Ronald Jobel has spent years watching billowing vapor rise from the Merrimack Station power plant against the skyline visible from his home on Golden View Drive in Bow.
Now, with the coal-fired plant shut down and talk swirling that a large-scale data center could one day be built on the same site, Jobel has made his position clear: he’s in support of the development.
“I think it’s an excellent use of a property,” Jobel said. “We’re not going to see those smokestacks out there putting out tons of smoke because we know these guys are not going to use coal.”
It’s not that Jobel wants the smokestacks to disappear from his line of sight. To him, the appeal lies in the possibility that his tax bill will go down. Jobel pays around $11,000 a year, he said.
“I think it’s great if the town suddenly got a hunk of money from a data center,” Jobel said. “If the taxes stabilized for a couple or five years, that would be great.”
Not everyone shares his enthusiasm.
Bow residents have been split on the possibility of a data center since news broke that Granite Shore Power — which owns the shuttered Merrimack Station — had filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to open discussions with Eversource about connecting a 350-megawatt project to the regional power grid.
The April filing does not mention the type of project or its location.
But a town official confirmed to the Monitor that high-level discussions have taken place with a company about bringing a data center to town.
With property tax rates at $20 per $1,000 of assessed value, the town has been hard-pressed to find relief, making any significant new revenue source appealing.
The Merrimack Station once anchored Bow’s finances, generating roughly 70% of the town’s property tax revenue when Eversource owned it through its subsidiary, Public Service of New Hampshire.
But the property’s value began declining over the years.
Adding to the problem was a state Supreme Court ruling in 2018 that determined the town had vastly overvalued the property, assessing it at $159 million in 2012 and 2013 when it was worth less than $70 million.
Bow eventually settled with the utility for a $10 million rebate spread over five years, completing payments in 2024.
“I’m not sure that it’s very good for the town when people overvalue things that actually aren’t the way they should be valued, and then we, the taxpayers, have to pay it back,” said Muriel Orcutt, a longtime resident of Bow. “The history of that old coal place is not very good.”
Orcutt said she would like more information before deciding whether to support a data center in Bow.
Environmental Concerns
Even if a data center could bring revenue to Bow, many residents oppose the proposal and remain skeptical of investor-owned companies.
Lyn Lull, who lives about a mile from the power plant, is among them.
“These places do not invest in the towns,” she said. “They may invest a little bit to get their foothold in it, but once they’re locked in there and they know they can’t get pushed out, they don’t care about the towns and we’ve seen it time and time again with industry after industry.”
Data centers are commonly sited at former power plants because these sites have established connections to electric grids, nearby water sources and large tracts of land to support their infrastructure needs.
The Merrimack Station and its surrounding land of 343 acres in Bow check nearly every box for a data center. The site offers plenty of space, proximity to the Merrimack River and an existing connection to the power grid.
When Merrimack Station shut down its coal operations, plans were made for a solar farm to replace the power generation there. But that never came to fruition.
Lull hoped the shuttered coal plant would become a site for producing a clean energy hub. Instead, she worries about a massive concrete building housing computer servers that consume massive amounts of power and threaten wildlife and pollute the Merrimack River.
“I’d rather see something going here that would be beneficial to the town, and the whole area like a solar farm that would bring power to the grid, as opposed to something that’s going to drain the power grid,” Lull said. “It will benefit people by having clean energy instead of something that’s going to be polluting.”
Poltical resistance
Currently, 10 data centers exist in New Hampshire, with the highest concentration clustered in Manchester according to the tracking platform Data Center Map.
None exist in Merrimack County so far.
State politicians have grown vocal in their opposition to data centers since the idea of one in Bow emerged.
Eleana Colby, a selectboard member in Bow and state representative, said residents have a voice in the process if an application is proposed.
She also said that state law still lacks a clear framework empowering towns to adopt ordinances tailored to data centers.
“That is why New Hampshire needs a pause until protections are in place and towns have the tools they need,” she said in a statement. “A thoughtful framework does not stifle innovation or create an unnecessary barrier. It ensures development respects residents, protects community resources, and reflects local priorities.”
Lawmakers entertained a bill last session that would have forbidden cities and towns from regulating data centers more rigorously than any other kind of development, allowing them “by right” on any parcel zoned for commercial or industrial use. The bill, Senate Bill 439, was tabled in May.
After Wednesday’s executive council session, Gov. Kelly Ayotte stated she is against “putting any data center in the state of New Hampshire” and would include a moratorium on data centers in the policy portion of the upcoming budget.
Her reasoning centers on energy costs.
Data centers are known to consume high amounts of electricity to support the growing demand for Artificial Intelligence.
“I want to reduce rates for energy costs, and data centers take a tremendous amount of energy,” she said. “I spoke with the head of ISO New England about that, and he confirmed that really this is not sustainable — not only in New Hampshire, but in New England as a whole — in terms of energy costs.”
State Democrats are planning to introduce two pieces of legislation for the 2027 session aimed at reining in data center development. The first proposal would pump the brakes on new data center projects for 24 months. The second bill would require any data center using at least 30 megawatts of electricity to foot the bill for the infrastructure and resources they consume instead of sticking other utility customers with the tab.
Though no formal proposal has been submitted, many Bow residents are already expected to voice strong opposition at the next selectboard meeting.
If a formal proposal were to come forward, the process would take months, with the town’s planning board reviewing it before anything moved forward.
Van Mosher, a resident who sees a data center as a potential way to ease the town’s tax burden, is keeping an open mind. He’s interested in gathering more information before making a judgment call. Mosher said he is critical of those who are already saying no without doing any homework, calling their stance “close-minded.”
“The people of Bow are really smart, and we’re not going to let anything in the town that is not going to be good for the town of Bow,” Mosher said. “But if there’s an opportunity to lower our taxes by widening our tax breaks, we should take a close look at it.”
