Despite A.I. being touted as the wave of the future, no fewer than twelve New Jersey communities have, to date, banned AI centers from operating in their municipalities. These cities and towns cite numerous uncertainties when pressed for reasons they are against the industry, ranging from water and energy consumption to the constant noise associated with running a data center. Yet, because of a generous tax incentive created by former Governor Phil Murphy, companies looking to build data centers find no shortage of Garden State officials rolling out a welcome mat for their business, despite public pressure to impose a moratorium on them.
710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte in the Morning program has discussed data center construction several times in the recent weeks; Larry has now made it his mission to let listeners know where the money is being spent in support of AI so that listeners who live in New Jersey can decide for themselves what to do with this issue.
Larry discussed how several New Jersey communities have asked Governor Sherrill for a moratorium on data center construction, only for that request to fall on deaf ears: “So they asked the governor, please do something. Do something; we don’t want these data centers. What they asked for specifically was a moratorium. Stop everything; stop construction, stop any of the new licenses, stop any of the people coming in until we can actually study this and figure out what’s going on. Well, she didn’t do that. She refused to do that. Instead she said, well, when they come in they must give money to the community, when they come in they must hire locally, and they also have to be forthcoming with all their figures, and they have to let us know how much power they’re using and they have to have their own water and power source.”
At the end of the day, Larry says it all comes down to following the money and knowing which lawmaker stands against data center construction if you want to keep them out of your community: “Unfortunately in New Jersey there are no state elections, none, coming up in ’26, and that’s going to have the most effect; you’ll have to wait for ’27 for that. But there’s going to be a lot of federal elections. Every House seat is up, and (U.S. Senator) Corey Booker is up… I’m not going to tell you how to vote, but if you want to vote accordingly, (Curtis and I) will arm you with that information.”
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