The news of a potentially massive data centre being built in Massena, NY, next door to Akwesasne and the Canadian border at Cornwall, created some alarm when the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne published a letter in opposition of the development. They wrote they have a “serious concern regarding the proposed development of a large-scale data center at the former Alcoa East industrial site in Massena, NY.” and included a detailed list of concerns and frankly, it’s not surprising they are one of the first organizations out of the gate to oppose this. As their neighbours and friends, I believe we need to follow their lead.
Given we lost another young community leader to cancer this week, we should start looking at the patterns in front of us. Karine Parthenais was only 41 years old when she passed away from cancer. We lost Lee Theodore last year, who was only 39. Akwesasne’s Christopher Thompson was only 39 when he passed away in 2018. David Murphy, a former city councillor, was only 50 when he passed away of cancer. Why are people from this area dying so young, I wonder? We need to take a serious look at all current and former environmental conditions.
Some answers might be found in the investigative piece that award-winning journalist, Brandi Morin wrote about in 2024, entitled: “‘Above the poison’: Mohawk land defenders refuse to surrender Barnhart Island to New York.”
The article states: “Abundant electricity led companies like General Motors, Reynolds Metals and Alcoa to set up shop on the St. Lawrence River, along the western portion of the Akwesasne reservation. And many of them spent years discharging harmful chemicals into the local waterways.” And “In 2013, Reynolds and Alcoa agreed to pay nearly US$20 million to tribal, state and federal authorities to help remediate the damage.”
I considered the positives of what a data centre would mean to our local economy, years ago. Being passionate about economic development, I did some research to find out that a bitcoin mining operation was the first project being planned for the same site at Alcoa. It fascinated me since I was working for a major tech company that was all about building data centres — even before AI loudly announced itself in late 2022 (creating a desperate need for them over the past 3+ years). In my personal opinion, the tradeoffs were too much considering we are currently battling a climate crisis.
Which leads me to ask if the St. Lawrence River Institute will be addressing this development? They have collaborated closely with Akwesasne on river health and have decades of research on the impacts that industrialization has had on local waterways.
There is so much I want to say about this as it unfolds but given its proximity to Cornwall, how industrialization, exploitation and colonization have hurt the Akwesasne population for generations, I think we all need to consider that despite the boom to economic development, would it really be worth it given how costly it would be to residents in so many ways (health, environment, wildlife, etc)?
With the opposition to data centres in the US growing, we are witnessing cities and towns rising up and challenging these companies to back down. The website www.datacenterwatch.org reports that “$64 billion of data center projects have been blocked or delayed amid local opposition.”
I plan on standing by our neighbours in whatever way I can, when the proof of these types of mass industrialization projects is already out there. There is so much pushback in towns across the US, it was only a matter of time that these companies would look for alternative ways to exploit local resources, even though they have already paid settlements due to the damage they have caused throughout the years. Data centres are now being called surveillance centres since the data being collected is now being used to track us, just like in the horrifying tv series, Black Mirror.
If you want to learn more about the negative impacts of data centres, you can check out Erin Brockovich’s (yes, that Brockovich!) data centre research and reporting here: https://brockovichdatacenter.com/
Kelly Bergeron,
Cornwall, Ontario
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