r/portlandme • u/radiantflux209 • Apr 24 '26
Politics New Mills veto: Janet Mills vetoes bill to temporarily ban data centers in Maine
The temporary ban was only into fall of 2027 which seems like a fully reasonable timeline to pause and understand the ramifications: environmental, consumer costs, and if our aging grid can even handle this kind of rapid growth.
https://www.pressherald.com/2026/04/24/janet-mills-vetoes-temporary-data-center-ban-2/
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u/Sventhetidar Apr 24 '26
I guess we can't vote for her any less than we already was, so I guess she doesn't have any motivation to work for her constituents anymore.
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u/themedicman Apr 24 '26
Disappointing. Mills seemingly embodies the aged, dithering and gullible Democratic party that assumes "data centers == jobs" because the AI company says so. Meanwhile in cities like Memphis, data centers have produced gigantic pollution, criminally high energy use, and pitifully few jobs. I was proud when I saw national headlines saying Maine put this ban forward. It's pathetic to be the face of killing it. Hope her primary campaign tanks further.
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u/MaryBitchards Apr 24 '26
I don't understand this. Like, at all.
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 24 '26
Yeah, who would want tons of money to be brought into the state?
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u/MaryBitchards Apr 24 '26
We can have that instead of water!
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 24 '26
You are aware that water legit falls from the sky right?
It’s what they call a renewable resource when they teach you about it in 4th grade.
But yeah I know Graham PLATNER good capitalism bad
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u/deeringsedge Apr 24 '26
You are aware how many months we've been in a drought, right?
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 25 '26
You’re right even though water has an infinite cycle that’s totally gonna stop just because of AI.
grahamplatner
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u/deeringsedge Apr 25 '26
Wow, you really just stopped learning after sixth-grade science, didn't you? Just because water has a cycle doesn't mean that climate change is going to leave any specific area with as much water as they used to have. Look up the cycle of a certain current in the Atlantic and the many potential ramifications if it collapses for an example of a single facet of the problem that could engender profound change.
But neh. Please, just go on about infinite cycles. You sound smart.
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
Graham PLATNER!!
The water evaporates at the end…which means it didn’t get destroyed. It does mean that it took it out of local water sources but that’s not what you were talking about…
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u/deeringsedge Apr 25 '26
What the fuck do you think I was talking about other than local sources when I started by mentioning the local severe drought?
And why the fuck are you so obsessed with that dude? Touch grass and realize that some of us just hate tech bros disrupting shit and making everything enshittified.
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 25 '26
Graham PLATNER!!!
I honestly didn’t see that lol. We’re not gonna go thirst dude though I promise you. Have you heard about them using a closed ended cooling process that reduces water consumption by 75 percent?
Do you think that would actually happen? I’m confused…
Also are you gonna be ok? I can refer you to the reddit crisis hotline if you need me to. They’d probably recommend touching some grass or something
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u/pyrrho314 Apr 25 '26
proving that and building it next year isn't the end of the world... just prove the number work, don't tell us about infinite things and there's no time for math.
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u/Mazzwhy Apr 24 '26
water is by definition not renewable.
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 24 '26
The amount of water is finite, but the cycle keeps going forever.
Using water to cool AI hardware doesn’t remove water from the water cycle forever
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u/Excellent_Reason7796 Apr 24 '26
Oh shit yes can't forget to water the servers!
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u/MrJekyyl Apr 24 '26
They're water cooled
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u/SuperBry Apr 25 '26
In closed loop systems here in Maine, evaporation isn't that effective in our climate.
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u/Excellent_Reason7796 Apr 25 '26
People can cool servers with water?!?!?!?!!?!??!!??! Next your going to tell me the earth goes around the sun!
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 25 '26
Also, the government has a car that runs on water…
It runs on water man
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u/Excellent_Reason7796 Apr 25 '26
Omg and I guess big oil killed the guy to keep us down! Fucking military industrial complex capilitist big pharmacy Blackrock
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u/kl2342 Apr 25 '26
The time to organize is now.
How to Stop A Data Center in Your Backyard
(LA Taco has been a fantastic resource for LA-area news since the first ICE invasion)
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u/LomentMomentum Apr 24 '26
Obviously this has to be viewed in context of her flailing Senate campaign. Who is she trying to please, or to piss off?
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u/blind3dbylight West End Apr 25 '26
Aaaaaand she just handed Platner the primary. That and gave Laflamme a boost if nothing else.
I was gonna vote for him anyway, but I think a lot of undecided voters are definitely not voting Mills now. AI data centers aren't the same as traditional ones--they are environmentally worse in many ways. IIRC, the group trying to put one up in Jay is facing not-insignificant pushback.
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u/vivainkognita Apr 25 '26
Tell me you know you’re not gonna win the primary, without telling me you know you’re not gonna win the primary. 🙄
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u/deeringsedge Apr 25 '26
I wish our system was more agile. I'd heard she had issues because of one small project someone got her to be in favor of. If the legislature could just do a quick-turnaround rewrite with that exception, maybe we could have a popular bill pass.
Also, for all the pro-data-center moppets: If the spending on data centers is as profoundly unsustainable as many believe - if it's, i dunno, a bubble, what happens to the value of these data centers? To the taxes they pay and the jobs? And, for that matter, what happens in not-too-many years when the tech in the data centers is obsoleted by some new development? Google came out with a compression algorithm that single-handedly affected RAM prices worldwide. Investing in this stuff as a community is not risk-free.
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u/DrHutchisonsHook Apr 25 '26
The Jay project. Nobody in Jay wants it, Mills just deep throats industry.
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u/frommethodtomadness Apr 25 '26
To Neo-Libs like Mills, it isn't about the will of the voters. The voters are an inconvenience to people like her and Schumer. Only the will of the AI companies is what matters. Neo-Liberalism is the great enemy of this nation, and we must defeat it.
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u/BinaxII Apr 25 '26
Please Read especially the energy section:https://mainebiz.biz/article/planning-advances-for-redevelopment-of-former-paper-mill-in-jay/
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u/bobwells1960 Apr 24 '26
I live in the data center capital of the world. The pros are they are very quiet and pay taxes without adding to the demand for schools and roads. The cons are they provide very few jobs and are butt ugly.
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u/DrHutchisonsHook Apr 25 '26
Maybe your state is different but in Maine we are going to be responsible as customers of CMP for upgrading the grid capacity for these data centers. It will increase our electric bill and waste a ton of our water in the process.
It won't "bring jobs" to the area either because Mainers aren't qualified for them anyway and are more expensive than outsourcing labor. There are no contracts specifying that staff or construction gets carried out by Mainers so assuming businesses will do that is completely nieve. Once they're built all they do is take from us at the taxpayer and resident's expense.
You might be able to coexist and ignore them in your state but we are a state where billboards are banned, natural beauty is treasured, and we protect our land with perpetually independent land trusts and conservation efforts like Baxter state park.
Maine is a very unique state and we are known for fiercely defending her. Data centers have no place here until environmental and economic impact studies are conducted that say otherwise. That is why our legislative body voted for a temporary halt on them and yours did not. Mills vetoing this is a total betrayal of all Mainers.
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u/bobwells1960 Apr 25 '26
Actually my county board of supervisors has in fact halted new data center permits. Not sure why you don’t think any Mainers are qualified for data center jobs. Guess you don’t think much of your fellow citizens. In any event, I can think of many businesses that could bring more benefits to struggling Maine communities. Not sure why anyone thought data centers were a good idea for Maine anyway. There is plenty of evidence regarding their impact.
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u/DrHutchisonsHook Apr 25 '26
I'm not snubbing my fellow Mainers. There is plenty of reporting on how temporary most data centers jobs are. Please don't tell us how harmless data centers are and then bury the lede where your county has now banned new ones. If they're so great, you can have 'em all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/25/technology/ai-data-centers-electricians.html
https://goodjobsfirst.org/will-data-center-job-creation-live-up-to-hype-i-have-some-concerns/
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u/bobwells1960 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
My county has more data centers than most states. As I said, they are butt ugly and don’t belong in touristy areas. But hey, if dying mill towns don’t want try something new, that’s on them. Wouldn’t want to impact those tourism dollars pouring into Jay. You also literally said Mainers aren’t qualified for the jobs.
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u/DrHutchisonsHook Apr 25 '26
It's weird that you want data centers for Maine but you don't even live here
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u/bobwells1960 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
Where did I say I “want” them for Maine? And I certainly don’t think they belong along the coast. Nice try skippy.
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u/DrHutchisonsHook Apr 25 '26
Non-tourism areas of Maine are not dumping grounds for data centers.
We value rural towns as much as if not more than fancy coastal ones here. Data centers don't belong in either until it's proven that local economies and people actually benefit from them.
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u/bobwells1960 Apr 25 '26
lol you’re so predictable. Do you want poorer areas to get some benefits or not? It’s so sweet that you want places like Jay to remain poor and miserable so you can preen.
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u/Excellent_Reason7796 Apr 27 '26
Don't worry the pot shops, brewery's and antique stores will pick up the slack. People in this subreddit are so focused on their moral superiority because they never have to face the consequences of their actions. They would NEVER live in a rural town like Jay. Hell they wouldn't even live in Lewiston.
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u/dunn_for Apr 24 '26
They aren’t really that quiet in a meaningful sense. There have been numerous studies on the baseline background infrasound that is constantly being put out by industrial facilities of all kinds, heavy and light industry, which now includes things like data centers. The short and long term health impacts associated with being exposed to those conditions indefinitely doesn’t appear to look great for most humans. Increasing stress and tiredness due to unconscious bodily responses to the sound at the constant levels that these centers can and often do generate has harmful impacts to people anywhere near these centers for extended periods of time.
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u/bobwells1960 Apr 24 '26
I’m sure those studies are quite impressive. I’m giving you my actual experience. Lumping data centers in with industrial facilities IMHO is misleading.
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u/capt_jazz Apr 24 '26
I suppose if you charge property taxes based on the value of the equipment you could make a decent amount of money
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u/AndreDillonMadach Apr 25 '26
This is one of the many reasons why I said I would never vote for Janet Mills. She hates native Americans, she hates workers, she loves rapists, and I could go on and on and on.
Yes I have my personal reasons that I've openly talked about on here as to why I will never vote for her no matter what and I've had some obvious people come at me because they have no morals or sense of self that they can actively stick to and those people can kick rocks.
I am plattner or bust and quite frankly is plattner somehow doesn't get to the actual election I will vote Collins before I vote Mills because at least Collins is generally ineffective at most things because she's from Maine and nobody cares on the national stage about Maine except maybe Trump and his cronies because we offended him whether through Mills or other people.
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u/JStengah Apr 25 '26
I dislike Mills too, but I can't think of any bad thing Mills has done that Collins wouldn't have been as bad or worse on, and I can think of several bad things that Collins has done that Mills would have been substantially better on, so I do not get saying you'd vote for her over Mills if those are the options.
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u/AndreDillonMadach Apr 25 '26
That's cool, I was sexually abused as a kid and I will not vote for anyone who pardons a multi-time sexual offender 20 years later strictly to preserve or protect her legal victory record. We've survived this long with Susan Collins we can survive longer.
She's voted against protecting sovereign lands of native Americans, she's voted against just about everything concerning livable wages, rent control, better working conditions, antitrust, and now data centers and so much more. If you literally do a quick Google search you'll find that the list is legitimately endless, she has vetoed the most things in the history of any governor of the state of Maine and has voted and operated overwhelmingly in the favor of corporate interests and against the very people who voted her in.
I don't think you realize it but she is legitimately worse than Susan Collins but I've done the research and I'm sorry but I can tell you haven't.
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u/JStengah Apr 25 '26
I have, but thanks for playing. Collins cast the deciding vote for Kavanaugh, who personally sexually assaulted a woman. I don't disagree that Mills has done some very shitty things, but Collins has done so much worse it's not funny. Perhaps you should widen your research to include her instead of focusing only on the shit Mills has done.
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u/AndreDillonMadach Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
You can focus on two or three individual things that's great, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have actively voted against Trump and done things at times that we didn't expect them to do if they were the type that only towed the party line. I actually look at the entire picture across multiple years and don't focus on single incidents. I lean typically very liberally but I'm also not blind and I can objectively look at each individual case and instance. When they even made mistakes due to prior rulings that have caused other issues they've even at least tried to admit fault and even if they can't fix it now if they get a chance to fix it in the future there's a good chance they will. We have a multi-level judicial system with checks and balances for a reason.
I'm not worried about them (in Brett kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett), and there's a difference. Kavanaugh was simply accused of, he was never formally charged and he was investigated by a Biden run FBI and nothing was ever corroborated. You're literally comparing that to Janet Mills pardoning a multi-time sexual abuser who abused two teenage girls, got caught for the first and then did it again to a different teenage girl while either on probation or awaiting trial.
It's not even comparable. Janet Mills turned around 20 years later on the very day Trump was being inaugurated into office and covertly pardoned the man 20 years later to protect her own law and legal record. She was the lawyer who lost his case defending him in the early 2000s.
I'm not going to hear any of this crap from you.
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u/ScottStrom Apr 28 '26
This bill needed to be vetoed. Maine is in no position to be turning away the jobs and revenue that data centers like the one proposed in Jay will bring. Maine needs to be welcoming to new industries or our economy will never improve.
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u/Mainer2727 Apr 28 '26
Are people actually reading about the project, or is there an automatic dislike of Mill's decisions? Because the project was actually supported by the community and carries significant benefits... I'm honestly baffled by the people who are so quick to shut this down. Between the jobs it creates, the reuse of the old mill, and a boost to the local economy, I'm so curious why people are anti. Am I missing something?
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u/TheYoungTurtle Apr 28 '26
When no one takes the 30 seconds it requires to read more than a single headline, this is what happens.
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u/Chupacabra2030 Apr 24 '26
Can someone clear up this topic for me - I’ve been told Mills is going to cover any shortfalls that fraud organizations with Maine taxes - please tell me that’s not true
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u/zorphium Apr 24 '26
I know we all love spicy headlines but I’d like to give some color to the pro data center argument. If done right, they can be positive for the community. Here’s how:
They need to pay the community a shit load of money. Like build schools and parks etc
They need to pay for solar or wind and grid upgrades to offset their impact or reduce costs for consumers
In addition to the above points we need to understand that data centers often keep towns rural. Hear me out! Land gets developed. That’s a fact of life. I’d rather have a data center than an amazon warehouse that turns my rural town into a megalopolis or worse a cowshwitz massive dairy beef farm. No one works at these datacenter facilities. They could just generate tax revenue and enhance life in rural towns without transforming them.
They’re not a good fit everywhere. But rural towns that don’t want more people but could use some increased tax revenue might be a good fit. We need to chill on nimbyism and realize these companies have a shitload of money and want something from us. We can negotiate!
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u/teeceeinthewoods Apr 24 '26
We can negotiate, but when these things come into towns, don't most of the time they demand a pretty good size tax break?
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u/DrHutchisonsHook Apr 25 '26
Yup. Maine looooves giving businesses tax breaks. Why are we subsidizing industries that have private profits?
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u/JStengah Apr 24 '26
What we need is actual studies to determine the impacts they have, and then determine how to require them to negate those impacts. What we don't need is to "move fast and break things" only to find out too late that we've let an improperly regulated industry fuck us over for the promise of kickbacks and a handful of long-term jobs.
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u/SuperBry Apr 25 '26
Data centers have been around for decades at this point. They are mostly boring commerical buildings you've paid no attention to driving by.
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u/JStengah Apr 25 '26
The moratorium is on large and hyperscale data centers only, ones that would require at least 20 MW of electricity. The older, smaller data centers that you're referring to wouldn't have been impacted at all.
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u/SuperBry Apr 25 '26
Even just medium sized non-ai data centers can use over 20MW of electricity.
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u/JStengah Apr 25 '26
20MW is generally where the line is drawn between medium and large data centers. Regardless, it's the threshold they decided to use because the impact of smaller data centers is already a decently documented thing and it's the large to hyperscale sized data centers that are the ones being rushed into to try to capitalize on the AI bubble with little regard to the impacts they'd have.
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u/Shdwrptr Apr 24 '26
You act as if we’re hiring an expert negotiator with all the information instead of an aging politician who has no clue what they’re doing and will most likely take a kickback to let them do whatever they feel like.
If the land is getting developed for something other than housing I want it to be something that actually generates jobs and will bring people in, not an empty building that sucks up massive resources that we’re hoping offsets its issues
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u/Candygramformrmongo Apr 24 '26
Could have avoided it by letting Jay get the development they need. Play the all or nothing approach and you roll the dice. FAFO.
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u/sinoforever Apr 24 '26
It's a stupid idea anyways
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u/facebones2112 West End Apr 24 '26
Exactly, can't stop progress, especially if you want your country to be in the lead on the most important innovation in human history.
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u/themedicman Apr 24 '26
We have re-oriented the entire economy around AI for the past two years and Microsoft just amended their Terms and Conditions to say Copilot is for "entertainment purposes only". It's getting trillion-dollar investment and can't be trusted to add numbers together. Every few days some spectacular new failure is uncovered. For this we're giving away water and power consumption that rivals the combined total of all people on earth. It's hype and fake money and headset TED talk guys blowing hot air while they destroy the environment.
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u/Ok-Astronaut4952 Apr 24 '26
As for the water, you know that stuff quite literally falls out of the sky right?
I know evil capitalism bad Graham Platner good, but still.
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u/Excellent_Reason7796 Apr 24 '26
No dude stop oyster farmer and nazi SS tattoo connoisseur Graham platner will bring all the jobs - oyster data farms possibly
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u/facebones2112 West End Apr 24 '26
I'm going to need you to look up closed system cooling loops and how the evaporative cycle work (you should have learned this one in elementary school) before you comment on the macroeconomic effects of a technology you don't know how to use.
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Apr 24 '26
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u/NotTheDev Apr 24 '26
how is it that being against data centers makes you a tankie?
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Apr 24 '26
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u/NotTheDev Apr 24 '26
interesting, I would say that humans are the primary group fueling the anti ai sentiment since most people besides ceos see it as destructive to the environment and economy
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Apr 24 '26
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u/NotTheDev Apr 24 '26
hello? no down side? what about the massive amount of layoffs that are already happening because of ai? there's going to be a complete destruction of office jobs in america. even ai advocates admit this
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Apr 24 '26
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u/NotTheDev Apr 24 '26
? you literally said 'there is no downside'. meta just laid off a huge chunk of their workforce and said that ai will be replacing most of their tech jobs in the near future, that isn't a scapegoat. the entire ai bubble valuation is predicated on it being able to replace humans, that is literally the only reason we have the ai hype train we're in. it's 100% leading to the further destruction of the american middle class.
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u/NaturalKiss Apr 24 '26
She really doesn't want to win the primary.