Work on the 23-acre project is projected to be completed by June said Sean Farrell, TeraWulf Inc.’s senior vice president of operations. TeraWulf Inc. is the parent company of Wulf Compute LLC, which will operate the data center.
The site plan for the addition, a five-building facility of which four buildings will be constructed, was approved by the town’s planning board last week but the approval is pending upon the company’s compliance with sewer and noise issues.
Jerry Goodenough, project manager of TeraWulf Inc., told the planning board that the company will be installing a septic tank in order to bypass issues in its line to the town’s sewer.
“We have an (Inflow and Infiltration) issue in the line going from our site to the pump station. I don’t know how far away that is, a couple of miles. … We suggested for this buildup, we’d build a private sewer,” he said.
Brian Sibiga, town engineer, said that the solution was, “a preferred solution,” and he hopes that the private sewer would be “designed to take on all site sewage,” as the current town sewer is very old.
“It would eliminate the need to have that pump station, which would be beneficial to the town by not having to invest money in it and also to potentially eliminate the need for a maintenance agreement,” he said.
Currently, the sewer is not in the site plan, but the company will not be required to come back to the planning board if Sibiga approves the addition.
Farrell said that once the permits are obtained, construction will begin “full-throttle.”
Board member Krista Atwater was also concerned about potential noise coming from the AI facility. There are already noise complaints of the company’s bitcoin operation on the site from residents.
“The sound is different all the time. Last Tuesday morning it was extremely loud, especially at 5 a.m. in the morning … Sometimes we don’t hear it at all and sometimes it’s excessively loud,” Atwater said, adding that she feels compliance to the noise ordinance in Somerset must be part of the conditional approval.
“I do feel it’s necessary. Especially, if god forbid, the noise actually increased,” Atwater said.
Currently, the site employs 22 workers. Goodenough estimated with the buildout of the AI data center, that would increase to 35-40 employees.
In October, the town board voted 5-0 to approve the use of the land as an AI data center.
The site currently has four buildings that house bitcoin mining on 30 acres. The entire plot is 400 acres.
© 2024 the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal (Lockport, N.Y.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
