Brookhaven Town leans toward 18-month AI data center moratorium

Brookhaven's town board seems likely to approve Long Island's first AI data center moratorium Thursday as opposition builds against a proposed Yaphank facility.

Concerns about data centers — and the enormous amounts of electrical and water usage some of them require — prompted town officials last month to call for an 18-month moratorium while Brookhaven considers updates to its town code, Supervisor Dan Panico said in a phone interview last week.

The town board will hold a public hearing on the issue at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, followed by a vote, Panico said.

Brookhaven's vote will come 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.

Panico said the state moratorium doesn't supersede the town's action. Besides being longer, Brookhaven's moratorium would give officials time to review town codes that Panico said do not specifically address data centers.

“It has emerged much faster than the municipal zoning codes can evolve,” Panico, a Republican, said, adding there is “overwhelming support” for the moratorium among the town's six councilmembers.

Data center regulations are “not spelled out, and the codes need to be far more specific,” Panico said.

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

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 at 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.

The 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, called the timing of Brookhaven’s proposed moratorium “unfortunate.”

He 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.

“So from our perspective we are moving ahead with the project," he said. "Our goal here is to help educate people on what this project in particular is and how important it is to the region.”

Support for moratorium

Brookhaven's moratorium has drawn support from civic and environmental leaders.

Yaphank Taxpayers & Civic Association President Chad Trusnovec said a moratorium would help clear up "contradictory messages" he has heard about AI data centers.

“We are all definitely in favor of a moratorium simply because there’s so much misinformation to flat-out lies,” Trusnovec said in a phone interview, citing competing claims about water and power usage. “Let’s sit back and take a breath here, because a lot of us feel like it’s just being shoved down our throats.”

Monique Fitzgerald, a Bellport resident and climate justice director for the Long Island Progressive Coalition, said the nonprofit supports the moratorium but wants Brookhaven to go further.

“The moratorium is nice, but we need a ban,” she said in a phone interview. She worries Thursday's vote may come too late.

"Why did they wait so long to put it on the calendar?” Fitzgerald said. "They could have done this back in May.”

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