At the Oneonta Town Board meeting Wednesday, Feb. 11, board members and the public were introduced to the idea of a moratorium on building data centers in the town.
While Town Supervisor Will Rivera made a motion to call a public hearing on a resolution regarding a data centers moratorium — an idea that was presented the board by the attorney for the town Chris McIlveen of the firm Coughlin & Gerhart LLP — no public hearing date was set.
The board did discuss a draft version of the moratorium, which would establish a one year prohibition on the “construction, operation and establishment of data centers.”
McIlveen said that while the moratorium would cover any standard concept of a data center, there are some exceptions, like for health and medical services “operating pursuant to a municipal certificate of need,” or educational services for a municipality.
Board member Joe Camarata said he was not comfortable voting to call a public hearing when he just received the resolution minutes before. Board member Brett Holleran also said that he needed more time to review.
Rivera said that the data center conversation will not go away, and the board has continued to hear community feedback, advocating against data centers in the town.
“I face an urgency from the community,” Rivera said.
Camarata said he did not disagree and might be in favor of calling the public hearing, but needed more “time to digest this.”
“You are forcing my hand for something I don’t know,” Camarata said. “I just got this today.”
The applicants proposing a data center facility in Oneonta, which they say is for an agricultural research project, are Tirusha Dave and Prashanth Gorantala, representatives from EcoYotta Inc, according to Daily Star archives. During the past several months, the proposal has drawn large amounts of backlash from community members, who voiced their opinions at many Town Board meetings.
The applicants are seeking a planned development district at 357 county Route 9.
Holleran said that if the board is against data centers, it could just vote to outlaw them, rather than start the process of examining a moratorium. Camarata said that if the board has an applicant in front of it, it should vote on the request for the rezoning. McIlveen said the moratorium could allow the board to “take your time and evaluate the big picture of it all.”
Rivera said the moratorium would not address the EcoYotta application specifically, but data centers in general. McIlveen said that if a moratorium were passed, it would put the EcoYotta application on hold.
The motion to call a public hearing failed, with Rivera and board member Patricia Riddell Kent voting yes, and Camarata, Holleran and board member Teresa DeSantis voting no.
Georgia B. Smith, a local artist and teacher who lives close to Cooperstown Junction, said during the petitioner’s period that EcoYotta’s claims surrounding its proposed data center have shifted during several months. She said, for instance, that the energy use included in the proposal, submitted to the town, has gone from 150 kilowatts per year to three million, now at about 300 kilowatts.
EcoYotta has stated that the business is primarily agricultural in nature, she added, but its initial application was for the use of a data center. She added that the memorandum of understanding between SUNY Oneonta has been misrepresented.
“When this was FOIA’d, we saw that hydroponic farming was never mentioned in that agreement and that it only described a collaboration taking place between a data center and the student body,” Smith said.
She submitted a petition with 680 signatures to the board advocating in favor of a moratorium vote.
The board plans to review the resolution at next month’s meeting.