Brookhaven Town Board Votes Unanimously to Halt Data Centers

The Brookhaven Town Board voted unanimously Thursday night to impose an 18-month moratorium on data centers throughout the town, aligning local policy with a broader statewide pause on large-scale artificial intelligence infrastructure that Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law days earlier.

The vote came at the end of a public hearing at Town Hall in Farmingville, where a large crowd of residents turned out to speak. Most speakers expressed concern about the effect data centers could have on water supplies, electrical capacity, noise levels and the character of surrounding neighborhoods.

Sonja Urrico, who said she lives near a proposed facility in Yaphank, asked officials to commission an independent environmental study and share its findings with the broader community. Lynne Maher, another Brookhaven resident, said such facilities are difficult to remove once built. Michael Bowden, director of development for Wildflower — the company proposing a roughly $1 billion, 549,000-square-foot data center campus on 71 acres in Yaphank — argued that existing state environmental review processes are sufficient and that the project would generate thousands of construction jobs and millions of dollars annually in property taxes for the Longwood School District.

The moratorium gives town planners up to 18 months to develop comprehensive zoning rules governing where data centers can be sited, what environmental mitigation they must provide, and how they interact with local water and power infrastructure.

The town action follows an executive order Hochul signed July 14 that imposes the nation's first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers — defined as facilities requiring 50 megawatts of electricity or more. Hochul said the pause is intended to protect the state's strained power grid for other major load users, citing the Micron semiconductor plant in central New York as an example of a project that creates far more permanent jobs per megawatt consumed.

"Micron came here because I could offer them more affordable hydroelectric power," Hochul said in a televised interview Thursday. "To have 50,000 direct and indirect jobs — this is transformational for upstate."

Governor Hochul did not address how curbing investment in gas and coal powered energy production while subsidizing unreliable wind and solar power reconciles with her sudden concern for the state electrical grid.

Over the next 60 days, Empire State Development is directed to develop a community investment framework that would require any new data center to fund local infrastructure improvements such as water and sewer upgrades, roads and broadband, Hochul said.

Critics of the bans, including trade groups and construction industry representatives, warned that the moratoriums could steer investment and union jobs to other states.