Jul 8
2025
Lawsuit seeks environmental review of STAMP data center
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Chief Roger Hill, a Tonawanda Seneca Nation leader, looks out to Plug Power site. Photo by Garrett Looker.
The Tonawanda Seneca Nation is again suing the builders of the Genesee County STAMP industrial park, arguing in a lawsuit filed last week that the industrial development agency failed to conduct a proper environmental review for a large data center.
The lawsuit asks a judge to issue a temporary restraining order to halt any prep work being done for the data center, and eventually to rule that additional environmental reviews are needed before the project can proceed. The Nation and the Sierra Club are suing the IDA, data center builder STREAM U.S. Data Centers, and the Town of Alabama in Genesee County Supreme Court.
Among other contentions, the Nation argues that STREAM and the IDA failed to conduct proper studies on possible noise and air pollution, as data centers tend to be loud and rely on diesel generators for backup power. Because the data center will border a forest that Nation members use for subsistence hunting, it argues that people and animals alike could be harmed by the construction of the server farm, which could serve a tech giant like Google or Microsoft. The Nation further argues that “any spill or pollution event” stemming from the data center or industrial park could contaminate the wells residents use for drinking water.
The suit is the Nation’s third against an aspect of the industrial park in recent years. It previously sued the IDA over approvals given to hydrogen producer Plug Power and sued the federal government over approvals for a sewer line. The Nation lost the Plug Power lawsuit and settled the federal case after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revoked the pipeline permit in question.
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The IDA, known as the Genesee County Economic Development Center, issued regulatory approvals and $472 million in tax breaks for the data center in March, against the staunch opposition of the Nation and other residents. The incentives work out to $3.9 million per job. One resident said she fears “constant ringing, 24/7” from a data center.
STREAM plans to construct a 900,000-square-foot server farm on a 60-acre plot in the northwest corner of the 1,250-acre industrial park, known as the Science Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park, near the Nation’s border. The IDA has been attempting to lure tenants to the remote industrial park for more than a decade.
The data center deal was crucial for the IDA because key infrastructure — including sewer lines and an electric substation — has yet to be completed at STAMP. As part of the agreement, STREAM agreed to front the cost of the substation.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomThe Nation, however, argues in the lawsuit that approval of the agreement came without a proper environmental review, potentially leaving the neighboring forest at risk. Nation members, in interviews and in court papers, have described the Big Woods — an old-growth forest used for hunting, fishing and gathering plants used for medicine — as essential for dozens of indigenous families.
“Animals will be scared away from the Big Woods and I fear that the hunting will be less productive,” Chief Kenith Dale Jonathan, head of the Nation’s Bear Clan, wrote in an affidavit filed alongside the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, attorney Stephen Daly argued that the IDA should have conducted a full, independent environmental review of the data center, instead of fitting the data center into an existing, generalized review the agency has already completed.
The IDA completed that generic environmental impact statement for all of the industrial park in 2012. Such reviews are allowed under state law for large projects that will be developed over time and include generalized assessments of possible impacts to air and water quality, vegetation and animals and other areas.
But that generic study, the Nation contends, never contemplated a data center and that STAMP was “expressly designed to target ‘green-technology and advanced manufacturing companies.’”
“Data centers are none of these things,” it argues in the lawsuit. The IDA, the suit says, “failed to take a hard look at the project’s environmental impacts.”
The Nation argues a deeper study is needed of how the data center’s generators, fans and other equipment will affect wildlife; how air quality will be affected by diesel fuel burned by backup generators; and how any spills of chemicals or other materials will be handled.
In a statement, IDA President Mark Masse said he was aware of the lawsuit but declined to comment, aside from saying the IDA believes it has adhered to the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act requirements.
