Plan for AI data centre in rural New York sparks alarm over green impact

A proposal to build an artificial intelligence data centre between Buffalo and Rochester, New York, is facing opposition from critics, including residents, who say they fear that the sprawling centre’s droning supercomputers will disturb Indigenous communities and animal life, strain the power grid and raise utility rates.

- Mark Sommer

The US$19.4 billion (S$24.8 billion) data centre, to be constructed in the town of Alabama in rural Genesee County, would require 500MW of electricity, according to the proposal, equivalent to 20 per cent of the electricity generated daily by the nearby Niagara Falls hydropower plant.

The 2.2 million sq ft complex would also be constructed a mile from the territorial home of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation and situated close to the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge and several smaller animal preserves.

"I can’t think of one good reason for it," said Mr Arthur Barnes, a resident of Shelby, a town just north of Alabama, who was one of about 60 people who attended a meeting on the data centre in February.

Like many attendees, he wore a button with a line through the words “STAMP project”, the centre’s informal name. The complex would be built at the Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park - or STAMP - in Alabama.

“I have been going to the rez for over 50 years, and it’s pristine,” Mr Barnes, 68, said, speaking of the Tonawanda Seneca reservation.

“Of all the places to put something like this, did they have to put it right next to a sovereign nation and a national wildlife refuge?”

America’s Al boom, driven by tech giants like Meta, Google and Microsoft, has created a need for data centres across the country that can support the technology involved. But the centres, many of them slated to be built in rural communities like Alabama, are being met with increasing resistance from local residents concerned about the environment, the noise and rising electricity bills, among other issues.