EASTPORT, Maine — Rising pub­lic con­cern over a pro­posed under­wa­ter arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence data cen­ter in the Bay of Fundy’s West­ern Pas­sage has pushed the issue to the fore­front in East­port, where res­id­ents pressed the City Coun­cil on May 13 to address the project.

In Feb­ru­ary, Deep­Green West­ern Pas­sage SPV LLC applied for a 48-month pre­lim­in­ary per­mit with the Fed­eral Energy Reg­u­lat­ory Com­mis­sion to con­duct engin­eer­ing and envir­on­mental stud­ies, the first step toward devel­op­ing a tid­al­powered under­wa­ter AI data cen­ter off East­port, accord­ing to the fil­ing.

Deep­Green, which spe­cial­izes in under­wa­ter-powered data infra­struc­ture, iden­ti­fied waters north of East­port as one of two poten­tial sites for its first project. The other is in Alaska’s Upper Cook Inlet.

A group of res­id­ents con­cerned about the pro­posed data com­plex asked coun­cilors to con­sider a tem­por­ary morator­ium to pause the project.

Res­id­ent Birdy Vel­veteen argued that the area iden­ti­fied for the data cen­ter’s on-shore cables includes wet­lands pro­tec­ted under Maine’s Man­dat­ory Shore­land Zon­ing Act, not­ing that the US Clean Water Act defines wet­lands as “areas inund­ated or sat­ur­ated by sur­face or ground water at a fre­quency and dur­a­tion suf­fi­cient to sup­port a pre­val­ence of veget­a­tion typ­ic­ally adap­ted for life in sat­ur­ated soil con­di­tions.”

The Shore­land Zon­ing Act requires muni­cip­al­it­ies to adopt ordin­ances pro­tect­ing areas within the “upland edge of a coastal wet­land,” and it also spe­cifies that “all areas affected by tidal action” must fall under shore­land zon­ing pro­tec­tions.

In a recent op-ed pub­lished in The Quoddy Tides, Louis Wolf­son, developer and man­aging mem­ber of Deep­Green, wrote that he hopes to build the data cen­ter with local cooper­a­tion and an emphasis on trust and envir­on­mental stew­ard­ship.  
Suel­len Hendrix, an East­port res­id­ent, told coun­cilors she believes “bil­lion­aire investors” have little interest in the city’s wel­fare, call­ing under­wa­ter data cen­ters an “under­stud­ied industry” and urging the City Coun­cil to enact a morator­ium.

“This man (Wolf­son) is a one-per­cen­ter,” Hendrix said. “He doesn’t care about us. There’s a reason he isn’t build­ing it in Cape Cod, where he lives, and he’s choos­ing East­port.”

Hendrix cited South Port­land’s Clear Skies Ordin­ance as a pre­ced­ent for the East­port City Coun­cil to act. The South Port­land City Coun­cil first imposed a morator­ium on pro­pos­als to load crude oil onto ships to pro­tect air qual­ity in the har­bor, later turn­ing it into a per­man­ent ban.

Hendrix said she is also con­cerned about the strain a data cen­ter could place on East­port’s power grid if it draws sus­tained elec­tri­city from it, and she ques­tioned whether the project would cre­ate any mean­ing­ful jobs for the local eco­nomy.

“If you wanted a job main­tain­ing this, you should have star­ted col­lege years ago,” Hendrix said.

Res­id­ent Laurie Stone ques­tioned reports that Deep­Green’s FERC applic­a­tion ref­er­enced a “com­munity bene­fits agree­ment” with East­port, say­ing that if the city has no know­ledge of such an agree­ment, that alone should be enough to pause the project.

Res­id­ent Deborah Gillespie draf­ted a sample morator­ium ordin­ance for the City Coun­cil, say­ing she based it on state tem­plates cross-ref­er­enced with East­port’s charter. She stressed what she sees as the urgency of paus­ing the project now, before it advances fur­ther, so the coun­cil has time to study it and make a plan.

Coun­cilors declined to vote on a morator­ium, say­ing it was too early in the devel­op­ment phase and not­ing that morator­i­ums carry man­dat­ory expir­a­tion dates.

Instead, coun­cilors voted to send a let­ter to Deep­Green’s Wolf­son express­ing their objec­tion to the project, Coun­cilor Rhonda Stevens said.

Coun­cilors said their let­ter will mir­ror lan­guage in a let­ter Wash­ing­ton County com­mis­sion­ers sent to Wolf­son on April 9, stat­ing the com­mis­sion does not sup­port the pre­lim­in­ary per­mit applic­a­tion for the AI data cen­ter in Wash­ing­ton County.

The April 9 let­ter, writ­ten by David Burns, chair­man of the Wash­ing­ton County Com­mis­sion, reads, “On behalf of the County Com­mis­sion­ers of Wash­ing­ton County, I am writ­ing to express that we do not sup­port the Applic­a­tion for Pre­lim­in­ary Per­mit Deep­Green West­ern Pas­sage Sub­sea Com­pute & Infra­struc­ture Hub, Wash­ing­ton County, Maine.”

Burns also wrote: “Wash­ing­ton County has a long, involved his­tory, depend­ency and respect for mari­time industry, and we feel this type of project would be too risky for this region and its waters and the people of Wash­ing­ton County who live and work here.”

In late April, Gov­ernor Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have placed a tem­por­ary morator­ium on data cen­ter projects statewide, writ­ing that while a “morator­ium is appro­pri­ate given the impacts of massive data cen­ters in other states on the envir­on­ment and on elec­tri­city rates,” the final ver­sion of the bill “fails to allow for a spe­cific project in the Town of Jay that enjoys strong local sup­port from its host com­munity and region.”

JGT2 Redevel­op­ment is now renov­at­ing the former Andro­scog­gin Mill in Jay and has an agree­ment with national data cen­ter oper­ator Sen­tinel Data Cen­ters to occupy 1 mil­lion square feet across two floors of the former paper mill.

Tony McDon­ald of The Boulos Co., which has partnered with New Mill Cap­ital Hold­ings, Infin­ity Asset Solu­tions, and Cam­jay LLC on the $550 mil­lion Jay project, said the devel­op­ment could employ 800 to 1,000 con­struc­tion work­ers and that ongo­ing oper­a­tions would require at least 125 people to man­age and main­tain the com­puters, build­ing and util­it­ies.

In her veto let­ter, Mills wrote that the “2023 clos­ure of the Andro­scog­gin Mill dealt a dev­ast­at­ing blow to the Town of Jay and its sur­round­ing area. 

As a long-time res­id­ent of Frank­lin County, I know well how crit­ical the mill was to gen­er­a­tions of work­ing fam­il­ies, and how import­ant it is — and how chal­len­ging it has been — to pro­mote rein­vest­ment and job cre­ation at the former mill, which is a brown­field site. After prior redevel­op­ment efforts failed, the Town of Jay worked for two years on a $550 mil­lion data­cen­ter redevel­op­ment project to finally bring jobs and invest­ment back to the mill site.”

Since the veto, sev­eral Maine com­munit­ies, includ­ing Lewis­ton and Scar­bor­ough, have enacted tem­por­ary morator­i­ums on sim­ilar projects, and oth­ers have begun the pro­cess to do the same.

After the veto, Mills signed an exec­ut­ive order estab­lish­ing a coun­cil to eval­u­ate policy tools for large-scale data cen­ter projects, includ­ing their poten­tial bene­fits and risks to Maine.

The coun­cil is dir­ec­ted to report back to the gov­ernor’s office and the Legis­lature by Jan. 29, 2027.

Video:

**Proposed underwater AI project in Eastport draws scrutiny**

[https://www.newscentermaine.com/video/tech/science/environment/proposed-underwater-ai-project-in-eastport-draws-scrutiny/97-e905d4a1-14b4-4123-b8ab-9703a0622522](https://www.newscentermaine.com/video/tech/science/environment/proposed-underwater-ai-project-in-eastport-draws-scrutiny/97-e905d4a1-14b4-4123-b8ab-9703a0622522)

Maine city battles against under­wa­ter AI data cen­ter

Maine city battles against underwater AI data center