In the article, Gay Nicholson responds to how decisions to implement AI data centers in small towns are often made by volunteer planning boards who may not have the time to fully learn about the details of the projects.
“We were all making the point that these deep-pocket billionaire developers target rural small towns, and our volunteer planning boards … are charged with making rigorous analysis and informed decisions on these huge projects that have layers and layers of impacts from the very local to the statewide grid,” Nicholson said. “We’re leaving it to these small towns that don’t have a lot of staff or very deep pockets to deal with billionaires who have white-shoe law firms.”
She also calls on the state to consider how the addition of data centers may strain the grid in its current shape and can lead to brownouts.
Read the full article from Tompkins Weekly here.
