The towns of Brunswick and Scarborough have joined the collection of Maine municipalities enacting temporary bans on data center construction.

Last week, both the Brunswick Town Council and the Scarborough Town Council unanimously passed 180-day moratoriums on data center construction. The goal of the moratoriums is to allow the councils time to evaluate their ordinances and codes and decide whether they’d like to enact any further restrictions on data centers.

Several other Maine municipalities, including Westbrook and Bangor, have taken action themselves after Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill in April that would have temporarily banned the construction of data centers with a load of 20 megawatts or more across the state. 

“We are not going to get help from the state of Maine until at least November of 2027,” said Brunswick Town Councilor Corey Perreault. “And so much damage could happen between now and then that I think it’s incredibly important that we take this very seriously, because once these centers are built, the destruction is done.” 

Data centers are the physical infrastructure behind the internet, according to the World Resources Institute. They house network equipment, servers and other infrastructure in one place. The computers are often cooled with water, leading to backlash over these buildings’ water and electricity use — some facilities could use as much as a million gallons of water per day. As large language models such as ChatGPT become more popular, data centers to house the servers are increasingly appearing across the country.

Scarborough and Brunswick residents expressed concern over data centers’ usage of water and electricity, pollution and impacts on property values.

“Allow data centers to be built, and the billionaires and the oligarchs will own these centers, and they will make billions of dollars off of you,” Topsham resident Neal Gabler told the Brunswick Town Council. “Allow them to be built, and what we get for those billions? Pollution, illness, economic distress and unlivable conditions.”

Brunswick is already home to a few smaller data centers, including Enables IT and FirstLight. No other centers seem to be in development in the town, and its moratorium prevents the construction of data centers with a demand of one megawatt or more. 

But a center in Scarborough is already in the planning board process. Greg Braun, the attorney representing Daniel Dickinson, the developer, told the Scarborough council that Dickinson has been involved in the planning board process for more than a year with no issue. 

He added that the Planning Board approved the development’s first phase last year, and the master plan is before the board now. He asked that the planning board vote down the moratorium.

“Every single impact that you’re going to discuss tonight is prospective in nature,” Braun told the council.

But Planning Board Director Autum Speer told councilors that the board approved a site inventory for Dickenson’s project last May, and there was no mention of a data center until after Mills’ veto. 

“It's like taking a stick and poking a hornets’ nest,” Scarborough councilor Scott Doherty said. “And I tell [Dickinson] that. ‘You gotta come up with something better than this.’”

Scarborough has until November and Brunswick has until December to decide whether to extend their moratoriums or enact policies regulating data centers. The towns could also choose to make no changes in these six months.