The Lansing Town Board decided to draft a ban on the construction of new data centers in the town at a special meeting on Tuesday night. The meeting was packed with over 200 concerned citizens, who voiced opposition to data center development during a public comment period.
The approval process for a proposed data center on Cayuga Lake was paused in July when Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) signed Executive Order 62, enacting a one year moratorium on state permitting for data centers exceeding a 50 megawatt capacity.
The board met to navigate uncertainty with how the state moratorium applies to the town — they were met with a crowd of frustrated residents who expressed concern for the future of their hometown in the event of data center construction.
The event was lively, with loud reactions from the crowd throughout the evening, met with multiple requests for quiet from the town board.
Many of the speakers and audience members wore red, signifying a “stop” to data center development and support of a data center ban. Of the over 30 people who spoke, all but one called for a data center ban in Lansing — the one dissenter being a TeraWulf employee.
The draft of the ban will be presented to the public by the town’s attorney at a future meeting. If developed and passed, Lansing will join Dryden and Danby in being some of the first New York towns to ban data centers of any size.
Background
In August 2025, data center developer TeraWulf secured an 80 year lease to the former Milliken Station powerplant, located in Lansing, and approval for the construction of a data center with up to 400 megawatts of industrial capacity.
The project, known as Lake Hawkeye Data, has been met with protest from groups such as No Data Center FLX and Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now!.
The groups sued Lansing’s Zoning Board of Appeals and TeraWulf in January 2026, challenging the zoning board’s classification of the center as a “general processing facility” — an undefined term in the code which makes it easier for development to proceed.
The lawsuit is ongoing in spite of the moratorium, the lead attorney for the environmental groups told The Sun in July, because the zoning board’s decision remains in effect.
No Data Center FLX has collected almost 23,000 signatures for their petition rejecting the project and has organized protests throughout the approval process.
During the moratorium, the Department of Environmental Conservation is prohibited from issuing discretionary permits, which are a necessary step in the data center approval process.
The moratorium, however, “does not directly impact local reviews and approval,” according to the board’s statement to open the public comment period. Therefore, it is unclear the exact impact of the moratorium on TeraWulf’s plans for the data center.
Public Comments
Over 200 people filled the Lansing Middle School auditorium to voice their concerns at the special meeting. This showing came after previous board meetings about the data center did not allow an open public comment period.
Commenters were widely in agreement, raising concerns around noise from the proposed data center and stress on the electrical grid, along with potential costly litigation in the event TeraWulf breaches any agreements. However, most did not directly address the state’s moratorium, instead raising concerns about the data center itself.
At the midpoint, the agenda called to shift from hearing comments from Lansing residents to non-Lansing residents, which was met with boos from the crowd. The board decided to allow a mix of Lansing and non-Lansing speakers to come forward, and many of the latter abdicated their allotted two minutes of speaking time to Lansing residents.
The single voice in favor of the development was Pace Ralli, TeraWulf’s vice president of project development. He said he has worked in clean energy for over 20 years and “care[s] deeply about our environment and natural resources.”
Ralli sees the Lake Hawkeye project as an opportunity for economic development and repurposing old industrial land. He described TeraWulf’s work with the town as “constructive and collaborative” and said TeraWulf has made “meaningful changes to the site plan in response” to local concerns. Ralli asked Lansing residents to keep an open mind and “evaluate the project on the facts.”
Board Discussion
After hearing public comments, some board members were split between a desire for economic development and opposition from the community.
Council member Judy Drake, who expressed concern for Lansing’s economic development, said the town has a reputation as “not interested in business.” She said she wanted to explore the option of a “highly regulated data center” as a means to promote the economy.
Regulations on project size “make an ugly project seem not quite as ugly,” Wetmore said. He added that supporting the data center as a means of economic development may push away other businesses.
Town Supervisor Ruth Groff described the prospective data center as a “fiscal nightmare” that is “open[ing] the door for more problems,” noting that allowing data centers of any size into Lansing could be risky as the only way to hold these companies accountable in the event they breach contract is expensive litigation.
The board discussed a town level moratorium due to uncertainty in how Hochul’s executive order would affect local governments, and expressed hope that the state would provide further frameworks or regulation to guide the local government through the evaluation and approval process.
Drake said he does not “trust the state when it comes to deciding what happens in our town.”
Within the final minutes of the meeting, board members decided to draft an all-out ban.
Despite the complexity of regulations and the details to weigh, the sentiment in the room was voiced by Lansing resident Lisa Peter: “This is my happy place, don’t eff it up.”
Lila Davis is a member of the Class of 2029 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is a staff writer for the news department and can be reached at ldavis@cornellsun.com.
