Followup for Work Session on LD 307, Resolve, to Establish the Maine Data Center Coordination Council
February 22, 2026
Senator Lawrence, Representative Sachs and distinguished members of the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Technology,
I am writing in response to the information provided in the two work sessions and to further underscore the importance of both a Council and temporary limitation as outlined in LD 307.
The Maine Data Center Coordination Council as created by LD 307 will help facilitate a flow of information that allows parties on all sides of a project to come together early and often to decide how, where, or if at all a community hosts a data center. The alternative is to face heightening community resistance, town by town. As researchers point out, “[h]ow data centers are governed will determine whether communities benefit from the digital economy — or bear the brunt of its risks”. To that end, the need for a temporary limitation until the Council concludes its work remains clear.
GrowSmart Maine is a statewide non-partisan non-profit organization helping communities navigate change in alignment with smart growth. Our vision is for Maine communities to be places where people feel safe, that they belong, and where they can thrive. Transparent public process and access to information is critically important to that end.
Our support of LD 307 is rooted in one basic idea: that data centers will create a significant impact on key aspects of life for those who live nearby, and all stakeholders would be best served by a baseline of information and guardrails to navigate these complicated and high-impact development decisions with clear eyes.
The Committee’s thoughtful consideration of this bill is encouraging because it, in and of itself, displays an appreciation for the acute need for deliberative fact-finding related to this issue. The range and scale of impacts, both positive and negative, brought about by these facilities, requires the type of close scrutiny modeled by the Committee at the February 19th Work Session – however, unfortunately, this type of public information gathering is the exception, not the rule.
In Lewiston, for example, residents learned about the Bates Mill project the Thursday before a City Council vote on the following Tuesday. With a short turnaround time, community members exercised whatever agency they could in the planning process, which ultimately took the form of a unanimous decision to defeat the project. Local concerns about these facilities are mounting nationwide, and the response from Lewiston residents echoes trends from across the country.
For the sake of quality and informed conversations, deliberations, and decisions at the local level, residents must be included in the planning and development process early and often – a point that’s borne out by the following:
- Community resistance to data center development is growing nationwide as pressure mounts to build more facilities: Data Center Watch found that, “In Q2 2025 alone, an estimated $98 billion in projects were blocked or delayed, more than the total for all previous quarters since 2023. As political resistance builds and local organizing becomes more coordinated, this is now a sustained and intensifying trend”. Amongst the frequently-cited concerns that you can see in testimony on this bill, communities are voicing a lack of participation in the planning process of data centers.
- Current industry practices run counter to winning community support for projects. An aspect of this trend is related to Non-Disclosure Agreements and the adjacent invocations of “trade secrets” to shield information from the public. In a recently released report from the World Resources Institute, researchers point out that “[a] review of 31 Virginia municipalities with existing or proposed data centers found that 25 (80%) had NDAs in place. At the federal level, new permitting policies have accelerated approvals for large data center projects, shortening environmental review timelines and reducing opportunities for local input”.
- There is an information gap among the general public that requires attention. National polling shows that “[m]ore than a quarter of Americans aren’t confident — or set — in their views about data centers”, with 25-30% of respondents either unsure of the exact purpose of data centers or the set of impacts in play.
It is again worth noting that the information made public about the Sanford Woods project at the February 19th Work Session was more than what was received by residents of Lewiston ahead of being asked to approve the Bates Mill project. Based on our understanding of the temporary limitation and the information provided by the developers of the Sanford Woods project, it appears that this project would be exempted, much in the same way as the Loring project. Given that the land is already owned by the developer, the exemptions to the temporary limitation would apply.
The creation of a Council to clarify best practices that are important to communities will help form a foundation for more consistent, fact-based conversations amongst stakeholders and developers. As we noted in our testimony, “[t]he data center development process thrives on asymmetry – of information, resources, and assets – and the deliverables outlined by this bill would go a long way towards providing clarity for the legislature and Maine communities alike when it comes to ensuring that Maine towns and cities can make critical decisions on an equal footing”.