NY1 reports on community opposition surrounding DataBank’s existing facility and proposed expansion in Orangeburg, Rockland County, as the debate over data center development becomes an increasingly charged political issue across New York State. The piece aired as part of NY1’s ongoing coverage of the statewide moratorium debate and includes on-camera remarks from DataBank Senio Vice President of Marketing JP Laqueur.

The story centers on a gap in Governor Hochul’s executive moratorium, which applies only to data centers requiring 50 megawatts or more — leaving DataBank’s 45-megawatt Orangeburg campus project outside its scope. The town of Orangetown passed its own moratorium this week but exempted the DataBank project because it is already in the approval process. A bill sponsored by State Senator Kristen Gonzalez that would lower the moratorium threshold to 20 megawatts passed in June and is awaiting the governor’s signature.

“We’re saying that not every data center is an AI data center, and we really do rely on data centers for our modern lives, so we have to protect them. If you want to have a moratorium, you want to have regulation that slows some of this stuff down, great. Let’s be smart about how we go about doing it and not have a knee-jerk reaction.”
— JP Laqueur, Senio Vice President of Marketing, DataBank

Laqueur directly addressed community concerns about water, noting that the facility uses closed-loop cooling, draws no water from Lake Tappan, and returns none to it. He also pushed back on the perception that all data centers are AI facilities, emphasizing that DataBank’s infrastructure predominantly supports banking, healthcare, and government services that communities rely on every day.

Read the full article at NY1.