Last month, the Massena Town Board voted 3-2 against a proposed six-month local moratorium on data-center development, keeping the door open for one of the largest data-center proposals in New York State. But a bigger question has been hanging over the project ever since July: does the governor’s statewide moratorium even apply to it?
The developers say no. The state hasn’t said yes or no — at least not publicly. And the answer turns on the fine print of the executive order itself. So we read it.
What the order actually does
Executive Order No. 62, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on July 14, 2026, is not a ban on building data centers. Its operative section directs the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to “hold in abeyance all applications for any discretionary permit, approval, license, or similar form of permission for the construction or expansion of a data center” — but only for applications that “have not been determined to be complete by DEC before the date of this Executive Order.” (Full text, governor.ny.gov)
Three features of the order matter most for Massena:
1. The 50-megawatt threshold. The order defines a covered “data center” as a facility — or group of facilities on the same or contiguous sites — whose servers and equipment “consume or can consume 50 megawatts of energy or more.” The Massena proposal, described in town records as “an approximately 635MW data center campus,” clears that bar many times over. (Massena Town Planning Board minutes, Aug. 20, 2026)
2. The grandfather clause. The pause only catches applications DEC had not deemed complete before July 14, 2026. Anything DEC had already determined complete by that date is untouched. This is the hinge the entire exemption question swings on.
3. Discretionary permits only — and local permits excluded. The order pauses discretionary DEC permits, not ministerial ones (routine registrations or coverage under existing general permits). And it states plainly: “This provision does not apply to permits, approvals, licenses, or similar forms of permission from local governments.” Massena’s own site-plan and zoning process rolls on regardless.
The order also carves out facilities “primarily used for manufacturing, research, education, or medical care” — none of which describes a commercial data-center campus.
One more thing worth knowing: the order sets no fixed expiration date in its text. It lasts “until DPS submits its report of the final Generic Environmental Impact Statement and associated findings statement” — the statewide environmental review the Department of Public Service is preparing. The governor’s office has characterized it as a one-year pause, but the order itself ties the end to the review’s completion, not a calendar date.
The Massena project, on the record
According to the August 2026 Massena Town Planning Board minutes — the official record of the developer’s own presentation — the applicant is NY Digital Investment Group LLC (NYDIG), with North Country Collocation Services (NCCS), its affiliate and the operator of the existing bitcoin-mining campus on the site, presenting alongside it. The proposal is to build out an approximately 635-megawatt campus at 182 and 194 County Route 45, the former Alcoa East/Reynolds industrial site.
A few details from that presentation are directly relevant to the moratorium question:
- 435 megawatts already approved through the NYISO interconnection process (“all studies have been completed for that amount of energy”), with an additional 200 MW request still in the NYISO queue.
- Wetland delineation already done in coordination with the Army Corps of Engineers and DEC, and the stormwater approach reviewed with DEC’s Region 6 office in Watertown.
- The design was scaled back from the original concept: a closed-loop water system with no process-water discharge to the St. Lawrence River, backup generators cut from 314 to 64, and the building footprint reduced from about 1.5 million square feet to roughly 870,000.
The project is also moving through the state’s environmental review process: the minutes describe it as a “Type 1 coordinated review” under SEQRA, with review packages going out to involved agencies.
The exemption argument — and what’s missing
Here’s the case for exemption, as town officials have described it: NCCS doesn’t need any new discretionary DEC permits — it applied for its permits back in 2020 — so there is nothing for the moratorium to pause. (That account comes from town officials speaking to North Country Public Radio; the underlying permit history is (unconfirmed) — we could not verify it against DEC’s permit records, which are not publicly searchable in the detail needed.)
Note what the argument is not: it is not the research/manufacturing/education carve-out in the order, and it is not a claim that local approvals suffice. It rests entirely on the grandfather clause — that whatever DEC applications the project needed were already deemed complete before July 14, 2026 — plus the discretionary-versus-ministerial distinction.
Whether that holds is, as far as we can determine, still an open question. A spokeswoman for the governor’s office has said DEC is reviewing proposed projects to determine which fall within the order’s scope (unconfirmed — no DEC-issued public statement on the Massena project could be located). Until DEC says so on the record, “exempt” is the developer’s and the town’s reading, not the state’s.
What happens next
The moratorium lifts when the Department of Public Service finishes its Generic Environmental Impact Statement — the review examining energy demand, water use, air quality, noise, and impacts on disadvantaged communities. Separately, the state has begun delivering the order’s other pieces: Empire State Development has released the Community Investment Framework the order required, with a recommended benchmark of $1 million in community investment per megawatt of a project’s utility demand. (Governor’s office announcement)
Locally, the project continues through Massena’s review: the town is engaging independent consultants (paid for through a developer-funded escrow), the SEQR coordinated review is underway, and a host community agreement — with payments the August minutes describe as $7 million at first energization, $3 million at full buildout, and $3 million annually for 15 to 30 years — is being negotiated.
The honest bottom line: the executive order is narrower than the headlines suggested — a pause on incomplete discretionary state permits, not a construction ban — and the Massena project’s fate under it comes down to a permit-history question only DEC can answer. We’ll keep watching for that answer.
This is a follow-up to Chips, Jobs, and a Data-Center Fight, our broader look at the AI boom reaching the North Country.