Long Island towns have enacted moratoriums on big battery projects. Large battery storage plants are key to Hochul's green-energy vision for the state; she doubled the target for the plants to 6,000 megawatts by 2030. 

Asked by Newsday whether battery facilities warranted the same protections as those for data centers, Hochul said the two were different.

Large-scale battery projects, she said, "all need to be looked at individually. Many have been functioning for a long time without any incident."

The 5-megawatt battery plant in East Hampton, she noted, "had a fire [in 2023] which really created a different dynamic. I don’t think it’s necessary to have a broad-brush approach saying every one [battery] that’s existing has to shut down."

Asked if she agreed with Romaine’s request to suspend the battery plant's use during state and local investigations, Hochul said, "That’s not something I’m going to get ahead of the investigation, because I don’t know the results just yet."

Suffolk's tests of wells in the neighborhood just south of the plant have shown levels of the forever chemical PFPrA of up to 1,170 parts per billion, well above a newly instituted state Health Department preliminary screening level of 3 parts per billion for the East Hampton site.

Jerry Larsen, mayor of the Village of East Hampton and a Democrat who supports Romaine’s call for the battery to be shut down during the state probe, said Hochul’s data center protections "absolutely should be applied to battery storage plants."

He noted the local fire department’s emergency plan for the facility includes a one-mile evacuation plan in the event of a fire.

"That one-mile radius shuts down our train system, Route 27, three of our schools. And that’s all supposed to happen while this place is on fire? It’s impossible," Larsen said in an interview Wednesday.

Hochul's emphasis on local control over data centers stirred one opponent of a state-backed Propel NY Energy power line to wonder why local opposition on the North Shore hasn't seemed to weigh against the project. The $3.26 billion, 90-mile cable awaits key state and federal permits, but its developers plan to start work later this year, and recently awarded key preconstruction contracts.

"She want’s local control when it’s convenient for her policies," said Doug Augenthaler, a Glen Head resident and a board member of the Gold Coast Business Association, which like three school districts, Sea Cliff Village, and U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, have publicly opposed the Propel cable plan. "Local control is local control," Augenthaler said. "You can’t be against local control sometimes, but not others."

Asked the difference between data centers and Propel, Hochul noted hyperscale data centers are "large-scale private-sector enterprises that [are] a massive drain on power ... there's no comparison in terms of the scale of this."

Hochul and other proponents say state-backed Propel is a critical infrastructure project that will improve the electric grid by reducing a power bottleneck between upstate and downstate.

"The big difference is the scale [of the data centers] and [their] depletion of resources," Hochul said. 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.