The Governor just hit pause statewide. Massena didn't. The Town Board meets tomorrow, 4:30.
Correction, July 14, 2026. This alert said the Town Board is “working on revisions to the Industrial Zone code.” That phrasing came from Planning Board chair Vance Fleury’s statement in the June 25 minutes. Councilman Sam Carbone has since said publicly that his own comments at that meeting were about the town’s data-center code requirements — cooling, setbacks, noise, lighting, substations, host community agreement provisions — and not the zoning language itself. We take him at his word. The email below is left exactly as it was sent; this note is the correction.
Neighbors,
Today Governor Hochul signed Executive Order 62, freezing state environmental permits for large data centers across New York while the state writes new rules to protect the grid, the water, and ratepayers. It is the first statewide pause of its kind in the country.
Read it in her own words: https://www.governor.ny.gov/executive-order/no-62-establishing-temporary-moratorium-data-centers-new-york-while-state-develops
We want to be straight with you about what it does and does not do, because you will hear both.
It does NOT stop the Massena project. The order says so itself: it “does not apply to permits, approvals, licenses, or similar forms of permission from local governments.” Everything happening here — the Planning Board's review, the Zoning Board question, the Town Board's rewrite of the Industrial Zone code — is local. None of it is paused. Nobody's hands are tied.
What it does do is take away the argument that this is a fuss made by a few neighbors. The Governor of New York just told the entire state that facilities this size are enough of a threat to water, the power grid, and your electric bill that permitting has to stop while the rules are rewritten. That is not our opinion any more. That is the state's position, as of today.
Which brings us to tomorrow.
The Massena Town Board meets Wednesday, July 15, at 4:30 PM, at the Town Hall, 60 Main Street, 2nd floor. It is also on Zoom. Residents get a public comment period at the end of the meeting.
This is the board that, per the town's own June 25 minutes, is working on revisions to the Industrial Zone code — the very language that decides whether a data center is allowed there at all — and is drafting the host community agreement with NYDIG: https://massena.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_06252026-1218
The group Mohawks United in Safety and Health has said it will deliver its formal demands and its petition signatures to the board that night.
The fair question to put to them is not “you have to stop.” They don't. It is this:
Albany just pulled the handbrake because it decided facilities like this one are that risky. Why is this town moving ahead under the old rules while the state itself has stopped to rewrite them? You are not required to wait. You are allowed to. Will you?
If you can be in that room, be in that room. A full room changes how a board votes. Bring a neighbor.
Can't make it? There is still something you can do, and it costs nothing.
Share the site. Send it to one neighbor, post it in a Massena group, text it to someone on your road. Most of this town still has no idea any of this is happening — and that, more than anything else, is what has let it move this quietly. Every person who finds out is one more person who might be in that room next time.