AI Data Center Paused Amid Uproar In Nottingham

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH

NOTTINGHAM, NH — The man behind a proposed data center on Route 4 is retreating as hundreds of people showed up Wednesday to protest the development.

Tom Moulton, the owner of the property known currently as the Nottingham Business Center, didn’t show up for the Planning Board meeting Wednesday night. He might have been the only person in the region who didn’t.

Local residents, children, senior citizens, political candidates, and even a few mask-clad Socialist agitators gathered outside the Nottingham School to make their opposition to Moulton’s data center heard loud and clear. The board typically meets inside the town office building, but due to the expected crush of people it was moved to the school gymnasium.

Moulton sent a brief statement, read by Board Chair Drew Stevens, announcing he was withdrawing his application in the face of the opposition. That doesn’t mean he’s done, however. Moulton said in the statement he plans to continue researching data centers and may come back with a proposal in the future.

But residents lined up to speak out against any data center coming to town, citing the environmental damage the centers do, as well as the massive amounts of water and electricity the centers consume. Rep. Scott Byer (R-Northwood) told residents he doesn’t want a data center in his town, neighboring Northwood, and offered to assist locals in any way he could.

New Hampshire law requires state enabling statutes addressing specific zoning issues before municipalities can craft and adopt local ordinances. New Hampshire state law has no data center definition on the books, meaning cities and towns can’t create local zoning to set guardrails on the projects.

An effort to give local communities that authority was killed in the Senate this year when pro-AI legislators amended the bill so as to make it easier for data center owners to set up shop in the Granite State.

According to opponents, warehouse-sized data centers house the massive computing systems that power money-losing and unpopular artificial intelligence programs. Those centers strain electricity grids, forcing utilities to fund infrastructure upgrades. While data centers pay for their power, utility customers typically end up paying for rapid upgrades, driving up bills.

The centers also require massive amounts of water to cool the servers. Large centers can use up to 5 million gallons a day, enough for 10,000 to 15,000 people. The large water and power consumption, combined with noise pollution from the centers, have pushed many communities to oppose the facilities.

Moulton is a developer and told InDepthNH.org last week the data center would use about 40 acres of the 100 acre property. Much of the land at the site is wetlands and cannot be developed.

The same property was the center of a controversy when USA Springs bottled water company tried to develop a bottling plant on site. USA Springs owner Francesco Rotondo planned to pump 300,000 gallons a day from the land, and sell the water overseas. But fierce local opposition and the 2008 recession corked those plans as Rotondo’s financial backers dried up.

Nottingham seized the property in 2017 for non-payment of taxes, and Moulton ended up buying the land in 2021 for $900,000. There are no businesses currently at the Nottingham Business Center.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.