EASTPORT, Maine — Rising public concern over a proposed underwater artificial intelligence data center in the Bay of Fundy’s Western Passage has pushed the issue to the forefront in Eastport, where residents pressed the City Council on May 13 to address the project.
In February, DeepGreen Western Passage SPV LLC applied for a 48‑month preliminary permit with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to conduct engineering and environmental studies, the first step toward developing a tidal‑powered underwater AI data center off Eastport, according to the filing.
DeepGreen, which specializes in underwater powered data infrastructure, identified waters north of Eastport as one of two potential sites for its first project. The other is in Alaska’s Upper Cook Inlet.
A group of residents concerned about the proposed data complex asked councilors to consider a temporary moratorium to pause the project.
Resident Birdy Velveteen argued that the area identified for the data center’s on‑shore cables includes wetlands protected under Maine’s Mandatory Shoreland Zoning Act, noting that the U.S. Clean Water Act defines wetlands as “areas inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions.”
The Shoreland Zoning Act requires municipalities to adopt ordinances protecting areas within the “upland edge of a coastal wetland,” and it also specifies that “all areas affected by tidal action” must fall under shoreland zoning protections.
In a recent op-ed published in The Quoddy Tides, Louis Wolfson, developer and managing member of DeepGreen, wrote that he hopes to build the data center with local cooperation and an emphasis on trust and environmental stewardship.
Suellen Hendrix, an Eastport resident, told councilors she believes “billionaire investors” have little interest in the city’s welfare, calling underwater data centers an “understudied industry” and urging the City Council to enact a moratorium.
“This man (Wolfson) is a one‑percenter,” Hendrix said. “He doesn’t care about us. There’s a reason he isn’t building it in Cape Cod, where he lives, and he’s choosing Eastport.”
Hendrix cited South Portland’s Clear Skies Ordinance as a precedent for the Eastport City Council to act. The South Portland City Council first imposed a moratorium on proposals to load crude oil onto ships to protect air quality in the harbor, later turning it into a permanent ban.
Hendrix said she is also concerned about the strain a data center could place on Eastport’s power grid if it draws sustained electricity from it, and she questioned whether the project would create any meaningful jobs for the local economy.
“If you wanted a job maintaining this, you should have started college years ago,” Hendrix said.
Resident Laurie Stone questioned reports that DeepGreen’s FERC application referenced a “community benefits agreement” with Eastport, saying that if the city has no knowledge of such an agreement, that alone should be enough to pause the project.
Resident Deborah Gillespie drafted a sample moratorium ordinance for the City Council, saying she based it on state templates cross‑referenced with Eastport’s charter. She stressed what she sees as the urgency of pausing the project now, before it advances further, so the council has time to study it and make a plan.
Councilors declined to vote on a moratorium, saying it was too early in the development phase and noting that moratoriums carry mandatory expiration dates.
Instead, councilors voted to send a letter to DeepGreen’s Wolfson expressing their objection to the project, Councilor Rhonda Stevens said.
Councilors said their letter will mirror language in a letter Washington County commissioners sent to Wolfson on April 9, stating the commission does not support the preliminary permit application for the AI data center in Washington County.
The April 9 letter, written by David Burns, chairman of the Washington County Commission, reads, “On behalf of the County Commissioners of Washington County, I am writing to express that we do not support the Application for Preliminary Permit DeepGreen Western Passage Subsea‑Compute & Infrastructure Hub, Washington County, Maine.”
Burns also wrote: “Washington County has a long, involved history, dependency and respect for maritime industry, and we feel this type of project would be too risky for this region and its waters and the people of Washington County who live and work here.”
In late April, Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have placed a temporary moratorium on data center projects statewide, writing that while a “moratorium is appropriate given the impacts of massive data centers in other states on the environment and on electricity rates,” the final version of the bill “fails to allow for a specific project in the Town of Jay that enjoys strong local support from its host community and region.”
JGT2 Redevelopment is now renovating the former Androscoggin Mill in Jay and has an agreement with national data center operator Sentinel Data Centers to occupy 1 million square feet across two floors of the former paper mill.
Tony McDonald of The Boulos Co., who has partnered with New Mill Capital Holdings, Infinity Asset Solutions and Camjay LLC on the $550 million Jay project, said the development could employ 800 to 1,000 construction workers and that ongoing operations would require at least 125 people to manage and maintain the computers, building and utilities.
In her veto letter, Mills wrote that the “2023 closure of the Androscoggin Mill dealt a devastating blow to the Town of Jay and its surrounding area. As a long‑time resident of Franklin County, I know well how critical the mill was to generations of working families, and how important it is — and how challenging it has been — to promote reinvestment and job creation at the former mill, which is a brownfield site. After prior redevelopment efforts failed, the Town of Jay worked for two years on a $550 million data‑center redevelopment project to finally bring jobs and investment back to the mill site.”
Since the veto, several Maine communities, including Lewiston and Scarborough, have enacted temporary moratoriums on similar projects, and others have begun the process to do the same.
After the veto, Mills signed an executive order establishing a council to evaluate policy tools for large‑scale data center projects, including their potential benefits and risks to Maine.
The council is directed to report back to the governor’s office and the Legislature by Jan. 29, 2027.
This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.