NORTHAMPTON — As neighboring city and town governments weigh whether to ban artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, the Northampton City Council is considering creating a committee to study the issue and draft a municipal policy on the controversial facilities.
Ward 3 City Councilor Laurie Loisel brought the idea of a joint mayoral-council committee forward at the council’s meeting Thursday night amid residents’ concerns that an AI data center might be built in Northampton following the closure of the Coca-Cola plant on Industrial Drive by the end of the year.
Alluding to other communities’ concerns with data centers, Loisel explained that a committee would help inform the council about data centers, whether they should be built in Northampton, and if so, under what regulations they can operate.
Easthampton and Greenfield are both considering temporary moratoriums on data centers, a measure that Westfield has already approved. Meanwhile, Shutesbury and Holyoke have banned such developments in their communities.
“I’m sure everybody has been hearing from people [about data centers] because it’s sort of in the air now, and in the water, and maybe I have been hearing from more people because the Coke plant is leaving,” Loisel said. “It feels like we need to be proactive and not [reactive]. I don’t know if anything’s coming, if anything’s been proposed. I don’t think so, but I think we should look at it before that happens to see what our options are … it seemed like a good idea to look back, gather facts and then present them.”
Environmental experts and researchers frequently point to data centers’ potential to use large amounts of energy, pollute nearby waterways, and release substantial heat, making the facilities a center of controversy in areas where they have been proposed. For instance, large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water in a single day, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute — a volume equivalent to the daily water usage of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people.
During the public comment portion of Thursday night’s meeting, resident Mark Jarvis, who said he has petitioned to bring a zoning ordinance banning data centers before the Planning Board, urged the council to take action to block any future data center projects that might come before them.
“I’m concerned that a commercial data center might be under consideration in the city of Northampton,” he said. “I’m not asking the City Council just to study this issue — I’ve now got the signatures of registered Northampton voters, as required by Massachusetts law, on a proposed zoning amendment to prohibit new commercial data centers in Northampton.”
In the council’s deliberations on the matter, councilors generally agreed that local government should study the impacts a data center could have on Northampton, though councilors offered different viewpoints on the best practice to address the issue.
Ward 5 City Councilor Aline Davis said that she believed time is “of the essence” for the council to act on data centers. She agreed that the issue should be studied in greater detail before the council takes any action. She voiced her support for the creation of a data center study committee, but added that the process should be concise and time-limited.
Agreeing with Davis’ suggestion that the study of data centers be time-limited and expedient, Council Vice President Deborah Klemer voiced concerns that such centers present themselves as being beneficial to communities, but wind up causing harm with little benefit.
“Sometimes they get in and they make it sound like this nice little project, and then next thing you know, it just becomes this huge thing that’s out of control, and it’s using all the resources and polluting the area and depleting property values,” she said. “In the long term, it doesn’t really provide many jobs … it’s really smart to get a handle on the approaches of these companies and their tactics of getting a foot in the door, especially since the Coke [plant site] is going to be available.”
Responding to a concern raised by Councilor At-Large Meg Robbins that a company could get its “foot in the door” and be granted a permit to build a data center before the council has time to study or form a policy, Ward 1 Councilor Gwenevra Nabad suggested the council pass a moratorium on data centers until it has more time to study their impacts on the community.
Others, such as At-Large Councilor Garrick Perry, suggested that the issue might be studied by bringing city department heads together for a joint meeting or a series of joint meetings, rather than forming a committee.
“I would love to start this as soon as possible, and I don’t think forming a joint committee is the way to get ahead of it,” he said. “I don’t think that having a joint committee is a bad idea in general, but if we’re really trying to deal with an issue and start these discussions, I’m very hesitant to support this path.”
Ward 6 Councilor Christopher Stratton explained that he believed a study — either through a committee or through meetings between department heads — can coexist with a moratorium. He said he was particularly interested in learning how much AI data the city processes and uses.
“I don’t think we want to become the regional center of this, but I also think we need to be a little bit careful that we’re not just offloading our work to some other community somewhere,” Stratton said. “The piece of information that really needs to go into this is some sort of size threshold; in essence, what we don’t want to do is make the local industry do everyone else’s data processing from the whole Northeast … What I’m really curious [about] is what is the data processing footprint of Northampton?”
The council is expected to discuss this issue next at its September meeting.
