Jan 30
2026
Genesee IDA has ‘conflict of interest’ in data center
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A rendering of the proposed data center. Image via GCEDC.
The Genesee County industrial development agency will once again lead the environmental review of a controversial data center proposal despite state officials, local lawmakers and Tonawanda Seneca Nation leaders raising concerns about the agency’s potential conflict of interest.
They and other critics argue the IDA, which is building the 1,250-acre STAMP industrial park in rural Genesee County, stands to benefit financially from the data center project. Should the agency’s board of directors approve the project, including issuing an environmental clearance, the IDA could earn between $76 and $126 million in fees from builder Stream Data Centers.
The IDA last year pulled the plug on the first iteration of Stream’s project after the Nation sued, arguing it never completed a proper environmental review.
“I would say that there’s a definite conflict of interest,” said Chris Murawski, executive director of the Clean Air Coalition, an environmental advocacy group that’s opposed other data center proposals in Western New York.
In response, Earl Wells III, a spokesperson for the IDA, said Thursday that “any entity that would serve as lead agency [on the environmental review] would benefit from the project, including New York State which has identified STAMP as a priority project for the region.”
Mark Masse, president and CEO of the IDA, added in a statement that the data center “will go through a vigorous and thorough environmental review where every comment submitted will be addressed.”
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomUnder state law, the Department of Environmental Conservation could have taken over the review of the data center, but, as of a deadline on Wednesday, chose not to. Nation leadership had requested the agency do so. They fear a data center — and activity at STAMP in general — could disrupt their hunting of animals and gathering food and medicinal plants in the forest that abuts the industrial park.
Instead, in a Wednesday letter, the DEC said it recommended the IDA itself do a deeper review of the proposal because the potential impacts of data centers “do not appear to have been adequately addressed” in the original, general environmental review of the STAMP industrial park. That review was completed years ago, before the data center was proposed. The DEC recommended the IDA consider how large the data center would be, its location adjacent to the Tonawanda Seneca Nation and various environmental impacts like noise pollution.
The IDA should also, the state agency said, “evaluate how a facility that will utilize … more than 20 percent of the … STAMP site area but only support 120 jobs, helps achieve the economic benefit of providing 9,000 jobs at full build-out.”
The 2.2 million-square-foot data center would be situated on 90 acres permanently, according to the DEC’s letter, and disturb an additional 40 acres temporarily.
Prior to Wednesday, Nation members had hoped the DEC would lead the environmental review: Agency Commissioner Amanda Lefton, at a November meeting with Nation leaders, said she was concerned about a data center’s use of diesel-powered backup generators and the project’s closeness to the Nation’s territory. Four sources who attended the meeting shared their recollections with Investigative Post.
“In the Nation’s meeting with Commissioner Lefton in November, we discussed the possibility of data centers at STAMP and she expressed that she would have concerns about air emissions and proximity to the Nation,” Nation administrator Christine Abrams confirmed in a statement.
DEC spokesperson TJ Pignataro did not respond to questions about the agency’s decision to not lead the data center’s environmental review. In a Wednesday statement, he noted that the DEC would “thoroughly [review] any applications for DEC permits … to ensure the protection of public health and the environment, threatened and endangered species, and historic and cultural resources, including of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.”
“It’s kind of emblematic of how broken the [State Environmental Quality Review] process is,” Clean Air Coalition organizer Bridge Rauch said. “A lot of projects for industrial developments kind of get rubber-stamped without enough oversight.”
Lefton’s comments came after Stream Data Centers dropped its first proposal. Stream did so after the Nation sued in July, arguing the Genesee County Economic Development Center failed to do a proper environmental review before approving the project and awarding $472 million in tax breaks.
The Tonawanda Seneca Nation’s concerns centered on 24/7 noise from the massive data center and air pollution from its backup generators. The Nation also worries about stormwater runoff affecting streams on their territory, which borders STAMP.
Stream’s second proposal came in December and is slated to be 60 percent larger than the first, another reason why Nation members, the Sierra Club and the Orleans County Legislature had urged the DEC to lead the environmental review.
An application for financial assistance from Stream is due to be released soon. The project is estimated to cost more than $10 billion. The IDA earns a fee based on that cost — between 0.075 and 1.25 percent — meaning it could net between $76 million and $126 million for approving the project and awarding it tax breaks. Requested subsidies could be more than $500 million.
The data center, according to Stream, is planned to be the size of 38 football fields and would use some 500 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 400,000 homes. Experts previously told Investigative Post such a demand for power could drive up prices for consumers.
Through its lawyers, the IDA pushed back on efforts to have the DEC lead the data center’s environmental review. In letters, the agency argued it had completed a full assessment in 2012 and amendments in more recent years that sufficiently addressed all concerns. For individual projects, the IDA argued, it must only perform more limited reviews and amend the original environmental study accordingly.
