A New Jersey developer that spent two years pitching the town of East Fishkill on two warehouses is now quietly pitching New York's grid operator on a 1,000-megawatt data center on the same parcel — a single facility larger than any data center currently operating in the state. In Ohio, the first organized industry-side editorial response landed against the citizens' petition to put a constitutional ban on data centers above 25 megawatts on the ballot — a guest column from a Big-Tech-aligned advocacy group ran across at least four central Ohio Sunday editorial pages. And Indiana's Tuesday Republican primary produced a class of state-Senate winners who ran explicitly against utilities, solar farms, and data centers, including the challenger who unseated the author of last year's property-tax bill.
Treetop Development, the Teaneck, N.J.-based developer that has spent two years asking the Town of East Fishkill in Dutchess County to approve two warehouses on a wooded tract bordering a residential neighborhood, has filed paperwork with the New York Independent System Operator for a project labeled “1 Gig Data Center East Fishkill, NY” — a 1,000-megawatt facility on the same parcel. Treetop has filed nothing with the town itself; Town Supervisor Nick D'Alessandro told the USA TODAY Network the developer “broached the idea during a brief conversation” but didn't specify a megawatt figure. The NYISO interconnection-queue filing is what surfaced the project.
For scale: the largest data center currently operating in New York state is the Lake Mariner facility in Niagara at 70 megawatts. A 1,000-megawatt facility — what the industry calls 1 gigawatt — would be roughly 14 times larger and would consume roughly the entire output of the Cricket Valley Energy Center, the natural-gas plant that opened 20 miles away in Dutchess County in 2020. NYISO's interconnection-queue list shows it as the second-largest pending data-center request in the state.
"They don't have the power," Supervisor D'Alessandro said. "Definitely not 1,000 megawatts."
Reuben Twerksy, Treetop's director of development, when asked directly about the data-center filing: "We're still pursuing the warehouse project." He acknowledged the data-center plans only when asked about the pending NYISO power study; he wouldn't say whether the company would switch projects if the study came back favorable. NYISO told the USA TODAY Network it would not release the study results to the public when complete, citing critical-infrastructure security.
The town's 2024 development moratorium has been extended for industrial parcels like Treetop's but expires June 30. Neighbor Jaime Lee of Hopewell Junction, learning about the data-center possibility from the reporter: "I don't believe something like that belongs in a residential community."
Source: Chris McKenna / Poughkeepsie Journal (USA TODAY Network).
Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project — a Big-Tech-aligned advocacy organization that has been reported to be substantially funded by Meta — published a guest column today across at least four Ohio Gannett papers: the Coshocton Tribune, Cambridge Daily Jeffersonian, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, and Newark Advocate. The headline: "Ohio will pay steep cost if we ban data centers." It is the first organized industry editorial response surfaced to the citizens' petition circulating across the state to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot prohibiting construction of new data centers with peak loads above 25 megawatts.
Kelly's central argument places the proposed amendment in a line with Ohio's historic infrastructure decisions — the 1825 canal system, the railroad buildout that gave Ohio the most track of any state by 1860, the Interstate highway program of the 1950s — and casts a constitutional ban as a break with that “build” tradition. The numbers he cites: $40 billion in Ohio data-center investment over the past decade; 170,000 high-paying construction jobs; over $1 billion annually in state and local tax revenue. The closing argument names China.
"Communities should absolutely have a voice in how AI infrastructure develops in their neighborhoods," Kelly wrote. "The key question is not whether Ohio will build the infrastructure of the future, but how we build it responsibly. A constitutional amendment doesn't answer that question; it shuts the door on the conversation entirely, flips the table over and walks away from the future."
The piece is published as a “guest” voice, not labeled as paid placement.
Source: Doug Kelly, American Edge Project, via Gannett Ohio editorial pages.
Tuesday's Republican primary in Indiana put a new bloc of state senators on a path to the Statehouse who ran explicitly against the state's investor-owned utility monopolies, against solar farms, and against data centers. The Indianapolis Star's Jacob Stewart names two specific races. Trevor De Vries unseated Sen. Dan Dernulc (R-Highland) running on a platform of “energy choice” — dismantling Indiana's investor-owned utility monopolies and giving independent producers freedom to sell directly to consumers, similar to Ohio's grid structure. Blake Fiechter unseated Sen. Travis Holdman, the author of the much-criticized 2025 property-tax bill, on a platform that included eliminating property taxes for seniors and pushing back against business-focused tax cuts.
Both new senators ran against data centers as part of the same package.
"Successful primary challengers also pushed back against data centers, including De Vries and Fiechter," Stewart wrote.
This is the third state in two weeks where electoral or signed-into-law accountability has shifted the data-center politics: Florida (where Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 484 on Wednesday May 7), North Carolina (where four bills are moving and Gov. Josh Stein has backed repealing the existing $50-million-a-year sales-tax exemption), and now Indiana (where the Senate caucus's composition has changed at the primary). Gov. Mike Braun donated $500,000 to support primary challengers across the state, Stewart reports — energy policy traveled with that wave.
The next inflection point in Indiana is the Senate president pro tempore vote — whether incumbent Sen. Rodric Bray loses leadership to Sen. Chris Garten — because the chamber's committee assignments determine whether utility-restructuring or data-center-tariff legislation gets hearings in 2027.
Source: Jacob Stewart / Indianapolis Star.
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