Onondaga County has chosen a firm to conduct a half million-dollar data center study. County executive Ryan McMahon announced the creation of a task force and funding for the study back in June. The county itself can’t approve or prohibit data centers but wants to gather information for local governments as they consider proposals from developers. Planning Director Troy Waffner told lawmakers Wednesday they received three bids, and a firm called CPL in Rochester is a good fit.
“CPL seemed to combine the best of both worlds in terms of both the planning aspect and the practical aspects of having dealt with data centers," he said. "They are actually the engineering firm who's representing the STAMP park in Genesee County where there's a proposed $20 billion data center.”
In Onondaga County, a developer has proposed a massive data center in GOP floor leader Brian May’s Lysander district. He said any leftover money from the study should be used for further review.
“The study is going to open our eyes, Onondaga County, to either additional areas that we need to do a deeper dive with, or means and methodology to support local municipalities who are facing this situation more eminently than others,” May said.
Lysander is among a half dozen towns in the county to enact temporary moratoriums on data centers, while Governor Hochul signed an executive order in July halting state permits for large data centers for one year.
Waffner with the planning department said the county’s study should begin sometime next month and be finished by mid-April. Data centers are widely controversial and have become a political issue in many campaigns. He tried to dispel social media comments that the study is biased in favor of data centers.
“This is truly an absolutely agnostic study to look at data centers across the board," Waffner said. "I have no personal view on data centers. The county executive has not offered me his personal view on data centers. This is really just to get to the bottom of data centers and provide a structured way of doing that a municipality on its own probably wouldn't have the resources to do.”
He said the county should do all it can to support municipalities in their decision-making process.
