Proposed AI data center in Yaphank meets opposition from residents and town leaders
The company leading the project says it will be beneficial to the community.
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Data centers are not new. Almost time you use your cellphone, the internet, Siri or Chat GPT, you’re relying on data centers. While they may be necessary for advancing technology, many communities are still fighting against having them in their backyards.
“There's data centers all over the place, so tens of thousands of them,” said Lance Ulanoff, an editor-at-large for Tech Radar. “But suddenly we want to build a whole lot more because we're using AI. And AI uses more computing power.”
A data center in Yaphank has been proposed by a tech company known as Wildflower.
“Every data center is not the same in our perspective,” said the company’s director of development, Michael Bowden. “And this one we believe to be incredibly unique.”
The company says they can build the center in an existing warehouse without any significant impact on the community.
Residents have raised concerns over electricity, water, and noise, but Bowden says they have designed the project with these things in mind.
The Long Island Power Authority said in a statement to News 12, "LIPA does not anticipate any issues associated with serving the project’s proposed load, subject to ongoing engineering review and project development milestones. Under LIPA’s tariff, transmission and substation infrastructure required to serve a large-load customer is paid for by the customer and does not impact LIPA ratepayers.”
The Suffolk County Water Authority also sent the following statement:
“The warehouse site is connected for its current use. If the developer intends to convert the site into an AI data center, they are required to submit a new water availability application to SCWA. To date, no such application has been submitted. Until SCWA receives and reviews those plans, we cannot make any assessment regarding impacts to drinking water."
“Infrastructure that is associated with this project will be paid for by the project,” Bowden said. “It will it will not impact ratepayers.”
Town Supervisor Dan Panico is against having a data center in Brookhaven, at least for now.
He proposed an 18-month moratorium and says he’s gotten the other Suffolk town supervisors on board. A spokesperson for the town says the moratorium is expected to pass unanimously.
“If they don't build one in Yaphank, I think they'll build one someplace else,” said Ulanoff. “It'll go up. In the 18 months between when that could be built, they'll build others. And then they'll come back and build that.”
Wildflower says the moratorium is not necessary.
“We are still moving ahead,” Bowden said. “We believe this is an incredibly beneficial project for the region….The data centers are the built environment for the technological world. And without them, that that ecosystem doesn't exist.”
The Data Center Coalition says these centers support the economy and enable everything from remote work to telemedicine. They also say data centers in New York have supported more then 200,000 jobs and generated more than $5 billion in state and local taxes in 2024.
Towns in Nassau tell News 12 there are no plans for any data centers or any moratoriums in the near future.
