Why Should Delaware Care?
Proposed data centers could have major impacts on electric bills and water use in New Castle County. Three primary races for New Castle County Council seats could shape the future of the debate over how to regulate the facilities beyond rules passed earlier this year.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the district number that Syam Kosigi and Valerie George are running in. The story has been updated.
The debate in northern Delaware over how best to regulate data centers has reemerged this primary election season between candidates for the New Castle County Council.
And whoever ultimately wins could have outsized influence over the future of data center policy in the county.
Two seats in contention this year are currently held by retiring council members Janet Kilpatrick and Penrose Hollins. Earlier this year, each voted against a narrowly rejected measure that would have retroactively imposed new data center regulations onto projects that had already been submitted to the county – including the controversial Delaware City data center project, known as Project Washington.
Another of the no votes on the measure, Valerie George, also is facing a primary challenger.
Now, each of the three races for those council seats includes one candidate who wants to impose the county’s new stricter data center rules onto Project Washington, as well as other existing data center plans.
The others argued that such retroactivity moves may not be legal or effective. The policy split also extends to a potential county moratorium on new data center land-use applications.
Primary Election
Delaware’s primary election will be held from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15, with early voting running from Sept. 2 to 13. Polls are closed Sept. 6 and 7 for the Labor Day holiday. The new voter registration deadline for the primary is Aug. 22.
The debate, which has played out largely on social media, has grown testy this month, most recently from dueling posts by candidates Jason Hoover and Curtis Linton, who are seeking to replace Hollins.
Earlier this month, Linton accused his opponent of misleading the public about his stance on a previous county measure to regulate data centers.
“Jason Hoover is playing politics with the truth,” Linton said.
In response, Hoover said Monday that his critique of Linton’s stance on data center regulations was simply taken from comments he made about the measure last year.
“I have relied on primary sources: his own public comment before County Council,” Hoover said in his post.
A year since the Delaware City data center
Last March, New Castle County passed data center regulations that require new data centers to maintain buffer zones around them, and to use energy-efficient backup generators, among other regulations.
Councilman Dave Carter first proposed the rules last summer, after developers submitted their proposal for Project Washington, which would consume 1.2 gigawatts of energy – or roughly the same amount as a million homes.
What followed was a monthslong political fight that largely pitted the Delaware trade unions against an array of individuals concerned about the environmental and affordability impacts of data centers.
The fight hit its height in November when Councilman Tim Sheldon flipped the middle finger at Councilman Kevin Caneco, a data center opponent.
Shortly after that, the debate also veered into electoral politics when a union leader from the Delaware Building Trades announced what became a short-lived challenge to Carter for his seat.
Shortly after that, Linton announced his candidacy.
Although he is also a trade union leader, Linton at the time told Spotlight Delaware that he was not as staunch in his support for data centers as others in organized labor.
Over the months after Carter proposed the regulations, other data center proposals have also been submitted to New Castle County. If all are ultimately built, they collectively could double the state’s electric demand.
What do the candidates think?
There are only three competitive primaries for New Castle County Council seats, and all of them are Democratic.
Syam Kosigi, a former nonprofit executive, is running against the incumbent Valerie George in District 5.
Kira Alejandro and Kyle Grantham are competing to replace Kilpatrick in District 3.
And in the three-way primary for Hollins’ District 4 seat, Helena Creamer is running against Linton and Hoover.
George and Creamer did not respond to requests for an interview.
Kosigi, Hoover and Alejandro all said they support a data center moratorium out of worries that the recently-passed regulations do not do enough to protect residents from potential effects of the facilies to the electric grid and the environment.
Hoover, an engineer and web designer, cited a study that suggested the proposed data centers in New Castle County could raise the wholesale electric rate in Delaware by 80%.
He said he supports the laws the Delaware legislature recently passed to try to put those costs onto the data center companies. But he said the scale of the proposed data centers are so unprecedented that the county needs more time to study their impacts.
“Our laws are clearly not ready for data centers,” Hoover said.
Alejandro, a barista and community advocate, also expressed concerns about electric bills rising, as well as potential environmental impacts of data centers.
A recent study suggested data centers could give off large amounts of heat from running the massive cooling systems needed for their server racks. And some data centers use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day.
“I think [a moratorium] gives us more time to learn about some of these consequences, which are still coming to light,” Alejandro said.
Kosigi, an IT professional, said a moratorium would allow the council to create additional regulations with more public input.
“The approach should be bottom up,” Kosigi said.
Kosigi, Hoover and Alejandro said they would use the moratorium to try to figure out a way to make the county’s existing data center regulations apply retroactively to data center projects currently in the pipeline.
Two of the opposing candidates, Linton and Grantham, also said they are worried about the effects of data centers.
Grantham said he personally dislikes the idea of new data center development and supports further regulations. He also wants the county to look closely at its code for any loopholes data center developers could exploit.
Linton said he is open to the idea of more regulations, but would need to hear the specific proposal and the reasoning behind it.
But Linton and Grantham were both hesitant about the idea of a moratorium, and both opposed making the current data center regulations retroactive.
Grantham, a documentary filmmaker and a former New Castle County communications staffer, said he doesn’t think the moratorium or applying the regulations retroactively would be legal moves.
“We’re probably going to wind up going to court, probably going to spend millions of dollars, and probably lose,” Grantham said.
But he said more regulations may act effectively as a moratorium.
“If we can change those things and make this an area where they’re going to pay their fair way … then this no longer becomes an attractive area,” Grantham said.
Linton, a local union leader, said he may support a moratorium, but he is concerned it may not be effective.
“If we do that, are we actually going to take a deeper dive and research … or are we just going to say we’re putting a freeze on them because we don’t want them here?” he said.
Linton said he would likely oppose making the regulations retroactive because it could discourage other industries from coming to Delaware.
“They might be saying, ‘OK, I don’t know if we want to invest in Delaware because we could be investing, and next thing you know, they change the rules on us,’” Linton said.
