Maine nonprofits have joined more than 200 environmental groups urging Congress to put a national moratorium on new data centers built to serve the artificial intelligence industry.
In a Monday letter, the groups say the country needs time to develop adequate regulations to protect the environment and human health from the centers' potential impacts.
"The rapid expansion of data centers across the United States driven by the generative artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto boom, presents one of the biggest environmental and social threats of our generation," wrote the groups, including Defend our Health, Physicians for Social Responsibility Maine and Alliance of Maine Health Professionals for Climate Action.
The organizations cited the centers' massive demand for water and energy. Data centers need lots of water to cool computer servers, while some of their electricity is generated with fossil fuels, according to the letter.
Defend our Health executive director Emily Carey Perez de Alejo said in an interview that data centers are also built with potentially toxic components and often sited nearby poor and historically marginalized communities.
"We just need to slow down because this is going way too fast and is causing a lot of harms and we are going to find out about those harms after they have already been caused," Carey Perez de Alejo said.
So far Maine has not witnessed the rush to build data centers that has occurred in other parts of the U.S.
In October, however, a company called Liquid Cool Solutions said it was partnering with developer Green 4 Maine LLC to build the state's first AI data center at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone.
In a statement Gabrielle Maninno, a spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine said the representative believed Congress had a responsibility to assess the environmental and consumer impacts of data center and AI expansion and put "strong, science-based protections in place."
Spokespeople for other members of Maine's Congressional delegation including Rep. Jared Golden and Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King did not immediately respond to inquiries seeking comment about the letter.
