Brookhaven Town OKs 18-month AI data center moratorium

Brookhaven's town board voted 6-0 late Thursday night to approve Long Island's first AI data center moratorium as opposition builds against a proposed Yaphank facility.

Dozens of moratorium supporters at Town Hall in Farmingville applauded when the board voted at 11:23 p.m. to enact the 18-month temporary ban.

The vote was preceded by a 5½-hour public hearing attended by about 300 people who packed a Town Hall auditorium.

More than 60 people spoke at the hearing, almost all of them in support of the moratorium, which expires in January 2028.

Concerns about data centers — and the enormous amounts of electrical and water usage some of them require — prompted town officials in May to call for the moratorium while Brookhaven considers updates to its town code, Supervisor Dan Panico said in a phone interview last week.

Brookhaven's vote came two days after Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a first-in-the-nation one-year pause on large-scale data centers while the state develops an environmental impact assessment for the facilities. State regulators also are expected to require data centers to provide their own power sources.

Brookhaven officials said Thursday the town moratorium gives them time to study data center issues while they consider future options, including a permanent ban.

"I wish we could ban them tonight, [but] we have to follow the law," Republican Councilwoman Karen Dunne Kesnig said.

Concerns cited

Moratorium supporters expressed concerns about noise, environmental impacts and potential rate hikes caused by data center power usage. Some called for a permanent ban.

"We want you to stand up and stand strong," Nicole Christian, of Gordon Heights, told the board. "I'm just encouraging you all to be on the right side of history."

Local opposition to data centers grew in recent months after the owner of a Yaphank warehouse complex proposed one that would occupy all 549,000 square feet of vacant space in three buildings on the northwest corner of Sills Road and the Long Island Expressway.

The proposed 176.6-megawatt Brookhaven Digital Infrastructure Facility would be part of a wave of data centers sweeping the country, prompting concerns that they gobble up too much energy and drive up costs for ratepayers.

Brookhaven is the first Long Island municipality to enact a data center moratorium. Islip Town officials, at a meeting Tuesday, scheduled a public hearing for next month on an 18-month ban.

The proposed Yaphank facility is one of at least 25 large-scale — greater than 20 megawatts — data center projects in New York, said a spokesperson for the New York Independent System Operator, the nonprofit that monitors state power grids.

Site owner: This project is different

The owner of the 71-acre Yaphank site, WF Industrial, also known as Wildflower, has declined to identify the tenant that would build the data center, Newsday has reported.

Michael Bowden, Wildflower’s director of development, has said the Yaphank project is different from other data centers because it would use a “closed-loop water system" and rain catchment equipment, at no cost to ratepayers.

On Thursday, J. Timothy Shea, a lawyer for Wildflower, told the town board there are other smaller data centers at nearby Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton. Those were not subject to town law or the state and town moratoriums because they are on state and federal properties.

The Brookhaven lab's data center "is located five minutes" from the Wildflower site, Shea said. "It is here. The impacts ... have not been disclosed as anything negative," he said.

Newsday's Mark Harrington, Sam Kmack and Joseph Ostapiuk contributed to this story.