As suspicions about mass-scale AI data center expansion hold strong across the US, Maine has failed to become the first US state to block the construction of new data centers.
Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) vetoed the proposed bill earlier this week. The bill, if not for the governor’s veto, would have prohibited any new data centers from being built in the state until 2027.
Mills did agree with parts of the bill, saying they were “appropriate given the impacts of massive data centers in other states on the environment and on electricity rates.” However, she objected to it on the grounds that it would have stopped the construction of a new data center on the site of the former Androscoggin Mill in the town of Jay, which shuttered in 2023 and was a major employer in the area.
“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,” she said in a statement.
The governor estimates that the data center would have created around 800 construction jobs and 100 permanent jobs once complete.
Rather than a permanent ban, the bill would have imposed a moratorium to give local officials time to assess potential environmental and natural resource impacts, including water use, emissions, land use, and other impacts on host communities, and identify ways to reduce these negative effects.
Though the ban failed to get through in Maine, many other states are currently disscussing similar moratoriums, including New York, South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, and Virginia.
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Many of the most well-known politicians have called for moratoriums, including Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who said they will “give democracy a chance to catch up, and ensure that the benefits of technology work for all of us, not just the 1%” in a post on X.
However, at the federal level, the Trump administration has put forth clear policy guidelines stating that “a patchwork of conflicting state laws would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race.”
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