On a recent afternoon, a few dozen people gathered on the Eastport waterfront in protest against plans to explore submerging a data center in the cold waters of Passamaquoddy Bay.
Speakers from across the political spectrum lambasted the idea, proposed by a realtor and property developer from Needham, Massachusetts.
The energetic crowd brought together retirees, summer residents, tribal representatives, business owners, hard-line socialists and Republican state lawmakers.
Many worried that thermal pollution from the center would make the bay unlivable for lobsters. That the development would destroy the local fishing industry and tourism, and harm whales and other wildlife.
Others saw Eastport joining a growing national backlash to facilities that store and process electronic data, including information used for generative artificial intelligence.
“This has happened nationwide folks, it’s nothing new. It’s happening, it’s coming. We’ve got to resist,” Dwayne Tomah, a historian from the Sipayik Passamaquoddy community next door to Eastport, declared to cheers and applause from the crowd.
In February, a company called DeepGreen Western Passage applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a permit that would give it up to four years to explore putting a data center underwater in Johnson Cove, off the northeastern part of Eastport.
News of the plan instantly roiled the small, isolated city of 1,300 year-round residents sitting on the Canadian border.
But how realistic the plan is remains to be seen.
“I have said it’s the equivalent of an idea scrawled on a bar napkin,” Eastport City Manager Brian Schuth said. “By very smart people but who may not know if it’s even possible to do what they’re doing,” he added.
According to its application, DeepGreen wants to use ocean water to cool the heat generated by the facility’s computer servers. One recent study found land-based data centers can increase air temperature immediately around them by 16 degrees Fahrenheit and up to 4 degrees in nearby neighborhoods.
A pilot model would also rely on the bay’s 22-foot tides to power turbines to generate up to 5 megawatts of electricity. The company said it wants to create a sealed, “behind the meter” facility that would not use outside power. A total buildout could use up to 15 megawatts, according to a revised application.
But Schuth said it’s still just an idea.
“Is it possible? We don’t know. Is it appropriate here? I think none of us wants to see anything that ruins the natural beauty out here,” Schuth said. “But we literally have no idea what it will look like, what it will sound like, or anything else.”
DeepGreen managing member Louis Wolfson declined multiple interview requests from Maine Public.
In a statement, Wolfson said the proposal is still in the very early stages but is engineered as a “climate and decarbonization initiative” to avoid negative impacts of land-based data centers including excessive water and electricity consumption, noise and air pollution.
“Right now, the project is in a quiet, analytical stage,” Wolfson said.
“My focus is entirely on exploring engineering partners and evaluating grant opportunities to fine-tune our subsea engineering and studies before I do any further outreach to the community,” Wolfson added.
Eric Masanet, who studies data centers and sustainability at University of California at Santa Barbara said the idea of putting data centers underwater isn’t science fiction.
“Is it achievable? The answer is yes. I mean Microsoft did test this concept several years ago,” Masanet said.
Microsoft’s Project Natick near Scotland found submerged data centers could work more reliably than those on land. The project is no longer in operation.
Earlier this year, another submerged data center was reportedly deployed in China.
Masanet said even if the concept is workable, there’s no telling whether it works in Eastport.
“It could be a viable solution,” Masanet said. “Whether or not it is economical, whether or not it is technically achievable, that’s hard to comment on. But it’s not pie in the sky per se.”
Regardless of its feasibility, the project is seen as a real threat by many people in the region, who are sounding the alarm.
Eastport resident Suellen Hendrix was furious when she heard about the proposal, and started organizing against it.
Eventually, she and others formed a committee to get enough signatures to advance local regulations that would block any data center development.
As it turns out, it wasn’t hard to convince people in town to support the petition drive.
“Ninty-eight percent of people signed it that we spoke to,” Hendrix said in an interview at her home. “
“Everyone was behind ‘we don’t want this data center.’ Nobody was questioning — ‘well, we need the jobs.’ Nobody was questioning why it should be here because no one really wants it here,” Hendrix added.
The result was two ordinances now in front of the Eastport City Council. The first is a straightforward ban on any data center bigger than 25,000 square feet.
The other would require a citizen referendum for any large development projects and add new regulations to local zoning.
“We, the citizens of Eastport, stand together to protect our waters, our livelihoods, and our future,” resident Deborah Gillespie said at the recent rally. Gillespie helped craft the ordinances and gather support for the effort.
“Small cities are not powerless. We have the right and the responsibility to shape what happens in our waters and that’s precisely what this initiative does,” Gilespie said.
A recent public hearing on the measures attracted nearly 200 people who packed into the local high school gymnasium. Many wore homemade, yellow “no data” pins in the shape of a fish.
Speaker after speaker urged councilors to accept residents’ demands and adopt the ordinances.
Kevin Raye, a city resident and former Republican Maine Senate President noted that the present controversy felt different than past contentious fights over an oil refinery and liquefied natural gas terminal in Eastport.
“Actually when you think about the times we live in and the divisiveness across the country that has trickled down to the local level it is extraordinary that this proposal has united people of all stripes to the AI data center,” Raye said.
The City Council could now adopt the ordinances as presented or send them to voters as a ballot referendum in November.
Either way, opponents vow to keep fighting the data center idea as long as it takes.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.