An artificial intelligence data center may find a home on the bank of Cayuga Lake in the next two years, despite concerns about the proposed center’s environmental impact and the chance of a one-year pause on construction in Lansing.

Maryland-based tech company TeraWulf announced in an Aug. 14 press release that it secured an 80-year lease to the site of the decommissioned Cayuga power station in Lansing. TeraWulf, which operates bitcoin mining and AI data centers across the United States, plans to break ground on its 183-acre site in the next year. TeraWulf Chief Operating Officer Sean Farrell said the center would provide power to racks of high-performance computers using the New York State Energy and Gas grid. The racks of computers will be leased out to companies and used to run AI software. According to the press release, the center will be partially operational in 2026.

Lansing’s town board convened Sept. 24 to discuss a one-year moratorium on all major construction projects in its jurisdiction. This moratorium would halt all major construction projects in Lansing while the board rewrites its zoning laws. The board chambers reached capacity long before the meeting began.

Dozens of people from Lansing and beyond came to voice their thoughts on the data center — both for and against. Despite persistent opposition from hundreds of community members and the risk of a construction moratorium, TeraWulf still plans to break ground in Lansing.

“We are very bullish about the site,” Farrell said. “It’s an incredible site. Something is going to happen at this site, something absolutely will happen, moratorium or not.”

Lansing Town Supervisor Ruth Groff clarified that the town of Lansing is about to undergo a major rezoning process, and it is common practice to pass a moratorium before such an undertaking.

“There’s a great misconception that the moratorium is against TeraWulf,” Groff said. “The truth of the matter is … we were planning to do this moratorium before we ever knew that TeraWulf was going to be coming into the town.”

In the days leading up to the town board meeting, the board received a flood of written statements supporting the moratorium and opposing TeraWulf’s data center project.

In over 100 pages of written comments, residents called the data center irresponsible and shared concerns about its effect on the health of Cayuga Lake and the surrounding towns. Others expressed doubts about TeraWulf, calling the out-of-state company an unseen force.

One resident said, “Monetary gain should not be made at the expense of what natural and sacred lands and waters that we have left.”

Groff began the Sept. 24 meeting by announcing that the moratorium vote would be postponed to the board’s meeting Oct. 15. Groff said the outpour of statements from the community encouraged the board to delay the vote.

“We received well over 300 written comments just in a few days’ time,” Groff said. “The board needs to take time to read all those comments.”

Senior Audra Fitzgerald, one of several Ithaca College students to write a statement opposing the data center, said conversations between both sides of the issue are beneficial to everyone.

“I hope that more people are learning about this as it’s going on, and maybe show up next month too,” Fitzgerald said. “I think the last thing that we need in our community … is an AI data center.”

TeraWulf’s press release noted that the new data center would only be used for AI high-power computing, not bitcoin mining, which uses large amounts of computing power to generate cryptocurrency. Farrell said the space within the data center would be rented out to companies that run their own AI programs.

“[The data center] is going to be infrastructure to support [computing power] from our tenants, for them to run artificial intelligence,” Farrell said. “We’re giving them water, fiber and power.”

Farrell said space at TeraWulf’s data center in Somerset was rented out to Google-backed company Fluidstack and Abu Dhabi-based Core42.

The proposed center’s use of water has been a hot-button issue among Tompkins County residents. Data centers rely on circulated water to cool their racks of high-powered computers. Several Tompkins County residents speculated that the data center would cool its computers using lake water drawn from the old power plant’s intake system.

While the press release called the former plant’s water intake system critical for supporting the data center’s high workload, Farrell dismissed the idea of using the lake water intake system to cool the center’s computers.

“[The intake system] has already been gutted,” Farrell said. “That intake infrastructure doesn’t even work anymore.”

Bill Klepack — a volunteer member of the Lansing Advisory Committee on Power Plant Future — said noise pollution poses another grave threat to the quiet beauty of the lake.

“[Data centers] run the risk of generating noise. Across a body of water, noise travels for miles,” Klepack said. “All you have to do is be on the shore of the lake on a quiet night, and you can hear a fisherman talking a mile, two miles away.”

Farrell said noise will not be an issue. He claimed the fans would operate at around 55 decibels — the volume of a normal conversation.

“We actually invested in ultra-low-noise fans,” Farrell said. “You can literally stand next to the coolers and you don’t even know they’re running.”

The proposed data center’s use of grid power raised alarms among local NYSEG customers. In its marketing materials, TeraWulf claims its data centers run on predominantly zero-carbon energy. Farrell said the area’s low-carbon energy grid is one feature that made the site attractive to TeraWulf.

According to the TeraWulf press release, the former Cayuga Power Plant receives NYSEG power from one of the country’s cleanest energy profiles.

Yet, the citizens of Lansing and beyond are worried that a powerful data center could drive up the cost of their energy bills. Groff said the town board is pursuing the truth behind these concerns.

“We are doing all the research that we can internally to understand how [the data center] would affect utility prices and how it would affect the environment,” Groff said.

Despite opposition to the data center, not all residents of Lansing want to keep TeraWulf out of Lansing. Many members of the Ithaca-based chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers showed their support for the construction project at the town board meeting. After the meeting, Farrell said unions are valuable resources and TeraWulf employs local electricians on its data center projects.

Still, residents are opposed to the construction.

“The promise of a lot of jobs for the community is definitely good, but I think that … people are losing sight of how it’s going to directly impact their community,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m just worried about Cayuga Lake.”

The town board will meet on Oct. 15 to take a vote on the one-year moratorium. In the meantime, Groff said the board plans to visit TeraWulf’s data center in Somerset.

“We don’t want to rush into any vote on something this important,” Groff said. “We want to listen to what the public has to say … and that’s not something you can do quickly.”

Klepack said he remains in support of the moratorium.

“I think it’s very good that they’re pausing on the moratorium vote to consider it,” Klepack said. “I hope they won’t pause very long.”

Regardless of the outcome on Oct. 15, Farrell said he is confident in TeraWulf’s plans for the old Cayuga power station.

“[The site] has got an 80-year lease with TeraWulf,” Farrell said. “It is going to be developed.”