Data centers are rapidly reshaping New Jersey’s landscape, and not for the better. As massive, energy-hungry facilities spread at unprecedented scale, Trenton has been unable to keep up. The result: rising energy costs, strained water supplies, loss of farmland and communities left in the dark while billion-dollar corporations move forward with little oversight and sweetheart tax deals.
Look no further than former Gov. Phil Murphy’s $250 million tax deal with CoreWeave in 2025, and Nebius’ five-year property tax exemption with the city of Vineland, each effectively shifting the burden to taxpayers.
Microsoft’s DataOne facility in Vineland serves as a microcosm of the larger problem.
This 2.4 million-square foot, 300 megawatt AI hyperscaler, or cloud computing provider, is under construction. It lacks final Department of Environmental Protection air and water permits, meaningful public transparency and an independent Environmental Impact Statement. DataOne’s location is entirely inappropriate, as it will jeopardize adjacent commercial farmland, a well head protection area, the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer and nearby overburdened South Jersey communities.
At the same time, about 30 miles north in East Greenwich, American Tower Corp. is trying to use zoning loopholes to build a data center. The site is just 50 feet from some homes. We need legislation that will protect communities from life-altering noise and heat island impacts due to server temperatures and extremely hot wastewater, as well as the air pollution from natural gas engines and backup diesel generators.
It is 2026, and New Jersey is allowing extremely polluting and extractive facilities to be built in incorrect places, severely impacting marginalized communities and sensitive ecosystems. We cannot allow the mistakes of the past to be repeated. We need strong data center regulation now to hold corporations accountable and mitigate impacts to ratepayers and the environment.
What we have instead is a dangerous vacuum, and New Jersey communities are paying the price. How do we ensure that we fill this regulatory vacuum and ensure these data centers are appropriately sited and developed?
Before facilities are approved, local governments should require a thorough analysis of the impacts to agricultural land, local water supply and communities by increased noise, heat and air pollution. In particular, we need to understand the risk of depleting aquifers, such as the 17 trillion-gallon Kirkwood-Cohansey, used for drinking water and for farmland irrigation.
We need legislation like S3379/A4096, to require facilities to report water and energy use, and A3966, to study the long-term impacts of data center water consumption. Without these data, communities and farmers like those in Vineland are left guessing about risks to their drinking water and livelihoods, and the state’s ability to plan becomes an impossible task, especially during droughts.
Credit: (engin akyurt from Unsplash)New Jersey’s data center situation is unique given our overdeveloped, highly populated landscape, where smaller data centers exist among farmland and communities, and next to parks and schools. Often, we find smaller adjacent data centers owned by different tech companies, creating conglomerates or campuses that complicate air and water regulation and amplify impacts.
When multiple data centers pull millions of gallons of water from shared sources and simultaneously run natural gas engines or diesel backup generators, it adds up regardless of single sources or environmental equipment permits. These impacts are felt by the community cumulatively and all at once.
When a data center is built in environmental justice communities, they should all be triggering New Jersey related rules regardless of whether it is a “small facility.” Hospitals, schools and colleges all trigger environmental justice regulations, while data centers become an egregious omission. Their buildout is like erecting small power plants without adequate oversight.
In place of fossil fuels, cleaner and cheaper energy alternatives exist. Battery storage can replace diesel backup systems, and legislation like S680 /A1170, requiring all clean electricity for data centers, has the potential to improve our grid and bring down costs for families.
Data centers strain our grid and drive up utility bills, and they should be paying their fair share, not less, as outlined in S731/A796. Tax incentives must be removed unless tied to clean energy, affordability or community benefits. Unlike offshore wind — which requires community benefit agreements even as it deliver cheaper and more healthful large-load electricity — data centers provide no benefit while extracting significant resources.
We cannot afford to let this industry grow without accountability.
We urgently need laws and rulemaking to establish clear and strong standards for siting, energy and water use and community impact. Anything less risks locking New Jersey into a future of higher energy costs, degraded natural resources, more unhealthful high-ozone days and less government transparency, with more decisions made behind closed doors.
The technology powering our future should not come at the expense of the people who live here.
