City Council - Planning, Development, and Transportation Committee Hearing on Docket #1718

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Good afternoon, and thank you for being here today. For the record, my name is Sharon Durkan, District 8 City Councilor, and I'm the chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Planning Development and Transportation. Today is October 19th, and the exact time is 2 08 PM. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being livestreamed at boston.gov backslash city-council-gb and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, Fios Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.plandev at boston.gov and will be made part of the public record and available to all Councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. individuals will be called on in the order in which they've signed up to testify and we'll have two minutes to testify if you are interested in testifying in person please add your name to the sign-in sheet near the entrance of the chamber. If you're looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison at Dixon, Shane Pack.

Shane.pac at boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list today's hearing is on docket 1718 order regarding a text amendment to the Boston zoning code to prohibit data centers in all zoning districts This matter was sponsored for Councilors Minyard, Culpepper and Bryan Worrell and was referred to the committee on May 11th, 2026. Today I am joined by my colleagues in order of arrival Ed Flynn, and Councilor Maynard Culpepper. I'd like to give them each an opportunity to give an opening statement. Municipalities across the country are confronting the rapid growth of tech infrastructure. and what to do about data centers. We've all read headlines about massive facilities moving into communities, consuming public resources and causing local disruption. Data centers consume significant amounts of water and electricity, and we need to guard against overuse of these finite resources. They could also generate noise and affect residents living in nearby communities. People are right to be cautious, and they should have a voice in these decisions.

But there's no need to be alarmed or move too quickly. Under Boston's current zoning rules, data centers are conditional meaning we can evaluate them proposal by proposal. The governor has given us local control and should use that authority to develop an informed framework that determines what level of impact is too great and determine what are we exactly trying to protect against. Large hyperscale data centers, the centralized facilities that other cities have banned are unlikely to come to Boston given our high land and energy cost. But we need to understand what facilities could threaten our natural resources, drive up energy prices or put our climate goals at risk or harm our communities It's important to note that any large facility would be subject to Article 80 and environmental review. I'd like to just read into the record, you know, consider Holyoke the home to the Massachusetts Green

High Energy Performance Computing Center, a green noise-free facility that supports research at Boston University, Northeastern, Harvard, UMass, MIT and Yale. Holyoke has since moved to banned data centers. I raise this example because it shows why we need to look carefully at what we are regulating. There is nuance here, and often nuance is overlooked in policy conversations. We shouldn't make that mistake here. Data centers help power the infrastructure behind modern life. They support our government, hospitals, universities. Think about how much computing power is needed to process an MRI or a CAT scan. How would the proposal before us affect our academic and health care institutions? Would it still allow for inference points and last mile computing? Boston is home to thriving research, technology, and healthcare ecosystems.

We should pursue an approach that accommodates the future of these technologies and supports Boston's competitiveness while protecting our environment and serving our communities. This means prioritizing resource efficiency, equitable access to affordable clean energy, responsible local development and better study services. I want to make sure that any proposal we move forward accomplishes these goals Rather than simply checking a box off of a political list. There are other approaches we consider too, including locally threshold based local permitting option which was a suggestion from a professor that I spoke with prior to this hearing That's why I'm looking forward to hearing from our city officials, our panelists and members of the public. I hope today's conversation brings all perspectives to the table and helps us better understand how data centers could function in Boston Which impacts are too great and how we can regulate them thoughtfully?

So, we have a Councilor. We've been joined by Councilor Roussey-Louisien. We're going to start with the lead sponsor for our two minute opening statement, Councilor Menard Culpepper.

Thank you, Chair Durkan for holding this hearing. I also want to thank the administration, our panelists, members of the public for participating in today's discussion. I filed this zoning amendment because As data centers continue to expand across Massachusetts and the country, I believe Boston needs to decide proactively whether this is an appropriate land use for our city rather than waiting for a major development proposal that already before us. Data centers can place enormous demands on electricity, water, sewer infrastructure and the electrical grid While occupying substantial amounts of land, Boston is already an incredibly dense city with limited developable land and significant infrastructure needs. We should be prioritizing

The limited space and capacity for housing, jobs, community development, and other uses that provide more direct benefits to our residents. We've also seen communities like Lowell raise concerns about noise Air pollution, backup diesel generators and the lack of meaningful community involvement in decisions about data center development. These concerns are particularly important for environmental justice communities that already experienced disproportionate environmental burdens. This is also a matter of civil rights and equity, as low-income communities in historically marginalized populations are too often left bearing the brunt of environmental and economic costs of development without sharing proportionately in their benefits. We have a responsibility, let me say that again, we have a responsibilities to ensure these communities are not subjected to additional environmental burdens

or excluded from decisions that directly affect their health and quality of life. That is why this amendment proposes defining data centers, enforcing zoning code and making them a forbidden use citywide while protecting Ordinary server rooms, computer infrastructure that support existing businesses, educational institutions and other lawful uses. I recognize that there are different perspectives on whether an outright prohibition A moratorium or more stringent zoning regulations would be the most effective approach. I look forward to hearing from our panelists about these alternatives and what protections Boston Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. Councillor Flynn?

Thank you Madam Chair I want to say thank you to Councilor Culpepper and Councilor Worrell for bringing this important subject forward I also want to say thank you to the administration for being here and for the community panel as well. I'm interested in hearing from people on both sides of the issue. I think it's important for us on the City Council to listen, to all sides. I do have a data center located in my district that I have visited several times I do know that this data center in the heart of downtown Boston does play a critical role supporting many important institutions, not just here in Boston but really really across the country as well.

I also know that the Boston Public School Department, also partnered with UMass Boston recently to improve artificial intelligence, AI proficiency among students. Boston has indicated interest in partnering with several others in the innovation economy, including AI, life sciences. These emerging technology technologies does deserve us to review and understand exactly what is happening in what the community process is. And I reference that because we also know that Governor Haley signed an executive order Establishing regulations in oversight for large data centers.

As I understand it, developers must now secure full local approval in a community benefits agreement before any I also know that many people in the medical fields realize how important these data centers are to the economy and to ensuring that we provide the best medical care we possibly can. I'm going to stop there, but I'm really here to listen and learn more from both sides. Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. We've been joined by Councilor Worrell, who is the second co-sponsor, so I'm going to let him go next. Councilor

Co-sponsor, Councilor Culpepper. Just here for the conversation around what regulations we should be thinking about and many more. And I know the governor has put something in place, but what additional if any regulations? How many data centers and if there's any additional revenue that we're collecting from them outside of property tax. Here for the conversation to better understand how we should be regulating data centers, but also just trying to get a baseline of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to the sponsors for bringing this docket forward right now we are in a national conversation around the role of data centers as being resource intensive and extractive from our community so it's an important and timely conversation for us to have. I do know that we have heard, I personally heard from union leaders about the importance of technology and so on. Not taking away some from basic needs of our residents and of our city. So I think that there's a lot of reason to move with caution and to be deliberate and to make sure that we are not allowing use of the grid in a way that is unfair to our residents. And so I'm looking forward to the conversation, and I want to thank the administration for your presence here. Thank you. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. And I'm going to read one letter of absence into the rector from Council President Breadon. Dear Chair Durkan, I regret that I am unable to attend this afternoon's hearing on docket 1718 Order regarding a text amendment to the Boston Zoning Code to prohibit data centers in all zoning districts. While I am unable to attend today's hearing, members of my team will be listening and too critically to this critically important discussion and I plan to review the recording. I kindly ask that you read this letter into the record, thank you." And that's Council President Liz Breadon. Okay next we're gonna hear from our panel do you have any opening statements?

Yes. For the record, my name is Jeff Thomas. I'm the special assistant to the chief of planning in the Planning Department.

Hi, I'm Shin Pates. Hi. I am the Chief Information Officer

And then I have a statement. So thank you for the council providing the opportunity to speak today and for prompting an important discussion regarding the zoning of data centers in the city of Boston. Boston's world-class universities, teaching hospitals, research institutions and our exceptional innovation sector rely on immense computing power to solve our most critical challenges. Our city has always welcomed the jobs, innovation and discovery that this new technology brings. Boston currently has a handful of data centers, some dating back to the 1990s serving as cloud computing services for companies in the area. None of these are hyperscale data centers and none are dedicated to AI. However, we recognize that the rapid rise of modern hyperscale data centers present a unique Environmental risk, potential for community disruptions among other things. Today's hyperscale facilities are entirely different operations from the data centers built in the past.

They draw heavily on the grid use massive amounts of water for cooling, rely on diesel backup generators and produce localized noise and heat. In short they are probably not a good fit for the urban environment or other sites in close proximity to people. Our current zoning code limits The large scale impacts of telecommunications and data distribution centers by constraining them to providing essential services in the areas where they are located. These traditional telecom data uses are only allowed within three very small areas of the city. Meanwhile, new hyperscale data centers cannot be built anywhere in the city of Boston without explicit regulatory review by several City of Boston departments. Any large-scale project proposed today would be subject to significant scrutiny through the Article 80 process and has an extremely limited zoning pathways without explicit approvals from the Planning Department, the BPDA Board, and ultimately the Zoning Board of Appeal. In short

Although Boston does not have data center-specific zoning at this time, our existing laws mean there is not an imminent risk and any proposal of scale will be subject to city approval including plenty of community feedback. In June of this year, Mayor Wu signed Boston onto the C40 Global Urban Data Centers Pact which requires strict scrutiny of any data center proposals for environmental and quality-of-life impacts. This global framework aligns with our vision for commercial uses that are strategically integrated into cities, resource efficient, accountable to their host communities and engines for their shared prosperity. The Planning Department is in the process of codifying these requirements into our zoning code. We look forward to working with the council on any proposed zoning amendments, specifically around new definitions that fit emerging technology. Thank you for your time and we'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you so much, Jeff. And Shinpei, would you like to speak?

No, I support the statement that was made and am happy to answer any questions that you might have

Okay, perfect. We'll start with the lead sponsor, Menard Culpepper. We're going to do five minutes with this panel.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Sorry if he could turn his mic on.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Jeff for giving us that information you did. I had a few questions regarding the C40 data center pack. Who are the members of the C40 data member pack?

I'll take that one. The C40 is a group of cities from the largest and many more. I would also like to thank our global cities, they are cities that sign up for climate commitments so very similar I'm not sure of the specific cities, but I believe that they're among the largest cities in C40 itself. So the pact... The cities that signed on to the pact could include London San Francisco, some of the largest cities around the world that might be dealing with this kind of issue.

Do you know specifically what city is in the pack? And if you don't can you provide us

I don't know the specific list, but would be happy to follow up with that list.

The featured cities are Dublin, Atlanta, Columbus, Amsterdam, New York, London, Milan, Chennai, Phoenix and Des Moines.

Is that all of them?

Those are the featured cities specifically related to data centers.

I'd like to get a list of all of them, not just the featured studies, just all of the cities that are part of the C40 PAC. And can we have a copy of the actual PAC? To see what it says? Sure.

Absolutely. We're actually printing it. Yeah, we're printing it as we speak.

You're printing great. Jeff a couple of things with regard to The data centers and the infrastructure. Does the planning department believe that a citywide prohibition is appropriate? With regard to land use policy, would there be or do you think a more narrow prohibition is more appropriate regarding zoning restrictions?

Yeah, at this time we don't think citywide prohibition is necessary. I think we definitely are open to discussing new zoning definitions the mapping of those areas with the council and other related And so what's the definition of data centers that we have under the zoning code today? So right now the use that we have is called telecommunications and data distribution centers. The definition is not thoroughly Um, fleshed out because this is These types of uses were mostly meant in service of either businesses or residences. So think of the type of technology that's coming into your home, allowing you to use and need some place for that

of Technology to come in somewhere, data storage, things of that nature. Essentially, the old zoning code definition is about storage and delivering things to house not necessarily processing of information the way that these AI technologies are.

So there's no real definition in the zoning code today that specifically apply to data centers? They apply to datacenters because it's overarching.

But is it a data center definition?

Is it a datacenter definition?

It's still inside of that definition, the telecommunications and data center distribution center. Can you read it? That is what it is.

I know but can you read because I want to see whether the word data center is in that definition of whether you're just applying it to data center.

I don't have that in front of me, so I'll have to get back to you all.

We can look that up too.

Yeah, I don't want it looked up.

Can you apply it? Can you supply it to us through the chair? Sure. OK. Because I'm really concerned about taking a definition that is not really meant to apply the data centers and applying it to data centers, and not really having the applicability or the prohibition that we're trying to achieve. You're saying that we're starting from scratch with regard to the data center zoning code.

I wouldn't say that we're starting from scratch, but I think you're absolutely right that we do need to update definitions in our zoning code.

And are you willing to work with us on that? Absolutely. I'll be glad to work for you Jeff like we are on other things thank you

Thank you so much, Councilor Culpepper. Councilor Orrell?

Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of questions. A list or stated that we have some data centers. How many do we already have in Boston?

By this definition of data centers, which is included basically telecommunications infrastructure. We know of four, but one way of thinking about it beyond a Verizon facility or a Comcast facility is that some of our institutions, our private institutions like a medical hospital. They might also store data and they might refer to that as a data center itself so I just think it speaks to the need for an updated definition as well.

Um, And then I know Berto generally covers buildings around 20,000 square feet or more. But a data center can have a relatively small footprint but still consume a tremendous amount of resources. Do we know how many data centers are currently reporting under Berto, and how many fall below that square footage threshold? And if you don't have the information... Yeah. We can get back to you on that. I guess my other question is, and maybe this might not be a question for this panel here but just knowing the amount of resources that data centers and many more. Thank you.

Could we require data centers to obtain an annual operating license and pay a fee that covers the city's monitoring, inspection or regulatory costs?

I think USB is something that we need to explore.

Yeah, we wouldn't govern that in the planning department under the zoning code. So we'd have to explore that.

The other example I can think of is with the telecommunications providers. We have some franchise licenses and maybe there's a model there, but this is definitely an area to look into. Got it.

Are we monitoring or having any idea of how much the current data centers that we have now are extracting in terms of like resources, utilities, water? Or even like an emissions. Any information around that?

I believe that in our environment department, in order to sign up for that global pact might have started to look into this, but that's just something we can get back to you about specifically on the resource consumption.

Got it. And then maybe this is not a question for you, but maybe another question for the environment. What happens with emissions from backup generators? Do we know how much backup generator energy our existing data centers are reporting and how much is being excluded from their Virto calculations? This could be another environmental problem. I think a lot of my other questions around the environmental impact of these data centers. So, I think... I think that a lot Executive Director Ferrucci on the next panel. So I'll save my questions for the second panel. Thank you, Chair.

Thank You so much. Sorry, I was talking to my colleague. I'm really grateful to you all for being here. I have really gotten into the weeds of this issue since we noticed the hearing, to try to understand from both like the technology hospital You know, administrative community that exists in Boston. What impacts a zoning amendment that prohibits them from all zoning districts would have? I think Rightfully so, a lot of people have questions about how this would impact computing centers in the hospital environment as well as Inference points that are needed to connect Boston to the cloud and other cloud internet. Obviously, Shimpei you're a lot smarter than me

I'm learning them, but been talking to some professors from different colleges who really are just trying I'm trying to, while we're familiarizing ourselves with the zoning amendment as drafted. McFarland. What are potentially the capabilities and needs that Boston may have in the future? How does Boston contribute to the overall conversation about data centers because ultimately This in the Northeast region ultimately will benefit like we will be the ones using the data and that's the case for the Holyoke. I'm not sure if you're aware of the Holyoake Data Center, it actually supports research at BU, Northeastern, Harvard, UMass, MIT and Yale That in Holyoke was a facility that's called the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center.

which is a green facility but does use electricity. They have since moved to band data centers but are talking about, you know that data center is a success. I'm just curious Schimpe, how you see the relationship between Boston and data centers that are built outside of the city? Because I really think it's important for and I think that I do think making sure that we're not sort of banning rooms of computers on you know and things that we may need too. I think we're all on the same page, that hyperscale data centers have no place in Boston but we just wanna make sure that when we're talking about zoning and land use, we're not doing something that unintentionally Handicaps us from the Innovation Economy.

Absolutely, Boston is considered a leader in thinking about this, thinking about the environmental impacts with our innovation right and Absolutely think that it's something where we can lean in and find a good middle ground, where we're creating the capabilities to build that innovation at home while we are competing beyond. I think that as the planning department is looking into updating the definition of what a data center should be, we could also look into the impacts and ways of managing them. And I think that there is a way of working in the idea of maintaining access to compute power and that's related to data, but doesn't necessarily sign us up for running AI models which is really where I think the hyperscale in those conversations have gone into.

I also think that this is an opportunity for us as a city to model innovations in the mitigation of the negative impacts, so whether it is energy efficiency Water, Management. These are things that Boston has shown time and time again that it's been able to account for and show other cities around the country, around the world that there's ways of dealing with those impacts. So I think there is a way of positioning data centers within the innovation side of the economy, that accounts for the negative benefits allows us to continue to build for the future.

Yeah, and I think the reason I'm using the terms inference point and computing center is when people hear the word data center they're thinking of a hyperscale you know facility like in the middle of nowhere because that's the only place that it could be built and again I think that having talked to some people that are smarter than me There was a suggestion that we should approach this with a threshold-based local permitting option, and that being decided and many more. Is there any thought that the city has been giving any thought to potentially based on how much water What we are protecting against when we think about what framework we want to move forward on this particular issue?

We're just starting our research on how we should think about this in partnership with environment and planning. I think you've done more research than we have, but with the Global Pact, we're using that as a basis for developing what we think should be Boston's position on these. definitions, what the thresholds might be and where they might be. I also think that there's potential for co-location meaning right now one of the data centers is related to our telecommunications at Verizon Center and there's another data center that's above the Macy's. There are ways of thinking about the way that we repurpose land in order to maximize the performance, and there's a lot more to look into.

Thank you. I just think it's really important that we not have a knee-jerk reaction to something that actually doesn't impact the city of Boston because when we think about And again, it does impact the city of Boston because we are a leader and people are looking to us for what to do next. But Boston benefits from

and many more.

I think it's important to have a nuanced conversation on this issue probably more than any I think it's just important to, and I just want to thank my colleagues for bringing this proposal forward because it gives us an opportunity to talk about what those thresholds are. And what are we trying to protect against? And what quality of life and I want to thank the administration for signing on to the pact because i think it is an important first step to acknowledging that we do not want to have a negative impacts of Data Centers or AI. But again, we're going to hear testimony from folks you know of all opinions on this issue and mostly what we don't want is the un- We don't want to not necessarily be banning technology from coming to Boston when, again, we're trying to be a leader in the innovation economy. So we've been joined by Councilor Ben Weber. We're going to hear now next from Councilor Louijeune.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I do believe Councilor Flynn was here prior to me so if you want to turn to him and then I will have my questions.

So sorry, I went to Worrell first because he was a co-sponsor and then... Sorry, Councilor And thank you, Councilor Flynn for understanding.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, thank you to the administration team that is here. I'm also looking forward to hearing from the community including members of Members of the organized labor that's here who I have great respect for and community partners as well. Let me ask you either one of your question, how do you balance The pros and cons of the community engagement process, say on one hand you might have the universities and hospitals in organized labor that Don't want to see these banned. And then on the other hand, you might have community partners, environmental groups that wanna see more strict regulation. Tell me about the community engagement process where

Both sides will, regardless of what happens, feel like they've been heard and respected even if they don't get exactly what they want.

Well, I'd say this is a good forum to start. Um, I would, you know, defer to your chief, but if this is relatively new industry for us to be managing and at least in the current function So I think we have a lot of education to do, first and foremost. I think that we have alot to learn from the panels that are coming behind us about how they envision the future of this use evolving New technology is going to bring, and then we need to have that conversation with the community just like we have on just about every other topic. Where do you want to see it? What are the thresholds? What are the environmental impacts, et cetera?

So the city council is proposing to prohibit data centers for zoning. But has the city done anything similar to that? Maybe not to that extent, but have they done anything that limits advanced technology from coming or limiting it in the zoning process.

I can't think of another situation which we're outright prohibiting things through the zoning code because there's very... I think there are certain uses that we've recognized as not conducive to an urban fabric, but they're There has to be some pathway that you can get to the Board of Appeal on. That's sort of where the legal threshold is, so outright prohibiting it gives us actually less Thank you. I think we're also relying on the The state and sometimes even the federal government for certain types of land uses that probably are above local jurisdiction.

So is it accurate to say, I think you mentioned it Jeff but This text amendment is not supported by the administration. Is that accurate, Your Honor?

Yeah, at this time we wouldn't support it. But we would certainly work to amend it and work with the council.

Do you think is the administration not supporting it because it's too inclusive? And it restricts so much, or are you thinking maybe if it was kind of narrowed down where there was some type of compromise? I just wanted to get an idea Is there a compromise to be had with this document that may be watered down or maybe there might be some compromise?

Yeah, I don't think we want to necessarily say we're watering down anything but we definitely need to update our zoning definition. So I think that's a great place to start Doing things like that. And then we need to have a conversation on where these sub-districts get mapped at the end of the day.

So how would you update your zoning regulations,

How would you do that? We would literally need to write new definitions. I think both Councilor Culpepper and Councilor Worrell have actually given us a good start on In reference to this particular proposal, they've got some new zoning definitions that we can review and work with them on.

Oh so this could be a start in the process of Writing draft comments about zoning changes, whether or not you include all of it. But that's the start from Councilors Culpepper and Worrell of the conversation. Is that accurate?

I think it's a good start to the conversation

I think I'm out of time and I'll be respectful to my colleagues. I'm going to stop asking questions now. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. We did something similar with beekeeping where that was in the zoning code, we didn't believe it belonged in the Zoning Code, we did a zoning amendment, we had to go before the zoning commission and change uses because there are things in the So it was a forbidden use and then for in some areas of conditional use. And then we wanted to make it an allowable use, and they made it, and we had an ordinance. There are models, and there are lots of things in zoning that we need to update. But I had a question regarding it as right now, it's a conditional use in our zoning code the telecommunications and data centers And the term is technological centers and data centers?

Yeah. The term is telecommunications and data distribution centers. It is largely conditional. and Citywide with some exceptions. There are three areas in which it is allowed to use, which I can name them for you as the Newmarket IDA, the Roxbury Community College, East Street area in South Boston, that's the light industrial area in south Boston.

Yeah so again similar to beekeeping there are areas like which it's not a wholesale but probably in those areas if you think about Newmarket or RCC they're as educational or industry reasons for why they've advocated for to be an allowable use or the city allowed that to be a use. Is there a way to distinguish between the data centers that, or information, whatever the correct terminology is, the telecommunications I'm just that we currently have in the city, and the data centers that are now a topic of conversation. That related very much so to artificial intelligence.

Yes, and this conversation's happening between the planning department and the environment department I'd say internally. We're using some of of Governor Healey's Executive Order, try to figure out what these types of thresholds are. I think it's largely around Power, and then the impact. So I think that's probably where we'll go that direction when Going through what definition, which data center, which type of data fits in which category but I think that's the direction we'd go.

And do you know what was the basis of, sort of where did the Commonwealth look to when drafting the executive order that the governor drafted?

Actually I don't know the basis for that executive order.

Okay.

I know that... Well, I heard that part of it was from an economic development bill. That it was like a piece of an economic develop that was already drafted and then they went into the executive order.

Thank you. I think people are rightfully, I am rightfully worried about the role that these AI-driven data centers, the role they will have in our environment and in our ecosystem and so I want us to be very vigilant especially when a lot of these tools, on the other side, a lot are used to discriminate against people who are poor because we can't find employment, against people of color. And so I think there's a lot I wonder if there are models that other cities A blueprint, but are there cities out there that are providing a blueprint that we've done any research on to see what they're doing?

Yeah, we're definitely so I think this is mostly through the C40's work where we definitely have been talking with other cities about how they're handling it. Off top of my head, I think we looked at Seattle. We looked at how Phoenix is handling it, completely different use case there. We're looking at how around in the DC area and Virginia, how their approach to data centers which is very usually pro-data center. Places like London in the United Kingdom and Dublin has The Chair mentioned. So yeah, I think we're trying to take bits and pieces stealing policy from each and every one of those cities.

And you mention a city that seems to be very like DC to be pro-data center.

DC, not necessarily but the outskirts Virginia area.

Because we also here have issues with our grid so I wonder if We have neighborhoods where we are having tough conversations about where we put in a new substation and all of that. So how does that factor into these conversations? There's the East Boston substation. Many of us fought against that, and at the same time we realized that we have energy needs and electrical needs that are growing across the city.

I think it has to be part and parcel of the conversation. You can't really separate the energy consumption The definition of, even the definition if we're updating the definition of data centers it is really about the energy that they are consuming in order for us to I do think that what we want to do is make sure Community input to be part of that process.

Yeah, which is why the conditional use is an important part of sort of the current zoning that yeah. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank You so much and just taking a little bit of my privilege as the chair it's important that we and many more. I would like to see that conversation we are having be really nuanced essentially right now there's no hyperscale data centers that are proposed and there's not, no person who would want to spend, no company that would wanna spend That much on land and that much on construction in the city of Boston. We're not even, you know what I mean? There's a bunch of projects that everyone wants that we can't get off the ground right now so though this is an important conversation to have it It really is about what uses exist And I just think it's important that whatever we do here is going to impact the data centers that currently exist in the city of Boston. It might not impact them because they're pre-existing nonconforming,

It may end up impacting them when they want to come in to change something about the project that they currently have, to make it more green. And so we wanna make sure that whatever we do is allowing people to change their current and many more. So next we'll hear from Councilor Weber. We're going to go to the next panel after that, except for we're gonna allow a couple questions from the lead sponsor additionally. Go ahead, Councilor Webber.

Okay, thanks. Yeah just following up on that last point for Jeff to If we were going to regulate data centers, is the zoning code a good tool to require energy efficient green technology or green energy sources?

We've certainly done some of that through the zoning code. I would say that the definitions are what matters in terms of first and foremost, so figuring out what categories of data centers we're talking about and where they're allowed, where they might be conditional, where there might be forbidden. And that's probably based off You know, how much output they require.

So from what you know about projects in general and planning in the city, like we're not expecting to see a proposal for one of the hyper scale data centers here?

I'm definitely not expecting that given our land values.

And I guess even so other cities like we hear about Phoenix, Arizona. Not all cities are the same and I feel there's lots of land. Is there something about Boston specifically

You wouldn't expect to see it here, but I just think we have a limited amount of industrial land in the city. It's a densely populated area, and again the land values are super high. to basically get all of that land would require quite a lot.

Okay, and is there something about proximity to these data centers that's helpful? I mean it seems like if they built Something in Nebraska, like that we could benefit from that? I just don't know exactly how. Would a company want to build one next door?

It helps a bit, but for example some of our cloud infrastructure is in a center in New Jersey. So it helps a little bit You don't want to be powering your cloud from the West Coast if you're on the East Coast, but there is now ways of moving that access along.

And do you think if we don't have data centers here, would that influence companies wanting to have their headquarters here? I think Amazon isn't using all the space that they were originally gonna use. Does it have anything to do with access to data centers or data centers?

I honestly, I haven't heard that. I think that in the update of what we're talking about now so beyond the hyperscale 100 megawatt type Infrastructure. How we define the data centers that are for institutional use or Some of the innovation and economy type of companies will matter, but I don't think that this has been an inhibitor in any way. That there's enough access to regional data centers along the East Coast anyway or the Midwest that is sufficient to power our companies too.

Okay, and I guess so Virginia we talked about has the most data centers in the country and do you know why that is?

They might, to be honest I don't know for sure. My guess is there's a few, there's available land that it's not too expensive and they have policies that are more conducive It doesn't it has generally it has tended to rest less on energy because they will come up with that energy infrastructure maybe at the cost of

Okay, and then I guess it's sort of you know, I think understanding the negative impacts of the data centers if we don't have one in Boston that I think that we all agree, we don't want to see it here. But if it's just outside, it's going to have the same impact. So how is the state doing in terms of regulating that? And what do you think we could do?

Well, I think there's a moratorium on them right now until further conversation. There's a year moratorium on them, I believe.

So I'll just say that the governor has done an executive order pushing it to local control which is kind of why we're having this conversation as a city But I also think it's really important to note that we do, Councilor Weber have some data centers that exist within the city of Boston. So, it's not that we won't or don't have any data centers. It's that they're probably just not what you're imagining and not...

I'm referring to the hyper scale. Yeah. And so it's gonna be left to local control, but I guess just as a follow-up. Any suggestions for advocacy at the state level? I don't know.

I mean from where we are as you can see that we're sort of beginning to figure this out. I think it's a relatively new, I mean hyperscalers have only come into the I think we're all in the same sort of position where we're maybe in a little bit of a reactive stance, but I think you know we're thinking about this stuff and I think As the city of Boston, we feel pretty comfortable about the current regulatory tools that we have to potentially have to navigate Somebody that's either proposing one or and I think the state feels similarly about what they have. It was proposed in, you know, in the greater Boston area. I mean, one thing I would add is that power's expensive around here. That's not necessarily great for running a hyperscaler data center.

The only other thing I was going to add is because it has been pushed to local authority, the work that we're trying to stand up now is to apply some of the best practices from these other places. and make sure that they reflect Boston goals, Boston plans, this zoning effort. So there's quite a few things that we have underway To Jeff's point, we have some regulatory structure in place already that implies a certain kind of authority over the data centers that would come in.

Thank you so much, Councilor Weber. As Councilor Culpepper is the lead sponsor I wanted to give him an additional three minutes he had a couple more questions and then we're gonna move to the next panel. There is going to be two testimony. Two people are going to testify in between the second and third panel. So Sam Cahill, you'll be the first person to testify. Councilor Culpepper, you have the floor.

Thank you Madam Chair. I just had a couple of questions. One of them had to do with the C40 PAC, and the C 40 PAC says we're establishing the global city vision for the sector through four key pillars, setting a clear standard for Sustainable Urban Data Centers, grounded in equity and community benefits that meet local residents' needs. How are you engaging the local community in order to understand What the local residents needs are?

Well, planning has a playbook. I think this is these data centers if they were completely new and not Double, you know repurpose or double co-located Would be a big piece of would be another big building or some kind of new construction and we have a process now where we We have a community engagement process. We should be talking about community benefits to reflect what the immediately surrounding community needs as well as the wider city And I also believe this is a very, very new topic. There are conversations with researchers and even the AI frontier companies like the Anthropix,

The open AIs on how to account for the, how to mitigate the impact on communities recognizing that there is that impact. And so those conversations are underway and what we are trying to do with these redefinitions is make sure that we're ready for them.

Just a yes or no answer, what about the community? Have you gone to the community yet to begin those discussions with the communities?

Well, there's no current proposal. So what she's saying is that would happen after...

I understand, but I'm looking at it from the C-40 perspective where a member of that pack. I'm just asking you as a result of what C- 40 sets out, have we sorted those The other question I had to do with the franchise licenses that you said you have with other businesses. What are those other businesses that we have franchise licenses with?

The model I was referring to is with our telecommunications, we have a franchise with Verizon and If you would like more information about that, happy to send it along. I'm not the expert on that.

Is Verizon the only business? That's the one I'm aware of. Okay. If there are others, can you let us know through the chair? Of course. And my final question was for Jeff. Jeff, when you talked about those three areas where there are allowable use, it wasn't clear to me what the allowable uses were for those three area that Roxbury, South Boston and New Market area.

Those are just the areas that telecommunications and data center distribution are allowed.

Could you read the zoning code areas?

Yeah, so it's the new market IDA. This is excluding the core industrial gateway industrial and creative industrial sub-districts

Say that again.

New Market IDA.

Excluding what's...

I can get all of this to you on the record for sure. But yes, it's excluding core industrial, gateway industrial and creative industrial sub-districts. Then there's one in the Roxbury Community College Sub-District is allowed use we actually I believe the back story on that is they were applying for a grant and we wanted, as a city to show support for the development of some technological education innovation stuff. I don't think they ended up actually building what they were hoping to build. and then the final one is the E Street area in South Boston, which is the light industrial sub district in South Austin.

Thanks Jeff. And I'm not looking for you to provide all this stuff when you get a chance if you would provide all that stuff so we can take a look at it and then sit down discuss it. Thank you so much. Happy to do so.

Thank You Councillor Culpepper, and thank you to our esteemed panel You are relieved. We're going to move to two public testimony and then we're gonna go, if those that are on the second panel could go ahead and come down and then were gonna go to Sam Cahill and Dan Daly for testimony And for testimony you can stand at either of these two microphones. Yeah. I think there might be a second page, though. Oh no, that's it. Sam will ask you to go once they're all seated.

Great. Okay. Okay, perfect. Sam, you can go ahead. Great. Good afternoon Chair Durkan and members of the council. My name is Sam Cahill and I am here on behalf of Longwood Collective and our healthcare higher education and cultural member institutions in the Longwood medical and academic area. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Docket 1718. We understand that the Council is grappling with important questions about land use, infrastructure and Boston's long-term growth. Longwood Collective is not here today to take a position on the broader policy conversations around data centers. Rather, we're here to talk about a technical aspect of this proposal because we have concerns about the potential unintended consequences of the petition as currently drafted. We appreciate the effort reflected in the amendment to distinguish data centers from research laboratories and educational facilities because we believe that distinction is important.

When many people think about data centers, they're understandably thinking about a particular type of standalone hyperscale facility. Hospitals, universities and research institutions However, increasingly rely on sophisticated computing infrastructure as part of their healthcare educational research and operational missions. Despite these distinctions, we remain concerned that the proposal is still broad enough to create uncertainty regarding the computing infrastructure upon which our institutions rely including systems that support patient care, scientific research, medical Excuse me, medical education and institutional operations as well as those that rely on network infrastructure in third party hosting or co-location arrangements. For that reason, before the council considers advancing this proposal we respectfully request that any amendment clearly exclude healthcare academic research clinical and institutional computing infrastructure. As technology continues to evolve

These capabilities will become increasingly important to the work that our institutions do every day. We believe any zoning amendment should be drafted carefully enough to ensure that institutional computing functions and the activities they support are not inadvertently affected by definitions intended to address a different category of use. Thank you for your time and consideration Longwood Collective stands ready to serve as a resource as these discussions continue

Okay, thank you so much Sam. Dan Daly, you have two minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you my Boston City Councilors for the opportunity to speak. My name is Daniel Daly. I'm a lifelong Boston resident and business representative for Local 103 with The Electricians Union And my biggest concern with this proposal is the potential impact on working families and future job opportunities in Boston. Thousands of local 103 members are Boston residents. They're raising families here, they're buying homes here and paying rent and most importantly supporting small businesses We have a responsibility to make sure these opportunities remain available for the next generation of labor. I believe there's a difference between We've been responsibly regulating development and creating barriers that could discourage entire category of projects before they're even evaluated individually. Technology continues to improve. Our electricians are installing advanced electrical systems that make facilities more efficient and sustainable.

We should encourage that innovation while demanding high standards. We need a fair review process. If a project isn't right for Boston, the city should have the ability to reject it. But if a project meets environmental standards and benefits our community and creates good union jobs, it deserves a fair opportunity and should be considered. I'm also concerned about discouraging private investment at a time when we need to continue creating job opportunities for Boston residents. We're not asking for free pass on developers, we're asking for a fair process that protects our neighborhoods without unnecessarily limiting opportunities for working families. We need plans, not bans. And I appreciate you making sure we're part of this conversation and I hope some of these points can be incorporated in the testimony. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you for spending time with us here today. So we have a second panel, which I know is a great mix of folks and perspectives So if you would like to go down the line, I know most of you have prepared a minute to just introduce yourselves. And then we're going to hear from my colleagues and they will ask questions You feel like they pertain to you, feel free to jump in with an answer. That's kind of how it works sometimes my colleagues might direct a specific question to you and then obviously that question is for you but feel free This is, I know for many of you, you've done this before and some of you it's your first time so if you have any questions feel free to ask. And then I'm gonna do a timer on here but it's not going to beep So just notice when it hits zero. Okay, go ahead.

Good afternoon, councillors. My name is Mary Wambui and I'm a lower resident and a member of Honest Future for Law which is a grassroots-led effort formed to push back against harmful data center expansion in South Law. We are not anti-data centers, we are for growth and development that keeps municipal budgets strong and protects residents. Our data center in Lowell is 50 megawatts, enough electricity to power at least 30,000 homes. Residents have experienced a lot of noise, chronic street flooding. And despite the data center receiving $77 million in tax incentives The facility that has been there for 10 years provides fewer than 40 jobs.

So I want to commend Boston for having this sitting because I believe that municipalities are the ones that are going to act on behalf of their residents. Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair, Councilor Culpepper, Councillor Worrell and members of the committee. My name is Hassan Faruqi. I'm Executive Director of the Boston Climate Action Network, and I also serve on the City of Boston's Berto Review Board overseeing greenhouse gas emissions from our large buildings. And I look forward to the conversation today. Obviously no one wants to see some Side effects that we've seen across the country in terms of higher energy costs and air pollution and water depletion. And so, we need to have a balanced and strategic and proactive approach here in the city that protects our residents from those effects and also protects our workers, and particularly make sure the construction jobs are high road union jobs. And so I look forward to the conversation into your questions thank you.

Tristan.

Good afternoon, Council. Thank you for the hearing. My name is Tristan Thomas. I'm Director of Policy and Law for ACE, Alternatives for Community and Environment, an environmental justice nonprofit that's been working on the issue of data centers for over two years now. We've been able to connect legal, policy and organizing resources to communities in Lowell, Westfield as well as nationwide. We're part of nationwide platforms And in doing this work and engaging with dozens and dozens of communities across the country, one thing is common. Data centers are a threat and risk to communities. They extract our resources They impose public health harms. They threaten our grid reliability, contribute to blackouts and all in exchange for promises of economic development I encourage folks to check out great research by organizations like Good Jobs First, which looks into tax incentives and job creations and shows that very little jobs are created. So on this question of prohibition versus moratorium versus regulation, we need some level of protections.

And until those established no data centers should be allowed to be built or expanded and I'm happy to engage on a conversation around what the right thresholds are The state thresholds are way too high. I think 10 megawatts is probably more appropriate, but also beyond specific thresholds around electricity water noise land use we also need Cumulative Impact Analysis, and an affirmative permit from a environmental department that there is no environmental harm. And so thinking about those quantitative thresholds but also qualitative and cumulative impact analyses. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you Chair and Councillors for the opportunity to speak today I'm Ayse Coşkun Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University, where I've worked for 17 years at this point. And I'm also Chief Scientist at Emerald AI, a startup company. I was a Boston resident for most of those years as well so Boston has been an important part of my life and I care deeply about our community and its concerns. I'm here to offer my perspective as a technical expert. The concerns about data centers are real and important, and we must take them seriously. As a computer engineer, I've spent my career researching energy efficiency In other words, how to accomplish more computing using fewer resources. Much of my work has focused on data centers, how they can use electricity more responsibly and now I continue to work at a startup translating some of these technologies into practice So data centers can become good citizens of the power grid and their communities.

I believe we can address many of these concerns raised today through a framework that requires data centers to operate responsibly while respecting the needs and limitations Communities, and the Environment. My expertise is in the electricity consumption of data centers so I will talk about that briefly as an example but similar frameworks can address other impacts such as water use land use pollution and noise Specifically, my work focuses on power flexibility also called grid responsive computing. For example during an extreme weather event when residential electricity demand increases sharply Data centers can temporarily reduce their power consumption by adjusting their computing workloads while protecting their critical services at the same time. This helps relieve pressure on the power grid when communities need electricity the most. This flexibility approach offers three important benefits, greater grid resilience, greater affordability and more sustainable energy use.

Across the United States and internationally, utilities and regulators are now exploring power flexibility requirements particularly for large data centers but more broadly. So this provides an example of a framework and policy design to accommodate affordable, efficient data center growth. It's also important to recognize that local computing infrastructure is essential to our universities, hospitals, scientific research education and daily lives Many institutions already face constraints in accessing the additional electricity capacity needed to expand their computing infrastructure. Therefore, we need policies that recognize the different types of data centers and their and establish clear practical standards for responsible operation. Boston and Massachusetts as leaders in innovation have an opportunity here to pioneer a thoughtful framework that protects our communities and environment while enabling the benefits of computing and AI, and to serve as a model for other cities and states.

Thank you for your time and concentration.

Good afternoon Madam Chair, Councilor Culpepper and members of the council. My name is Michelle Brooks I'm a senior organizer with the Massachusetts chapter of Sierra Club We want to thank you for holding this important hearing today. The Sierra Club is committed to and supporting the agency and autonomy of communities to determine what is best for themselves including analyzing the collective good and harm of any individual project. Critical to this is developing a shared language, and clear non-biased information. We must also analyze the cost of any decision In recent years, we have found ourselves in a situation where the growth and demands of AI and data infrastructure are outpacing our municipal language and the laws meant to protect us. Data centers power the compute of real technological advances that have the potential to solve climate and environmental challenges

such as identifying and removing forever chemicals in our drinking water, and developing scalable sustainable battery storage solutions just as a couple of examples. and they can do so with minimal impact to the communities and environments that host them. If these breakthroughs are possible, surely these developers can also find a way forward that does not pollute our communities and to find a way that does not require the expansion of fracked gas pipelines to power Just as technology has outpaced our municipal protections, it can just as quickly develop the technology that would make them part of the solution and we must demand better. We caution that a ban may have an adverse impact and rather than incentivize the development of solutions, shift development to communities with less capacity to fight extractive and polluting development.

So we recommend the following for any new data center projects. 24-7 carbon free energy, no diesel or gas generators Clean Energy Investment and Capacity Procurement, Free or Open Air Cooling, Non-Potable Water Sources, Transparency and Accountability Measures including water and energy usage Available publicly and reported regularly. Data center developers must pay their own way. Strictly defined zoning that protects people and the environment Community benefits and project labor agreements are non-negotiable. Boston is a leader, and this is an opportunity. And this hearing can be the beginning of a conversation That can lead to a model that scales across the Commonwealth and protects our communities. Thank you.

Thank You Trish Tash sorry How are you?

Good to see you. You too. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Councilor Culpepper and members of the City Council. My name is Tish McMullen. I'm the Executive Director. of the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals. On behalf of our 12-member hospitals, we appreciate the opportunity to comment on docket 1718. We recognize and appreciate The City of Boston and the Commonwealth's interest in large-scale commercial data center development in light of the potential for significant impacts already mentioned today. While we truly appreciate the clear exemption for research laboratories and educational facilities included in Docket 1718, it is critical to our nonprofit hospitals

That essential infrastructure that supports our healthcare institutions is also excluded from the proposed ban. This is particularly important for our academic medical centers and the patients and families we serve every day in order to protect the technology infrastructure we rely on to fulfill our missions. As you know, the City of Boston is recognized around the world as a center of excellence in patient care and healthcare delivery, medical education, biomedical innovation, and clinical research. These activities increasingly depend on secure, reliable and resilient computing and telecommunications infrastructure

to support a wide range of activities and functions, including electronic health records, diagnostic imaging, laboratory and pathology systems Clinical Decision Support, Cybersecurity, Hospital Operations and the Secure Exchange of Patient Information. Our world-renowned research community also relies on advanced computing to analyze large datasets, support biomedical and genomic research develop new treatments and cures, and accelerate scientific discovery. For our patients and their families these breakthroughs and curs cannot come soon enough

And it is critical that our hospitals are able to maintain, expand and modernize the technology infrastructure we need to fulfill our patient care Research and Medical Education Mission. In light of our shared interest in advancing patient care and pursuing medical breakthroughs, we respectfully recommend that the proposed prohibition explicitly exclude from its scope the data centers and infrastructure that supports our healthcare institutions both today and into the future. This approach would allow the city to pursue its policy goals regarding large-scale commercial data center development without inadvertently restricting the infrastructure

upon which healthcare delivery, biomedical research, medical education and patient access and safety increasingly depend. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you in further detail. I also wanted to mention, given how much conversation there's been about the governor's executive order That that order requires her administration to key cabinet agencies to publish municipal guidance by the end of the year. after consulting with a very wide range of stakeholders that are listed in the executive order. And I think it's instructive for all of us here today. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Tish. So I'm going to move to my colleagues for questions starting with the lead sponsor, Councilor Culpepper. You have five minutes.

Thank you Madam Chair. You mentioned that you'd like to see a thoughtful framework that protects our communities. Have you thought about what that framework would look like?

Yes, so I'll speak towards power but then generalize from there. I would recommend starting with a few threads. One is doing grid impact assessments Understanding power availability. The second is looking into energy efficiency and power flexibility standards to ensure responsible operation. Like I was mentioning, energy efficiency is great but power flexibility brings and opportunity for the data center to support the grid, become an asset to the grid. And the third thing would be measurement and verification requirements Quantify the impact on power and you can expand this to other areas like water, pollution, other impacts. And to make sure data centers eventually when there's a regulatory framework they meet the requirements So these are three starting points.

Of course, this would require a broader discussion with various stakeholders. It would also require cooperation with utilities and other regulatory bodies for electricity.

Do you have those three recommendations in writing? Yes, I can send. Can you provide it through the chair? Yes of course. Tristan, I had a couple of questions for you.

Oh, sorry. I'll just say that the folks that are on the panel don't work for the city because there's no requirement for them to do anything after. No, no, absolutely. I will ask but I'm just saying for all of your knowledge you're not required to provide it. Happy to. Thank you.

You're not require but we'd love you to help us put the framework and The policy together as we work with Jeff and the planning department. I mean, any help and information we can get is helpful because they're really starting with little or no information. And so this hearing is really intended to give us as much information and assistance in putting together policy that makes sense, and would love to have the recommendations that you have in writing.

A little bit about... One of the panelists, Mary wanted to say something as well.

Oh sure, Mary.

I like your question about regulations, but I'd like to say something about law. We in law know that in 2024 Massachusetts had regulations in the books that would have protected us from further expansion of the Mackley Data Center. And my point is, having regulations is not even enough. There needs to be more.

And so Mayor, you tell me you want to work with us on helping us put this together based on your experience? We'd love to have you.

I would, but I really want to emphasize the need for municipal, for a city to be the leader in data center regulation. and not rely on the state. Lower residents have had to sue the state because they were not engaged in community engagement was not done I'm just saying the regulations can come, but how are they enforced? Secondly, I want to say something about what my other panelists have said about grid impacts. It's important to situate this conversation in the realities of Massachusetts. Massachusetts, and I know this because I do a lot of energy work in my other life, has not figured out how to pay for its own electric sector modernization plans.

And those do not include Data Centers. So while I welcome the idea that grid impacts and data centers can do this, and that, I don't think anyone should leave these things to chance.

Thank you, Mary. We'll be in touch. We'd love to work with you on this. Tristan, let me, in my 30 seconds that I have left, really talk about how Boston, how should Boston define a data center? to ensure we're targeting the facilities with significant environmental impacts without unintentionally restricting smaller servers or computing infrastructure.

There's many, many different approaches we can take. But ultimately what we're trying to protect against is environmental and public health impacts. And so explicitly naming that in the threshold both through megawatts, gallons of water Decibels of Noise, but also this sort of qualitative affirmation by the environmental department that they've done a cumulative impact analysis not just looking at the data center individually but also where it's cited and all the other facilities in pollution impacts in the area. What we've seen in Lowell is that the data center started off relatively small, a little bit over 10 megawatts has incrementally grown over the years and is now approaching 50 megawatts, enough to power 30,000 homes. So while we might not have a hyperscaler proposed in Boston, some of the same companies had data centers in Boston We have a sales and use tax exemption, and there's a big gap in regulation as the state works to figure things out. So hope that answers your question.

And real quick, as we look at national trends, should Boston consider requiring and Environmental Justice Impact Assessment or certification process before allowing any data center development.

Absolutely, the current processes around zoning won't allow for an adequate cumulative impact review around these facilities. They need their own special process and special permit approvals.

And Tristan, you're willing to work with us on this?

Absolutely. And we've helped put together national policy toolkits and can share that with the full council.

Great.

Thank you. Through the chair. Through

This whole conversation is so important because we're getting to a lot of the meat of it very quickly, of like where sort of the different I feel like there are approaches that we should consider I think including a threshold based local permitting option which i believe would give us all the flexibility to you know and honestly it could be a regulation that's not you know that we review annually so it's not necessarily codified in terms of I don't know personally i mean the more we talk about this conversation i don't if its just zoning that is a part of this Given that this is already a conditional use, most places I feel like the Article 80 review could include

I know for the projects in my district we're always talking about special shadow reviews and we're This seems like even more impactful on the environment in a very measured and pointed way. And so I think any Article 80 review should include and it sounds like any large-scale data center would be subject to article 80 review which might be That being said, a lot of the computational centers that already exist in the city and hospitals have gone through that Article 80 review as part of the permitting of a hospital or Flynn, Thank you Chair.

One of the questions I have is on the economic impact and we know you know that they do create construction jobs. Can you talk to me about any research of what you've seen around The permanent jobs that are created and then also how they support any other industry in jobs that is supported by these operations.

You see, Boston has a good example in law. You don't need to go far You just go 35 minutes away from here and you will see the amount of jobs that these companies create. Merkley has been in lower for 10 years, It's true there have been construction jobs, but for 10 years we have below 40 jobs. And we shouldn't just be talking about jobs. I'd like to tell you about two weeks ago The fire station that serves the location where this data center is was browned out because the city could not afford extra overtime. My point is that we cannot just say it's jobs, jobs, a municipality should be able to come out of this kind of an arrangement

protecting its residents from fires, surveillance and so many other terrible things.

And I'll again point you to Good Jobs First. They're a national think tank that has done research into data center tax subsidies and job creation, I think off the top of my head For the large hyperscale data centers, much larger than the one in Lowell they create an average of 100 jobs. However there's no certainty that those jobs are local many of them are remote They often require different kinds of technical and special certifications and skills. And so we think about if a data center were to come to Boston, would people in Boston actually benefit from working there? And how much the math isn't math, we lose more and tax incentives than we get back.

Right that's a good point is one of my questions was around the how much of um How much should we weigh that tax incentive versus the regulatory of the data centers? But before I go into that question, are most of these data centers owned by for-profit or nonprofit companies?

To your earlier question around the Berto applicability of these data centers, right now there are eight buildings that have the designation of data center. within the 2026 Birdo reporting. That is an undercount, there's at least one data center that hasn't reported to Birdo. All of the ones that have reported are currently owned by for-profit companies to my understanding from that list.

And based off the square footage, do you have any idea of how much emissions or how much electricity or resources they use based off a square foot is compared to other similar size That's a good question.

As an aggregate, no and that's largely because one of the larger ones which is the Markley Data Center and Washington, and Summer Street. They have not reported their energy and water use. And important to note as well to the other question that the use of backup generators is not and many more. Just even within the definition of energy and emissions under Birdo, to my view, the full complete picture because it's underreported. Got it.

All right. And then? Sorry, just looking at my questions. How do we determine whether economic benefits outweigh the additional electricity and infrastructure costs?

I'll jump back in. So ACE, in 2025 we hosted a national convening on data centers in partnership with the NAACP and two local Memphis environmental justice organizations that were organizing against XAI and we came up with frontline framework community guiding principles for equitable data center development. One of my favorite ones is jobs cannot justify harm, so you have to put a bottom line on the health and well-being of our people We cannot exchange asthma for the promise of tax dollars. And so that's my bottom line.

All right, well thank you and look forward to working with the panel on this ordinance. Thank you

Thank you so much, Councilor Orrell. Councilor Flynn, you have five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask a question to... Is it Mary from Lowell? Hi, Mary. It's good to be with you. Mary, the proposal outlined by the City Council in this ordinance changed to the Zoning Code. Is there any other city that has done something similar to that besides some of the cities that were mentioned? Do you have any background information? Would Boston be the biggest city or the first major city to enact this type of change in the country, or other cities are doing this as well?

Are you asking about the law moratorium?

Yeah, I'm asking if Boston were to implement this change as outlined would it be the first city in the country to do that or or have other cities?

Yeah, so in regards to moratoriums those are an epidemic. They're happening everywhere because they're needed including here in Massachusetts in terms of putting a pause One year with no data center development in terms of outright bans. To my knowledge, no super major cities but there definitely have been municipal bands across the country.

Okay, that's what I'm asking is the outright bans. I think this one here, this proposal would prohibit data centers In all zoning districts, I think that's the wording. But I guess my question is would Boston be the first city to do that in the country?

So if I can also jump in, Councilor, One other example that's relevant here is in Phoenix, Arizona. They passed a law that requires a special use permit from their city council for the construction of data centers outside of an industrial area which is similar but not the same as what is being proposed here.

I did want to ask a question to Mr. Dealey, I know he's not on the panel but my question to Madam Chair may I ask a questions to Mr Dealey?

Yes, you can. Okay, my question- Can we make sure his mic is on over there?

Yeah, my questions- Could I add in one more thing to that last question before we move on? I would also recommend looking at the city of Everett recently, past updated zoning for data centers which includes thresholds. Just for another example.

I just wanted to say, just while I'm pausing the thing before Regulatory framework in other cities can be very different from ours. We are petitioning, you know this is a petition to the zoning commission which is going through this committee. Boston any We are actually not special as a city council. This petition is the same as a regular person submitting a petition. The difference is that we can waive a public meeting. and so on. There are certain places where every development goes through their town select board, and they have hundreds of people that are on the select board. So every city and municipality is different in the powers Towns in Massachusetts that have done either temporary moratoriums or moratorium on data centers. What they're talking about is hyperscale, I don't know if all had the same definition.

And part of why I was so interested in having a hearing on this zoning amendment is it gives us the opportunity to talk through and so forth. I don't know what those definitions might be as we are having this conversation because every municipality has done something differently, a lot of mayors have made huge Flynn. I'll start the time back and let you have your time back, Councilor Flynn, but I think it's important to say that every municipality is different. We in...I know the state of New York has done a moratorium. There have been We're all set up differently, and so I think as a city we're now having this conversation about definition. And so it's not a surprise that this conversation is so detailed because it is such a nuanced conversation to be having. Flynn, you have the floor.

The question I had to Mr. Daly and besides the building of a data center isn't it true that Union Electricians do play a critical role inside the data centers. They have to maintain them as well. Can you talk about what that job entails in Is that a critical part of a data center is making sure that the ongoing maintenance is properly addressed?

Thank you, Councilor for the question. Absolutely we have hundreds of electricians working and I don't know how many other city councils walked through the Macy's building but my boss reported it was a very successful walk and you got to meet some of the electricians that are maintaining very critical data. This isn't so much about TikToks or Snapchats, it's mainly about and many more. Never mind somebody complaining that their email didn't go through as fast as they wanted to, the inconvenience factor. But our electricians maintain these systems that are critical more to everyday hospitals, universities.

So it's very important to have skilled licensed electricians 24 hours maintaining these data centers. I know we want to focus on Boston. I will say the Mockley Group up in Lawrence planted 1,500 trees in Lawrence which is incredible. They are getting kicked in left and right up there, but they have done a lot for the neighborhood. And one other thing as listening to this process of the concern about diesel generators, they do run maybe once every six weeks Five minutes, I think. These data centers are not running on these diesel generators. However it is critical information to have immediate response to a power outage somewhere that More important than Facebook and TikToks, that our universities and hospitals and all the critical banking information does not have a disruption at all.

Building the data centers, the small ones that we have. We'll never have a mega center here in Boston or really in Massachusetts I would say maybe in Western Mass if it goes through but there are great jobs to build these data centers and their continued real good job opportunities for fellow Boston residents like me to maintain these throughout many years to come.

Thank you, Mr. Dealey. Madam Chair, may I ask one more question?

Yes, you can.

Okay. And I do want to ask a question, if I may, to Tish who is the Executive Director Boston Teaching Hospitals. It's good to be with you. So the data centers, say the data center in downtown Boston. Just so we are educating the public that data center is holding Information data from hospitals, colleges. Is it critical to have that data stored offsite from a hospital? For various reasons, maybe it's safety. Maybe it needs to be at this place. But is it critical to have that type of data center offsite and not Not physically at the hospital itself.

I did have the opportunity to visit the downtown Boston site and talk to many of the workers who, well, Thank you very much.

critical to the hospitals, whether it's something they could replicate on site. I don't know, but I'm happy to get that information back to you and the chair.

Yeah, the professor would like to respond.

Yes, I can briefly comment not specifically about the hospitals and many more. So that universities moved their individual server rooms mostly by large there. It becomes much cheaper, safer, more secure, more up-to-date to maintain it Otherwise, each entity would need to essentially run their own cloud service which requires a lot of resources.

Excellent. Thank you. Madam Chair, thank you for giving me an extra couple of minutes. I appreciate it.

Thank You so much Councilor Flynn. I did want to just follow up on that question. Can you tell us more about Professor, what you think about sort of because obviously I've been studying this for the last week but I don't know if... You are a leading expert on both AI and on green building for Um... Data Centers. I'm curious sort of what you would put as the threshold for a hyperscale data center versus, you know, a smaller data center and also how you would define an inference point and how you can describe how like inference points and other computing centers communicate with a larger data center just for us to understand that there is infrastructure that we might need in Boston that isn't necessarily a sort of larger scale

Great question. I think in terms of the first question, where is the threshold that separates a large hyperscaler from a smaller data center? I don't think there's a golden number, but there are various studies or states have various regulations. Some place the number at 75 megawatts, some at 50. Some lower number. So this depends on the particular grids and what is considered a large load. Generally, we are looking into 50 plus megawatts. In terms of the inference points, there is increasing need for AI and computing infrastructure for a variety of reasons. We talked about hospitals, scientific research for law enforcement, for many other applications and some of these will need to have local as you call inference points or edge data centers also call them.

This is necessary because some of the applications that we run are low latency, so you need to have a local data center to access There are also data centers that need to be connected to research infrastructure, laboratory equipments and the like. So again they need to local

Can you describe what just for like the, I would say the public but I'm like me too, can you describe like what those might be used for? Yes. Like some examples?

Yeah, sure. For instance biomedical research may have lab equipment drug discovery Thank you very much. The computational activities we are doing may need to connect to physical devices and again, laboratory equipment for experiments and the like. So I mentioned Low latency applications, I mentioned the need to connect to physical infrastructure. And the third thing is some of the data is sensitive and it's not easily uploaded to remote locations

Like a CT or CAT scan or an MRI?

Medical data, finance data. When we look into examples, we talked about cities as examples. New York City has a large number of data centers and a lot of the finance industry hold Their data, sensitive data in New York City. So and one can give more examples so not all computing needs to be local so computing is actually very flexible you can move it around you know you can access different locations However, local infrastructure also matters. So some local infrastructure is needed. What's the threshold? How much headroom we have in Boston to build safely data centers? I don't know but it can certainly be studied and these thresholds can be determined based on measurements scientifically, essentially.

And I know you're not in the medical industry. You're studying... I'm a computer engineer. Yes, yeah, you're a professor, you study, you are a computing engineer and you also have your own AI company. So I'm just kind of, so I'm curious I hear a lot about computing centers. And what do you think, in terms of how much megawatts inside a hospital or inside a university How many megawatts do you think those are using? Because right now, we don't have a special permitting option to permit that. And I don't even know that we've been as a city tracking How, you know where these computational centers are located?

So I don't know the number. Generally Boston is mentioned before has a handful of data centered greater Boston area though has over 40 data centers, last time I checked. And that's all around Boston essentially. Size changes from a few megawatts to tens of megawatts, if you look at hyperscalers we are talking about 100 megawatt plus typically. So I don't know the current data center load in Boston but when we talk about a computing facility Typically a megawatt and above. MGHPCC I believe operates at several megawatts right now, and with the AI Hub it might expand a few more megawatths So relatively, it's a small data center as far as data centers go.

Oh yeah, let her finish.

So generally like I was mentioning there is no number on top of my head for Boston but it's certainly can be studied how much data centers can be allowed safely in terms of the grid impact, in terms other impacts within Boston City.

Okay, thank you so much. Sorry Mary. So when Lowe enacted its data center moratorium we've been through a process and had similar discussions. And so we have like two options, there's not been a disagreement yet but the regulate option says anything higher than 15 megawatts.

Yeah, and I imagine that there are probably some over 15 megawatts that we have not specially permitted necessarily because they've been inside another thing that we've permitted.

Probably not in Boston. I mean, I don't think there are large hidden data centers in Boston it's just a lot of electricity because they need to be interconnected to power at the end There could be small facilities of a few megawatts that are maybe not known about, but I don't expect to find any large data center facilities in Boston. Thank you.

Yeah it's hard for me to wrap my head around what a few mega watts even means so Tristan?

I want to apologize. I'm going to have to step out to catch a flight for a conference on data centers. I wanted to just make two points before I leave. One is, again as we think about the question on what the risk is to Boston there are no current major proposals but we do have the larger sales and use tax exemption and there has been tons of interest submitted to the utilities So in speaking with Eversource, National Grid and Unitil they've gotten almost 5,000 megawatts of data center proposals. Those aren't all real. They like to shop around but that's multiples of what it takes to power all the homes in our state And so we just want to be mindful of being proactive. And part of the way we tried to do that, to answer a question that Councilor Weber asked earlier, what advocacy can you all do to the state legislature? We as advocates have been working with Senator Howard and she had some and many more. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Clean Energy Generation, and Protecting Costs to Ratepayers.

The Senate has passed a somewhat broader set of protections but has tied it to the sales and use tax exemption So what we believe is that all data centers, whether or not you accept the bribe of a tax exemption, you still meet high standards. And so we want to see a combination of Senator Howard's Amendment Language 62 with the House's broader approach.

That's very helpful. And Tristan, thank you for proverbially being at the table with us and I hope you have a safe flight.

Thank you very much.

So we're going to go to Councilor Weber. You have five minutes.

Sure. Professor Koskind, am I pronouncing that right? Sure, yes. Sorry. So just in terms of what we're looking at and in terms the future, I think a lot of sort The anxiety is like the AI is really sort of on-the-scene and it's new, and seems to be growing exponentially. So what do you think five years from now? I read one study that said we were going to double our data center capacity in the country in the next four or five years. But what do you think we're gonna be seeing

Yes, we are seeing tremendous demand for AI data centers with AI growth. It's completely unforeseen and the numbers you quoted are right that the expectation is to double In the next few years, the total capacity of data centers. This is because AI is becoming very pervasive and it's increasingly being used in a lot of different applications, different sectors and AI also consumes, I mean needs to do a lot of math basically out of computations. Therefore the resources it requires is larger than the compute need we typically had in the past.

And I guess, is there any hope that all of that data and the AI will increase the energy efficiency of the data centers themselves or no?

So energy efficiency, a couple of things. One, energy efficiency is going to increase. It always does with hardware, with software. We always manage to make our computer systems better But typically efficiency doesn't necessarily curb the demand because when we make more efficient use of our computing, we find more uses to apply it everywhere. We see a tremendous demand growth. This is why I'm working on specifically power flexibility because when you look into the power grid today, it's not like there isn't power. There is power Most of the time our power grid is utilized 30 to 50 percent of its capacity, but there are Small number of hours every year where we hit the peak. Typical example is hot summer day in a hot area or cold winter day. We have electrified heating here, right? Few number of hours annually is the time we hit the peak.

Now, the grid upgrades used to happen assuming data centers can consume all the capacity that they have. If it's 100 megawatt, this can consume 100 megawatts. This is the old model that we need to change because it requires doing very expensive grid upgrades so we can use the available power we have today in a much better way. So that's why the demand is there. The efficiency will come, they're still going to be substantial demand so we need to change how we power data centers. That's what I believe in and that's have been seeing that it's possible basically to change how we power our data centers.

And just on the topic of efficiency, if I could, you know, we have a number of existing policies here in the city of Boston that are quite unique compared to other cities. And I'm thinking notably about Berto, about our net zero zoning code article 37 and then the specialized energy codes So the combination of all these things means any new construction of any kind, including data centers are going to be highly energy efficient and they're required to be net zero emissions on day one if they're built now. So that would put these new constructions substantially even more efficient than the existing data centers that already exist in the city. And I think those are, that is a unique thing about Boston and a small number of other cities nationally. Okay, yes.

Yes, so the outlook on data centers and AI is there's going to be a lot of this stuff happening but remember every boom has a bust and when that bust happens, it's the city of Boston and its residents that will be left dealing with decommissioning. So it's important even as you think about the future, you ask yourselves of who will take care of that data center when the owners pack up and go.

Well, yeah. I guess so maybe Michelle and Mary my question just looking at this on a strictly municipal basis that I can understand why we do that but If Lowell bans data centers but Chelmsford puts in five or six, doesn't that have an impact on Lowell? So should we be looking more at the state or, you know, I don't know how to think about this issue in light of that?

You can start, Mary. Okay, so you have to understand I'm one of the ten people that suit the Department of Environmental Protection. So I don't have a lot of confidence in this state and My firm belief is that a city needs to be very well fortified for the protection of its own people. That doesn't mean we are not working We will not try to make sure the state has the right laws, but I think that when it comes to this any type of industrial growth in your The city needs to be strong and firm, and that's why the executive order that the governor signed made a lot of us happy because it said that

More power, you know, the local people are the ones who are first. If they don't want it then it will not happen which means that if we want development even of data centers then we have to do it right and the municipality is the one that leads.

There we go.

Sorry, can you turn on that one? Sorry, we have no... Okay.

They pressed the on button.

Is this one? Okay. One thing that I would add to that in terms of protections for ratepayers for increasing electricity costs with and many more. I would also like to add that the city could have conversations and partner with and I can just go over quickly what the definition of that is. So they're regulatory approved rate structures for large electric customers That ensure that they are paying the costs for that infrastructure. And this is also particularly a good protection Speculative data center projects. To Mary's point about the boom happening right now, we definitely would want this city to be protected

For many proposed projects which ultimately did not go through or did not use the amount of power that they projected and pay for that in advance so that Those impacts aren't being passed on to ratepayers when we know Bostonians and residents across the Commonwealth right now are really struggling with energy costs as one of the top concerns.

Okay, thank you. Thank you Chair.

Thank You and I'm gonna let Councilor Culpepper ask he has one follow-up question And then we're going to go to the rest of testimony.

Dr. Koskinen, I had one question for you concerning your research on technologies and I think they help data centers manage their electricity demand more efficiently. Even if the facilities were able to manage the electricity more efficiently, Isn't there still a risk of expansion of data centers that will continue to drive up overall electricity consumption?

So efficiency is important, but what I've been particularly working on is flexibility. The model used to be that we give data center 100 megawatts and we need to support that at any time it wants, it can consume that hundred megawatt. This brings a lot of cost because new generation transmission distribution has to be built It's expensive and it can be, I mean if unless tariffs are put in place all this cost can be reflected to the ratepayers. Now instead If we have power, let's say 99% of the time, we actually power in the grid for a 50 megawatt data center. We can't say OK. You can have 40 megawatts of firm power, but 10 megawatt of flexible power which the utility or the independent service operator can take away during these stress times.

So that's a new way of looking into data center operation. You might have heard of demand response, basically this is similar concept where the consumer adjusts its electricity when there's hard use in the grid. Now, why is this a new form? Because data centers most of the time, 98%, 99% of the times can serve their customers' business as usual but that few percent of the when the grid needs it most Then they can lower their consumption. They have the flexibility to do that. A lot of compute load is not urgent, they can be temporarily suspended or slowed down So this is the kind of technology we are building. So overall, for this to happen, of course, necessary programs, policies need to be put in place and to ensure that data center operates Within their allowed power numbers, the measurement verification Essentially systems need to be put in place.

So all of this is possible. Like I mentioned, broadly in the United States, in a variety of areas, utilities are looking into flexible interconnection programs Some regulatory bodies are looking into how to make this happen. especially for large data centers, especially in areas where there's a lot of the data center demand waiting in the queues. But we can also think about when we are thinking about Boston's potential data center growth We can think about how we can, from day one, how we make them efficient. How we can make them responsible. Grid Responsive Assets so that they don't break the grid, instead they provide resilience to the grid.

So you mentioned consumers. What protections are needed to ensure that consumers and small businesses are not paying for the resulting Infrastructure upgrades.

So, I mean it goes beyond my expertise in terms of how to price electricity but generally speaking... What protections? Protections for the ratepayers you mean? Yes so So, like I was saying my specialty is not developing tariffs but in general what we are seeing across the US and globally is there are suggestions to reflect some of this infrastructure cost to data center companies. So generally speaking, affordability is an important piece and again like if we use the available Thank you very much. to build a lot of costly infrastructure upgrades. We can use the available power we have better and do better, more sustainable, more paste cheaper growth of the power grid.

At the same time technology this is the foundation and many more. Framework, so that all of this cost is not paid by the community.

Yeah, I think we're about done with this portion just because we've gone a little bit over. And there's actually like a big City of Boston event tonight which is why my colleagues have left us. So I want to make sure that we have time for public testimony. But if you guys have any additional testimony, we will still be accepting testimony I know some of our folks online have been waiting for a while. Cyril Clement? We are ready for you, for two minutes. And thank you so much to our panel for spending time with us today. And then we have two folks online I think? Kate, and Chattin Green. So okay perfect you have two minutes.

Good afternoon, Chair Durkan and members of the City Council. My name is Cyril Clement and I'm a resident of Boston and the Environmental Justice Fellow at the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance. As a statewide public health advocacy organization, MPHA strongly supports the prohibition of new data centers in Boston as defined in the proposed order. This is a crucial step while we work on understanding and mitigating the risks of this new technology, and the concerns that it poses to the health of our communities. Our concerns about data centers, irrespective of their size, focus on three primary issues. Rising utility bills, undermining the city's response to climate change and the health risks that will outlive data centers. First, it is clear that data centers exacerbate the affordability crisis that is hitting our city. By driving up energy demands and requiring significant infrastructure upgrades, data centers contribute to rising utility bills.

At MPHA, we know that people will be forced to make impossible choices between paying these bills, putting food on the table, getting the healthcare they need and spending time with loved ones. Second, as Boston faces increasingly frequent climate disasters such as heat waves, snowstorms and droughts we must consider how the excessive energy and water consumption of data centers will harm our ability to respond. Seeing data centers flourish while power outages and water shortages occur in our city would be devastating. Finally, the current AI boom is built on speculation and lofty promises about tech-based futures. As technology rapidly advances, data centers can quickly become obsolete and it's difficult to repurpose these sites. When these corporations move on to the next big idea, communities will continue to pay for abandoned data centers through exposure to pollution, toxic waste, and forever chemicals

MPHA is skeptical that data centers will create a prosperous future for all and believe they should no longer be allowed to divert resources away from things such as health care, housing, food, public transit, and healthy environments. To prevent rising utility bills, improve climate resilience and prevent their long term health risks. We urge this committee to prohibit new data centers in Boston. Thank you.

Thank You so much for your testimony. Kate Archard is on virtual You have two minutes, Kate.

Hello. Thank you Boston City Council for taking public testimony. I stand here before you as a cautionary tale from the city of Brockton, when in the late 90s they deregulated the power plant electric generating business model. Data centers are that next type of Wild West speculative development. I think conditional zoning carefully done is needed from what I've heard at today's meeting, it was very educational I think that environmental justice communities need to be excluded. I think the overlay of your business districts need to look at And the third point I have, unfortunately Tish won't be happy. Be very careful of giving hospitals a free pass. The City of Brockton also had a predatory venture development capital group come in and strip assets from hospitals.

Hospitals are poised now needing to use more and more of these types of AI generating Thank you for joining us. Looking for this type of access. Using smart grid technology is an excellent way from what I've seen, but at the same time it all starts with zoning When I asked time and time again why these, it was a 350 megawatt power plant being put next to a school with kids with asthma. It all came down to zoning and Brockton had some Intricate zoning, you can put it here. You know this that and the other thing but City of Boston do your homework think about all of the impacts and the needs assessment not just for the grid but also for the human beings that are living in and among your beautiful city. Thank you.

Right on time, thank you so much. Chatham Green?

Oh, perfect. Okay.

You have two minutes. Is he unmuted? Okay, I think you're muted. You can unmute.

Okay, got it. Thank you. My apologies. Perfect, perfect. Good afternoon. Good Afternoon everyone. My name is Shaton Green I'm a Boston resident, a proud Roxbury resident and the agent and representative for the Boston Building Trades Unions We represent 35,000 construction workers across the region who build maintain empower our communities. Our unions strengthen the local economy through family sustaining wages quality benefits apprenticeship and training programs and the highest standards of construction safety. We believe in responsible economic development that creates lasting opportunities for working families, and strengthens our communities Data centers, digital infrastructure or whatever name we use are critical to our future. They support patient records at our hospitals, research and education at our universities, EMS and first responders, public transit Financial transactions and the technology we rely on to plan our daily lives and long-term futures.

This infrastructure is essential to modern world, and we do not believe a moratorium is the answer. Conversation, collaboration and small policy are. We cannot turn away from conversations that help someone gets it right. Who better to shape the future of our region than people in communities who live and work right here? In addition to large institutions, medicine and education, this infrastructure means we can get on the bus in the morning, get to school and work and to our appointments on time. It means when you run out of milk in the fridge, we can buy some at local stocking shops and corner store or bodegas. It means we can borrow a book from the Boston Public Library and be able to log on to public meetings and more. Our everyday life is becoming reliant on this infrastructure. Data centers development must be responsible and deliver tangible benefits to workers in host communities. That means prioritizing union labor, creating good jobs and apprenticeship opportunities

Bringing new clean energy online to meet growing demand and ensure developers pay their fair share of energy and infrastructure costs so existing ratepayers aren't left footing the bill. We applaud Governor Haley's approach to responsible development and local decision-making giving communities meaningful voice in shaping projects that affect their futures. Our members build to maintain this infrastructure, and we're here to help residents and policymakers understand why it matters When the issue arose, we immediately heard concerns about how new policies might affect projects expanding data storage for world-class medical institutions and universities. That's just one example of how far reaching this conversation is. Everyone in this chamber relies on digital infrastructure, and ironically it allows many residents to participate in these public discussions virtually. We believe informed public dialogue is essential to ensuring development.

Thank you, I'll end it by saying thank you to City Council Chair Durkan and thank you for the opportunity to be part of this conversation.

Thank you so much, Chetan. Okay I don't see any more folks for public testimony um so we're going to close down the hearing this docket on Docket 1718 is adjourned and will remain in committee.