LANSING, N.Y. — The Town of Lansing’s moratorium saga has come to an end.
Wednesday night, the Lansing Town Board voted unanimously to withdraw the land-use moratorium that had provoked weeks of debate among town officials and their constituents.
The moratorium would have put a one-year halt on some development in the town as officials rewrite its zoning code. However, some residents felt it would negatively affect small businesses and place an undue target on the controversial artificial intelligence data center project spearheaded by computing and data mining company TeraWulf — which had threatened legal action over the moratorium if it was enacted. The data center plan was announced shortly before the moratorium proposal was publicly introduced.
Wednesday’s meeting was originally slated to include a public hearing on the moratorium to gather more feedback from residents, with town officials relocating the meeting to the Lansing Middle School auditorium to accommodate a presumably large crowd.
But a press release from the town clerk last week derailed those plans, announcing that the previously defeated withdrawal motion would be reintroduced and cancelling the public hearing on the matter. The location was thus shifted back to the Lansing Town Hall.
TeraWulf had previously asked to include a presentation to the town board in the agenda, though that did not occur at Wednesday’s meeting.
There was no comment from town board members before the vote was made. Town Supervisor Ruth Groff and town board members Joe Wetmore and Laurie Hemmings had previously voted against the withdrawal, but did not comment on their change of heart.
The resolution states that all town officials must “cease all activity in furtherance of such moratorium, and no longer consider or work upon the same,” though the town reserves the right to “consider a new or different moratorium in the future, when and as warranted.”
The meeting included a public comment period during which some residents aired their frustrations with the withdrawal, while others thanked the board for stopping the moratorium effort.
The first speaker, Philip Gillemot, was interrupted by Groff while talking about the data center’s “titanic” energy draw, because the privilege of the floor was limited to items on the agenda. Since the moratorium vote had already concluded, it was effectively no longer on the agenda or future agendas, Groff said, and shouldn’t be discussed further.
This decision received vocal backlash from attendees against the development of the data center, who said discussions about the moratorium were on the agenda. Ultimately, residents were allowed to speak freely, though not without occasional vocal pushback from the crowd.
Attendees against the development of the data center were largely wearing red and shared concerns with energy use and a profound distrust of the company’s environmental promises around water use and the economic benefit to the town.
Amid heated debates within the audience, former town board candidate Joe Lovejoy, who ran an unsuccessful write-in campaign centered on opposing the moratorium, almost came to blows with fellow meeting attendee and former Tompkins County Legislature candidate John Dennis, who has repeatedly expressed support for the moratorium. They were split up by a third person sitting between them.
During his privilege of the floor, Lovejoy expressed disappointment with the town board’s perceived unwillingness to listen to representatives from TeraWulf.
“You’re against things. You’re against a lot of things, actually,” Lovejoy told the town board during public comment. “I think you should open your eyes and actually listen. You’re in a position to listen.”
The moratorium was first discussed by the town board on Sept. 17, soon after plans for an artificial intelligence data center on Cayuga Lake were announced. The moratorium would have temporarily halted development of the data center, which is slated to take over the defunct Cayuga Power Plant facility.
The town’s Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals both previously suggested withdrawing the moratorium — or making changes to its language, at least. In the weeks prior, the original draft had seen various revisions, but the withdrawal was nonetheless reconsidered because of legal concerns over the moratorium’s validity.
According to the press release announcing the changes to Wednesday’s meeting, town officials “realized” they needed more time to consider input from these boards and the Zoning Advisory Committee.
It is unclear what the town’s next steps will be as it works on the zoning rewrite and reviews the data center project.
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