Nottingham residents voted overwhelmingly Tuesday in favor of a 12-month moratorium on any data center development within town limits. The move comes after a now-withdrawn proposal to build a facility generated significant backlash earlier this year.
The vote was 1,335 in favor, to 143 against.
The temporary ordinance is intended to “protect the public health, safety and welfare of the residents of Nottingham and the surrounding communities, along with the regional watershed” while “[allowing] the town adequate time to study the potential land use, environmental infrastructure and fiscal impacts associated with data centers.”
This year-long pause gives the town the opportunity to make potential zoning changes that could ban data centers permanently, according to planning board chair Drew Stevens.
At the polls on Tuesday, Denise and Jim Metcalf said they vote for opposite political parties, but they both voted in favor of the moratorium.
“We agree on the data center thing,” Denise Metcalf said.
Mike Kaplan said he voted in favor of the moratorium because he thought data centers could be a huge drain on resources in town. He said he’s found that opposition to data centers has united many residents.
“Everyone can get behind, you know, the use of resources or the misuse. So it's not really drawn on party lines, I don't think,” Kaplan said.
There are currently no so-called hyperscale data centers, used to power artificial intelligence, in New Hampshire. Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican running for re-election this year, has said she would propose a statewide moratorium on data centers in her next state budget.
However, the state’s consumer advocate Don Kreis shared plans for a feasibility study in Bow last week for a hyperscale data center in that town, likely on the site of the former coal-fired power plant owned by Granite Shore Power, LLC, that ceased operation last year, according to public filings to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
