Citizen's Quill

A procedural zoning amendment, expected at the Massena Town Board’s regular Wednesday meeting, is the threshold legalization decision for a 1.45-million-square-foot data center campus on the former Alcoa East / Reynolds Metals site. The St. Lawrence County Planning Board’s own staff has flagged questions the §207 amendment, as drafted, does not yet answer.

Disclosure: I will attend the May 20 Massena Town Board meeting as a notetaker for the League of Women Voters of New York State and as the publisher of this site. The analysis below is my own.

The Massena Town Board meets Wednesday at 4:30 PM in Room 30 at the Town Hall, 60 Main Street, 2nd floor. The agenda is expected to include action on an amendment to §207 of the Town zoning code -Article VII, governing the General Industrial District – that would authorize “data centers” as a permitted use in that district.

If the amendment passes as drafted, it clears the legal path for a project that has been under St. Lawrence County Planning Board review since April: a 1.45-million-square-foot, 635-megawatt data center campus at 182 and 194 County Route 45, on 865 acres carved from the 1,375-acre former Alcoa East / Reynolds Metals industrial parcel.

The applicant is Massena Development, LLC – a project entity associated with the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), which is owned by Stone Ridge Asset Management. NYDIG also holds a stake in Coinmint, the cryptocurrency mining operation already running on the same site.

That much is in the public record. What deserves wider attention is what the County Planning Board’s own staff wrote when they reviewed the site plan in April.

“The Industrial Zone does not permit data centers”

Page two of the County Planning Board’s April 2026 staff write-up contains a paragraph that should reframe how residents understand tomorrow’s vote.

The applicant has argued that the proposed facility is a permitted use under existing §207, qualifying as “manufacturing, processing, storage of products and materials, and warehousing.” County Planning Staff disagree. They note that the Town code defines manufacturing as “any process whereby the nature, size or shape of articles or raw materials is changed or where articles are assembled or packaged” – and that data centers do not produce articles or raw materials. They process data, an intangible product. The write-up also flags the applicant’s own contradictory description of the facility as “passive, highly regulated… rather than active manufacturing.”

Staff then make their point explicit: “Since [the §207] revisions were not adopted, the current code remains in effect and the Industrial Zone does not permit data centers. As such, Staff suggests this project requires a use variance to operate in the Town of Massena at this location.”

In other words: tomorrow’s §207 vote is not a routine zoning cleanup. It is the threshold legalization decision. Without it, the project would need either a use variance (a much higher legal bar) or a Zoning Board of Appeals interpretation that contradicts County Staff’s reading. With it, data centers – this one and any future one – become a permitted use in Massena’s Industrial District subject only to site plan review.

Water from the river, and what comes back

The most striking number in the April staff write-up is not the 635 megawatts. It is the water.

The applicant has disclosed that the project will draw 800 gallons per minute from the St. Lawrence River – 2.7 million gallons per day at peak – from April through October, with an evaporative cooling system. About 1.1 million gallons per day return to the river as treated wastewater. The remainder evaporates.

County Planning Staff put this in plain terms: “At peak operating times, the proposed facility will use as much water as 32,926 Americans; more than 2.5× the population of the entire Town of Massena.”

The write-up also acknowledges what longer-term residents already know: “The Reynolds Metals site has a long history of environmental contamination, specifically contamination as a result of discharge into the St. Lawrence River. So, while river water extraction and discharge is not new to this location, there is a legacy of environmental degradation that needs to be acknowledged and addressed when engineering future water extraction and discharge activities.”

The chemical content of the discharge has not yet been disclosed by the applicant. Cooling-tower “blowdown” at facilities of this type typically contains elevated temperatures (86 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit), dissolved minerals concentrated to four to eight times source-water levels, oxidizing biocides such as chlorine and bromine that generate U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-regulated disinfection byproducts linked to elevated cancer risk, non-oxidizing biocides including glutaraldehyde and quaternary ammonium compounds, and corrosion inhibitors including molybdate and zinc.

A separate regulatory gap is worth noting. Data centers are not on the EPA’s list of industry categories presumed to discharge per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS,” sometimes called forever chemicals). As a result, standard New York State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permits do not require PFAS testing of data center discharge – even though data centers commonly use PFAS-based fluorinated cooling fluids and historically used PFAS-based firefighting foams. Where PFAS testing is performed under EPA Method 1633A, the method covers 40 of more than 14,000 PFAS compounds in EPA’s own toxicity database.

Heat, and the “data heat island” effect

Recent research at comparable facilities has identified what University of Memphis environmental health professor Chunrong Jia has called a “data heat island” effect: measurable temperature increases in the area surrounding large data centers from the thermal output of industrial cooling fans.

At Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus 1 facility in Memphis – a 785,000-square-foot data center – researchers measured temperature increases of up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit immediately surrounding the site, averaging 3 to 4 degrees across a 6.2-mile radius.

At the proposed Stratos AI data center in Box Elder County, Utah, approved on May 14, 2026, Utah State University physics professor Rob Davies estimated that daytime temperatures in the surrounding valley could rise 2 to 5 degrees and nighttime temperatures 8 to 12 degrees from industrial cooling fan output. Davies told reporters: “The thermal load from the proposed Stratos project is extreme.”

The proposed Massena facility is 1.45 million square feet – approximately 1.85 times the size of the Memphis xAI Colossus 1. A 6.2-mile radius around the former Alcoa East site encompasses much of the Town of Massena, substantial waterfront residential development along the St. Lawrence, agricultural land, and the Akwesasne Mohawk territory to the north. The County Planning Staff write-up requires the applicant to “identify any environmental impacts that are likely to be generated including but not limited to… heat islands”; that analysis has not yet been performed.

316 backup generators and 63 parking spaces

Two specific facts in the April write-up tell residents something the applicant’s marketing materials do not.

The first concerns noise and air emissions. The applicant has disclosed that each of the three buildings will be backed by between 92 and 112 diesel generators, for a total of 316 backup generators across the site, each with its own adjacent fuel tank. The applicant has stated the equipment will be CAT 3516c Tier 4 backup generators, with a noise level of approximately 75 decibels. According to the applicant, only in a “catastrophic emergency” would all generators run simultaneously; routine testing would run up to 20 generators at one time. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association considers 70 decibels the threshold for safe long-duration exposure; the County Planning Staff has recommended a noise emissions test be performed within a three-mile radius before approval.

The second concerns jobs. The applicant has requested an “area variance” from the Town code to allow it to build 63 total parking spaces across the three buildings. The Town code, under its manufacturing classification, would require 2,416 parking spaces (one per 600 square feet of floor area, or one per employee, whichever is greater). The 63-space request is, in effect, an implicit disclosure: this facility will employ approximately 63 people once operational. Coinmint, the existing cryptocurrency operation on the same site, employs approximately 100. The Alcoa smelter that previously occupied this site employed 450.

The peak construction workforce will be much larger – the County Planning Staff write-up notes that peak construction will generate 880 trips per day (100 truck movements and 780 worker movements), with operational traffic of 90 vehicles during weekday peak hours. Construction jobs are temporary by definition. Permanent operational jobs, as disclosed via the parking variance request, are roughly 63.

The Plattsburgh precedent and what County Staff is asking for

In the winter of 2018, two Coinmint-affiliated cryptocurrency operations in Plattsburgh, New York pushed that city’s New York Power Authority (NYPA) hydropower allocation over its monthly quota. The New York State Public Service Commission found that the operations directly increased residential electricity bills that January; some residents reported bills as much as $300 higher. Plattsburgh adopted a temporary moratorium. The PSC subsequently authorized municipalities to impose a separate, higher rate class on cryptocurrency operations.

The Massena Town attorney, Eric Gustafson, told Marketplace in 2022 that Massena had been watching Plattsburgh closely. His exact words: “We wanted to make sure that we didn’t fall into that same issue. We wanted to make sure that our regular ratepayers were protected.”

That logic is now being tested at substantially greater scale. The Massena Electric Department’s firm hydro allocation from NYPA is 23.6 megawatts. Winter peak load is already 40 to 45 megawatts – already exceeding the firm allocation in cold months. Supplemental energy above the firm allocation is purchased on the market at roughly three times the cost of NYPA preference power. NYPA preference rates themselves are rising approximately 80 percent over six years under a schedule that took effect April 1, 2026. The proposed data center’s 635 megawatt load is 27 times MED’s entire firm allocation.

County Planning Staff included a specific recommendation on this point in their April write-up: “The applicant should cover 100% of the capital costs associated with the substation and transmission upgrades so that residential ratepayers do not subsidize the facility and specify how legacy costs will be covered for maintaining the electrical infrastructure.” Staff also recommended public disclosure of the applicant’s power purchase agreement with NYPA, its NYISO power allocation, a cooling plan including chemical disclosure, a SPDES permit from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, a noise emissions test, escrow funding for a third-party State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR) review, and public disclosure of all projected resource demands.

The §207 amendment, as drafted, does not yet incorporate these recommendations.

A second data center pipeline: Pontoon Bridge Road

A second large-scale data center proposal appears to be in motion, much closer to the Village of Massena than the Alcoa East site. According to a commenter on the NNY360 article covering the January 21 public hearing, approximately nine days before that hearing, the former Air Products hydrogen plant on Pontoon Bridge Road was sold to American Data Center Partners for $2.5 million. This purchase has not been confirmed, and independent verification through County Clerk records is recommended before this is treated as fully established, but if accurate, it indicates a clustering trajectory.

Under SEQR, reasonably foreseeable future development must be evaluated as part of cumulative impact analysis. Two large-scale data centers within the Town’s Industrial zone – one adjacent to the Village rather than nine miles east – cannot, as a matter of state environmental law, be evaluated in isolation.

What residents can do

If you have concerns about any of the above, you have a number of options, none of which require expertise:

1. Attend the Town Board meeting tomorrow, Wednesday May 20, at 4:30 PM, Town Hall Room 30, 60 Main Street, 2nd floor. Public comment is typically permitted near the start of the meeting. You do not have to be an expert — telling the Board you live in Massena and want them to wait for fuller information before adopting §207 is meaningful in itself.
2. Attend the Massena Town Planning Board meeting Thursday May 21 at 5:00 PM, where site plan review of the project will continue. Per the meeting record so far, the Planning Board chair has publicly stated the site plan was “sent prematurely” with “too many unanswered questions.”
3. Attend the community information session on Tuesday May 27 at the Massena Public Library, organized by area civic groups including Akwesasne Mohawks United for Sovereignty and Heritage (MUSH).
4. Watch for the St. Lawrence County Board of Legislators’ vote on June 1, on the resolution affirming local authority over data center siting that came out of the Operations Committee on May 11.
5. Contact your Town Board members directly. The Board’s contact information is available at massena.us.
6. Read the underlying documents yourself. Links are below.

Sources and further reading

• St. Lawrence County Planning Board Staff Write-Up on the Massena Development LLC site plan, April 2026 (available through the County Planning Office, Canton, NY)
• St. Lawrence County Operations Committee Resolution Affirming Local Authority over Data Center Siting, May 11, 2026
• League of Women Voters of New York State, Memorandum of Support for S9144 / A10141 (proposed statewide data center permitting moratorium), May 2026
• NYS Public Service Commission Order on the Plattsburgh Municipal Lighting Department, March 2018
• New York Power Authority Preference Power Notice of Proposed Rule Making, October 2025; approved February 2026
• U.S. EPA Method 1633A, “Analysis of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Aqueous, Solid, Biosolids, and Tissue Samples by LC-MS/MS,” December 2024
• U.S. EPA Memorandum, “Addressing PFAS Discharges in NPDES Permits and Through the Pretreatment Program and Monitoring Programs,” December 2022
• Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), “Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers,” March 2026
• University of Memphis research on data heat island effect, via FOX13 Memphis, April 2026
• Utah State University Professor Rob Davies analysis of Stratos AI data center thermal load, May 2026
• Brookings Institution, “New evidence on data center employment effects,” May 2026
• Marketplace, “How a New York town navigated bitcoin and crypto-mining,” March 2022
• NNY360 coverage of the proposed Massena data center site plan (May 2026 and prior)

---

If you are reading this after the Town Board meeting on Wednesday May 20 and want to know what happened, follow Citizens Quill for the meeting coverage.