The War Between Central Management and Constitutional Home Rule Heats Up over Data Centers on Maine's Coast
Governor Mills steps in to nix an affordable housing development to make way for a data center
Water, the Enabler:
The Boothbay Peninsula was able to develop as a town at the end of the Peninsula because it has its own water supply, but the state has listed the supply as endangered by further development since the eighties, which has had little impact on development.
Local leadership has proposed resolving the water shortage by connecting to the Bath water supply via Wiscasset.
The Bath water system draws on Nequasset Lake, which is the reservoir for Wiscasset’s public water supply and the watershed that feeds it. A thorough report on the lake and the watershed was prepared in 1989 by Dresden, Wiscasset, and Woolwich in conjunction with the non-profit Bath Water District, which manages the reservoir and conveyance.
The Bath Water District considers the protection of the watershed the most important strategy for assuring Nequasset’s water quality. Although the district believes there is plenty of water for the future, increased development in Wiscasset and new situations such as Edgecomb’s request to hook into Wiscasset’s water supply raise important issues for all the towns involved. Wiscasset Town Office Report
Small Town vs Big Tech:
As the Town of Wiscasset was awarded ARPA funding for an affordable housing development, a data center was being negotiated for the same location through the underhanded shenanigans of the town’s Director of Economic Development, Aaron Chrostowsky.
The proposed “hyper-scale” data center is projected to be a $5 billion facility. Specific figures are hidden by the nondisclosure agreement, but similar “hyperscale” data centers consume 300,000 to 500,000 gallons of water per day, with the highest-end facilities using up to 5 million gallons per day for cooling.
Chrostowsky signed a non-disclosure agreement with an anonymous developer. Given the scale and the industry, it’s reasonable to assume that the anonymous party is one of the "Magnificent Seven" U.S. tech companies—Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Platforms (Facebook), and Tesla—that dominate the global stock market.
Local Residents vs Outside Investors:
Sound familiar?
It’s the same way the negotiations were conducted in Boothbay over school plans funded by the Anonymous Group, organized by Paul Coulombe. who bought the right to run a local referendum based on their plans, with two million dollars funding the architects to design the new school, as the old one was slated to be demolished in their plan. Developer Paul Coulombe’s style is to demolish and rebuild the Peninsula with his own design, which he has been doing at an unprecedented pace since he rolled into the region.
Research revealed that many of the individuals who funded the placement of the “demolish and replace” referendum on the ballot do not reside on the Peninsula, and some do not reside in the state. Those individuals were disqualified from voting due to their non-resident status, and the residents of the Peninsula voted the referendum down.
Shifting Narratives
Chrostowsky is quoted on the Wiscasset Town website as supporting the local small business community, but has proven to be willing to sell out what the community wants if big money shows up on his doorstep, as is documented with detailed research in How a data center derailed $240,000 for affordable housing in Wiscasset in the Maine Morning Star. After derailing the housing plans and losing $240,000 in federal funding for the affordable housing project, and amid public protest over the data center, the talks with the developers stalled last November. Read more here.
Here is Mr Chrostowsky extolling the value of the locally grown economy:
“The Town of Wiscasset is open for business. Department staff are focused on helping new and existing local businesses grow. We understand that these businesses are people’s dreams and livelihoods. It is our job to help them keep these dreams alive.” Aaron Chrostowsky, Economic Development Director (Town of Wicasset website)
Despite the reported stall in negotiations with anonymous California investors, a very recent story on MSNBC is about the non-disclosure agreements that small towns are asked to sign before negotiations begin with major corporations that employ large teams of lawyers. The MSNBC story features the non-disclosure agreement signed by Wiscasset economic developers, displaying the blacked-out name of the negotiating company.
Residents, move aside, central management will now take over!
Governor Mills was also determined to get her fingers in the pie as she aggressively went all-in on data centers in Maine, an industry that intentionally carved its path to funding by promising the investor class to eliminate jobs for the working class, setting the tone at the top that trickles down to all the players in the new gold rush, including Mills and Chrostowsky.
After many decades of using state taxes to subsidize the capitalization of large corporations and justifying it as “job creation”, Governor Janet Mills has no problem jumping into bed with the masterminds of an industry funding itself on the premise that it will deliver on the ability to eliminate jobs to create higher profits for the ownership class. Wherever the money is, she will follow.
It didn’t matter that the Town had its own ideas; Mills had her own ideas too, and Wiscasset was part of it, targeted on her Maine Community Energy Redevelopment Program (MECERP), a program specifically geared toward utilizing available electrical capacity, which Wiscasset has in abundance from the old Maine Yankee site. MECERP is a shopping list of sites to attract large industries to Maine; you might say it is custom-made for data centers, the sort of large-scale industry that central management of an economy is built on.
On October 22, 2024, the Mills Administration announced six communities in Maine will receive technical assistance through MECERP to support locally-determined revitalization projects at current and former industrial sites to create good-paying jobs, drive local economic development, and meet state climate and clean energy goals.
The words “locally-determined revitalization projects” in the description of the state-driven plans for Maine’s economy are a legal nod to the Maine Constitution and its Home Rule Amendment that provides that the inhabitants of any municipality shall have the power over all matters, not prohibited by the Constitution or general law, which are local and municipal in character:
Article VIII.
Part Second.
Municipal Home Rule.
Section 1. Power of municipalities to amend their charters. The inhabitants of any municipality shall have the power to alter and amend their charters on all matters, not prohibited by Constitution or general law, which are local and municipal in character. The Legislature shall prescribe the procedure by which the municipality may so act.
Section 2. Construction of buildings for industrial use. For the purposes of fostering, encouraging and assisting the physical location, settlement and resettlement of industrial and manufacturing enterprises within the physical boundaries of any municipality, the registered voters of that municipality may, by majority vote, authorize the issuance of notes or bonds in the name of the municipality for the purpose of purchasing land and interests therein or constructing buildings for industrial use, to be leased or sold by the municipality to any responsible industrial firm or corporation.
Actions speak louder than rhetoric. Mills clearly and strategically jumped in with the intent to overrule the locally-determined decision to build affordable housing and replace it with a data center, after she vetoed a bill that would have paused data centers until a study on their effects could be completed, speaking to the fact that she cares as much about the effects of data centers as she does about the people having a voice in the development of their own communities, what Mills cares about is money-pure and simple, uncopmplicated by other considerations.
Considering how water usage affects community development
According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people. The Bath water supply currently serves a population of about 15,000 people.
Wiscassette has only 6000 residents, so a large data center would effectively wipe out residential growth in Wiscassette and the surrounding towns served by the Bath water supply. The workers in the data center would have to live in communities that have alternative water resources. This is consistent with the narrative spun by the tech industry that envisions a world run by cities of robots without human involvement. Given the manner in which data centers devour the water supply, it would make sense to locate them in the middle of nowhere, were it not for the fact that regions that have water supplies are where human-occupied cities are born.
The gold-struck politicians are not interested in studying the effects of data centers beyond the tax base they would create. They are like robots themselves, responding instinctively to the money prompt, and people are indistinguishable units of a non-distinctive mass used as a bargaining chip in their trades.
Synchronicity
Tit for a tat, the two projects advance in oppositional orchestration, with the data center plans following closely on the heels of the affordable housing plans
The Town was finalizing its ARPA award in October of 2024. The MECERP program was announced on October 22, 2024. On November 5, 2024, Lincoln County awarded $240,000 to Wiscasset for the Old Ferry Road property, and at the same time Wiscasset signed an agreement to receive technical assistance from the Maine Community Energy Redevelopment Program (MECERP), an initiative promoted as supporting locally-determined revitalization projects at current and former industrial sites, the same industrial site that the California site evaluator heard about through MECERP, initiating discussions only two days after the AARP adffordable housing funding was finalized.
In April 2026, Maine lawmakers passed legislation to establish an 18-month moratorium on new data centers over 20 MW, until November 1, 2027. Governor Mills vetoed the bill (LD 307), and instead, her administration is setting up its "Data Center Advisory Council" to study impacts, which will allow data centers to proceed while the study is ongoing. That’s reassuring; an aggressive data center advocate will be in charge of the study and will be involved in advancing data centers before the study is done.
Actions Taken Under Accelerated Pressure
Mills and Chrostowsky are struck dumb by the narrative coming from big tech, while big tech is under pressure to establish world dominance before the bubble financing its establishment bursts. Local inhabitants are to be pushed aside by whatever means possible in a race to grab the tax base that large data centers represent. Meanwhile, the narrative being advanced by the tech lords has not been given the thorough consideration that is its due, as the part about the benefits of corporate culture for the working class collapses into class warfare of the owning class vs the working classes.
The new world governed and operated by robots is just a narrative conjured up by special interests. Sam Altman, Dario, and Daniela Amodei are just individuals imagining a future that could be, not soothsayers with special divinatory authority. That distinction doesn’t matter to lapdogs responding to the lure of the dollar.
The reality is that the future is in the making through complex forces. One of those is the changing perception of the relationship between corporate power and the people. Sam Altman and the Amodeis ’vision of the future needs the cooperation of the rest of us, but the vision pits the working classes against the ownership classes and the environment against those who are blind to everything except money. And yet such a totalitarian narrative needs the co-operation of all of us to achieve its goals, but its narrative intentionally drowns out any other voices, taking up all the air in the room.
While finalizing the details of its ARPA award in October of 2024, Wiscasset also signed an agreement to receive technical assistance from the Maine Community Energy Redevelopment Program (MECERP), an initiative launched by Maine’s Governor, Janet Mills, to support locally-determined revitalization projects at current and former industrial sites. Wiscasset’s Old Ferry Road property, near the former Maine Yankee nuclear plant, was among those selected for economic development planning. How a data center derailed $240,000 for affordable housing in Wiscasset
Opposing Views
A locally determined revitalization project is just necessary political spin in the eyes of the centrally managed economy headed up by Janet Mills; she is going to ramrod data centers into Maine, and local communities will have no say in the matter.
While Governor Mills nixed the investigation into the effects of data centers, Wiscasset has published a detailed, comprehensive description of the water sources available to Wiscasset on the Wiscasset Town Office Website, covering the laws governing the use and maintenance of the water system and other natural resources.
The 1989 report found that phosphorous levels in the lake were high; development pressure in the watershed was a threat to water quality; Wiscasset Town Office
Data centers are known to release phosphprous into the water as corrosion inhibitors Clean Water Action
The Bath Water District in Maine utilizes groundwater from four wells, with a total storage capacity of 2.5 million gallons across their tanks. Their water treatment system features a 126,000-gallon clearwell storage tank.
A single, large data center can consume as much water as 10,000 to 50,000 residents. At the lower end (300,000 gallons per day), a data center's usage is roughly equivalent to the needs of 1,000–2,600 households. data center overview
The primary people involved in these discussions in the Town of Wiscasset:
Aaron Chrostowsky: Wiscasset Economic Development Director, who has been directly involved in conversations with the prospective developer’s site assessor, reportedly starting as early as November 2024.
Dennis Simmons: Wiscasset Town Manager.
The Wiscasset Selectboard: Specifically mentioned is Select Board Member Bill Maloney and Board Chair Sarah Whitfield, who have addressed the “nascent” talks and confirmed that the board was exploring the concept to see if it would be a “win-win” for the town’s tax base.
Calling for Prudence:
As long as the data centers are on the table, the Peninsula cannot count on hooking up to Wiscassett to reinforce its water supply. The community needs to be conscientious about preserving its water supply and adjusting community development plans to a scale that the existing water supply can serve, at least as Plan B, if not Plan A, because hooking up to alternative water supplies in the days of aggressive data center development is not a reliable plan. Power and money delegated housing needs to the back burner, as we saw attempted in Wiscasset, which caused the Town to lose its affordable housing funds while the data center has not materialized.
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