Several small towns across Maine are weighing temporary bans on data center development as a nationwide backlash against artificial intelligence and Big Tech continues to grow.
Larger communities like Bangor quickly passed moratoriums this spring. Fears of data centers are reaching many smaller towns, with several towns in Oxford County that were unlikely to ever see such projects weighing pauses on hypothetical ones.
After Gov. Janet Mills vetoed what would have been a first-in-the-nation temporary statewide ban, municipalities are taking steps to regulate development of the centers, which have been springing up nationally and have drawn criticism for their power and water use.
The Democratic governor’s controversial veto, which came just before she ended a U.S. Senate primary, was largely to protect a Jay project. But the idea fell through weeks later, with some boosters of the project blaming political resistance. Rural Maine is now leading that.
Data centers are large warehouses that hold computers necessary for AI and other software to function. There are relatively few in Maine, and those proposed here so far have been small. But massive data centers in other parts of the country have drawn significant ire for their high water and power usage, which can strain local grids.
Down the road from Jay in Dixfield, rumors of a possible data center were enough to lead the town to schedule a vote on a ban. It has fewer than 2,300 residents, but many came in expressing concerns about how the town would handle data center proposals, Deputy Clerk Tyler Blackburn said.
The town will hold a special meeting next month to decide whether to ban data center development for 180 days, with the possibility of extending it further. The pause would give Dixfield a chance to study whether it could support a center.
The language of the proposed ordinance, which the town obtained from its lawyers, matches proposals in towns and cities like Brunswick, which passed its own 180-day ban in June.
Bethel, a growing regional hub in western Maine’s mountains, will also vote on whether to pass a temporary ban on data center development. Its select board voted last month to put the question on the town’s ballot in November. Fryeburg, farther south along the New Hampshire border, has also weighed whether to bring a ban to a special town meeting.
Some towns in Down East Maine are also pushing back against data centers. In Ellsworth, the City Council may vote on a ban next week. A city councilor there blamed “a lack of transparency in the planning process” for the pushback from towns and cities.
Dana Colihan, a Portland-based activist with the environmental group Slingshot, which campaigned heavily against now-canceled data center proposals in Wiscasset and Lewiston, said the bans help communities prevent data centers from being planned without public input.
She said residents of communities where data centers are planned have often “discovered these projects in incredibly indirect ways.”
“When residents don’t get opportunities to participate, data centers can really steamroll their way into communities,” Colihan said.
Town officials in Jay only found out about the proposed data center after the plan was reported by the Bangor Daily News. Emails obtained by the BDN showed that the project’s developers reached out to the town manager with an offer to brief local officials about the project on the day the story was published.
Resistance to data centers is not only preemptive. Scarborough town councilors passed a ban in June after residents expressed concern about a developer’s plan to put a data center on a 52-acre lot in town.
In Eastport, a proposed underwater data center is on hold after the Down East city passed its own ban. That idea has run into opposition from a wide and influential coalition of locals, lawmakers and the Passamaquoddy Tribe.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.