Following reports that a former power plant property could be used for a hyperscale data center in Bow, residents from the town and neighboring communities overwhelmingly spoke out against such a plan at a selectboard meeting Tuesday.
Background:
New Hampshire currently does not have any hyperscale data centers, or state policy against their development.
Merrimack Station, New England’s last coal power plant, closed in 2025. Public records show that in April, Eversource, the state’s largest utility company, had agreed to conduct a viability assessment for a 350-megawatt project on the land on behalf of the owner, Granite State Power.
All of this came to light in August, when the state’s consumer advocate Don Kreis posted on X about a meeting between state energy officials and Eversource, the state’s largest electric utility, about a 200-megawatt data center in Bow.
Since then, Bow has not received an application for such a project or had any communication from Granite Shore Power about it, said selectboard chair Kip McDaniel at the selectboard meeting Tuesday.
He clarified that if such a project was submitted to the town for approval, the planning board would have jurisdiction over the project, not the selectboard.
Nonetheless, McDaniel said the board wanted to hold space for residents to share their thoughts and learn more about what would happen if an application for a data center was submitted. The board held an hour-long public comment session Tuesday night.
“We want to be as transparent with you as possible,” McDaniel said.
Barbara Bennett, who has lived in Bow for nearly 30 years, said she felt in the dark.
“I came out to just get some information. We know nothing, so we need to have some questions answered,” she said.
Residents and neighbors push back:
Data center opponents protested ahead of the selectboard meeting, with residents raising concerns over environmental degradation and health consequences caused by the facilities. Research has shown that hyperscale data centers, which are the massive facilities used to power artificial intelligence, can lead to noise, water and air pollution, as well as other harmful impacts.
Leslie Ring held a sign outside the Bow Municipal Building Tuesday that read “Bow Says No.”
“I'm pretty sure it will reduce property values and not improve the quality of our lives,” she said.
The protest was organized by 350NH, a climate activist group whose “No Coal, No Gas” campaign fought for Merrimack station, New England’s last coal power plant, to be taken offline permanently. In recent years, prior to its closure in 2025, it would only be used to generate power when demand on the grid was high, like on exceptionally hot summer days. Granite Shore Power said in October 2025 that the site would become a “renewable energy park.”
How a data center would impact taxes was a top-line point of discussion for residents. It is not known if a data center would raise or lower taxes.
After its construction in the 1960s, Merrimack Station brought in substantial tax revenue for Bow, allowing the town to keep property taxes low, a rare situation in New Hampshire, which relies heavily on property taxes to fund municipal governments. This was as high as 70% of the town’s property tax revenue at one point, but that figure decreased in the plant’s final years.
Kevin and Anne McManus said they have seen their tax bill climb in the more than 30 years they have lived in the town and the station's productivity waned.
“We moved from Concord to Bow, and I always calculated the differences in the taxes, and it was about half the taxes in Bow compared to Concord then,” Kevin said. “Now it's pretty similar.”
But he and his wife Anne said they still did not want a data center to come, even if it meant lower taxes again.
“We knew it wouldn't last forever when we moved here, but we're not willing to trade lower taxes for this at all,” Anne said.
As the tax impact remains unknown, at least one resident sees a data center as a potential boon for the town.
Scott Coulombe, the sole resident to speak in favor of the idea during Tuesday’s public comment, said he sees a data center as critical infrastructure as artificial intelligence technology rapidly evolves.
“I say let the data center come and vet them properly through all the codes and ordinances and other regulations that are in place,” he said. “As we know, there's plenty of regulations in this state and in the country to prevent a lot of the things that a lot of people in this room are concerned about.”
Bow is just the next of a growing list of New Hampshire communities that have found itself debating data centers on its ballots and in its normally sleepy municipal meetings. Nottingham residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of a year-long moratorium on building data centers in the town, after a local developer proposed building one on Route 4. Rochester officials are taking steps to discourage their development.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she was against the plan for a data center in Bow, saying she was opposed to “putting any data center in the state of New Hampshire.” She said she planned to propose a statewide data center construction moratorium in her 2027 budget.
