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Fredonia Mayor Michael Ferguson has echoed New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's cautious approach to large-scale data centers.
Ferguson told the village Board of Trustees that he participated in a Hochul roundtable discussion Monday afternoon about the centers. Hochul just announced a year-long moratorium on state regulatory approval of new data centers.
"They're popping up," Ferguson said. "This came up when we had the windmill issue, then we had the solar farm issues, and now data centers and hyper-speed data centers are becoming part of the mix."
Ferguson mentioned Hochul's moratorium, and offered an example from the days of the windmill boom to buttress his case for caution.
"If you remember, back when the windmill issue began... New York state put four of those windmills on our tollbooth stops," he said, noting that one was erected at the Fredonia exit. "Within about four months, they broke, the company in France (that created them) went out of business and no one's ever been able to fix it. So my discussion today is, know who you're working with."
Ferguson continued, "I have a double edged sword with regards to how I feel about AI technology. I think it's the future, and foreign countries are outpacing us. But I don't think you want to get in bed with people who aren’t prepared to run this. We had a lot of people who chipped in, bought themselves a windmill company years ago, and suddenly you're looking at windmills that haven't worked in many, many years or they fell apart.
However, "I'm proud to say, the windmills you see in Arkwright, I have yet to see those go down. I have yet to see much with regards to trouble. That's because the technology has changed."
Ferguson said it was concerning that the data center scene "changes by the minute, changes every day. The governor’s concern is, you know, somebody's going to eat the others at one point. Right now there's about six or seven top names... out there, somebody's going to ride to the top, much like Google, and the others are going to fall off."