Today’s open house about data center at STAMP will be rescheduled

Orleans County Legislature, Tonawanda Nation want DEC to be lead agency for environmental reviews

ALABAMA – An open house at the Alabama Fire Hall for the proposed data center at STAMP has been cancelled for today and will be rescheduled.

The meeting was focused on a proposal from STREAM US Data Centers. That company is planning a sprawling complex at the Western New York Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing (STAMP), a manufacturing park being developed by the Genesee County Economic Development Center.

STREAM’s plan for “Project Double Reed” envisions three structures more than 100 feet tall, occupying more than 2.2 million square feet and using more than 500 megawatts of electricity per year.

Orleans Legislature says GCEDC would be biased in assessing environmental impacts

The Orleans County Legislature on Jan. 16 sent a letter to Amanda Lefton, commissioner of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, asking the DEC to be lead agency for reviewing the environmental impacts of the proposed project.

The Genesee County Economic Development Center wants to be the lead agency and conduct the SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act).

“Under GCEDC’s stewardship, STAMP has been nothing more than a series of unfulfilled promises, questionable allocation of resources and a series of environmental pollution events so significant that this Agency and the Federal government revoked its permits,” Lynne Johnson, Legislature chairwoman, wrote to the DEC commissioner.

Johnson said the GCEDC “biased position” will compromise its objectivity in a SEQRA review where the lead agency needs to compile data and facts and evaluate them.

“The only way GCEDC can justify the fact that it has spent almost $500 million of taxpayer dollars is to jump start a project – any project – regardless of its environmental impact,” Johnson states in her letter.

While there is limited information currently available about the data center, Johnson said the project “will likely have significant inter-county and regional impacts, including on air quality, energy usage, water usage, and waste water disposal that are ill-suited for a single county IDA to oversee as part of the SEQRA review.”

Tonawanda Seneca Nation calls project: ‘terrible threat to our people, our Territory, and future generations’

Chief Roger Hill of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation has also asked the DEC to be the lead agency in the environmental impact review. In a letter Dec. 15, 2025, to Commissioner Lefton he said the proposal for the data center, doubling its size from an earlier submission by Stream U.S. Data Centers “threatens far greater harms to the Nation and the surrounding environment than the earlier, discredited application.”

Hill said the latest proposal will be much closer to the Nation’s Big Woods.

“As we review the details of this terrible threat to our people, our Territory, and future generations, the Nation reiterates the call we made to you when we met in November: DEC must take lead agency status for SEQR review of this hulking data center facility,” Hill wrote. “GCEDC cannot be entrusted with this vital role.”