TeraWulf Cayuga data center (former Cayuga Power Plant) Awaiting decision
TeraWulf leases 183 acres of the 434-acre former Cayuga Power Plant site on Cayuga Lake in Lansing, NY, proposing ~125 acres of development: Phase 1 of 150 MW across three buildings plus a Phase 2 of another 150 MW. On April 27, 2026 the Lansing Planning Board deemed the site-plan application incomplete and requested lease details, construction-traffic data, and landscaping clarification; environmental groups' lawsuit over the Zoning Board's permit interpretation survived a standing challenge on April 29.
Key facts
- Operator
- TeraWulf
- Size
- 300 MW
- Acres
- 125
- Location
- Lansing (Tompkins County), New York
- Hearing
- 2026-04-27
- Stage today
- Awaiting decision
Source
read 2026-08-14
What to do next
Next step: Heard 2026-04-27; decision pending. Call the board clerk for the vote date and get on the notification list.
What has happened so far (12 events)
- 2025-08-14financing
Concurrent with the August 14, 2025 lease announcement, TeraWulf reported securing a multi-billion-dollar investment from Google tied to its expansion, with the Lansing site projecting about $400 million in redevelopment investment, roughly 500 temporary construction jobs, and 100 permanent positions. · source - 2025-09-22hearing
On September 22, 2025 the Lansing Town Board held a public hearing on a proposed year-long development moratorium that would have paused major construction while the town rewrote its zoning laws; the final vote was deferred to a later meeting. · source - 2025-11-05vote
On November 5, 2025 the Lansing Town Board voted 3-2 not to withdraw its proposed construction moratorium, before reversing course later that month. · source - 2025-11-14lawsuit
As reported November 14, 2025, a letter from TeraWulf's representatives called for withdrawal of the proposed moratorium and demanded the immediate resignation of Town Supervisor Ruth Groff and board member Joseph Wetmore, alleging Open Meetings Law, FOIL, and Lobbying Act violations. · source - 2025-11-19vote
On November 19, 2025 the Lansing Town Board unanimously voted to withdraw its proposed one-year land-use moratorium, without discussion or explanation, clearing a path for the TeraWulf project to advance. · source - 2025-12-22vote
On December 22, 2025 the Town of Lansing Zoning Board of Appeals voted 3-2 to classify TeraWulf's Cayuga site as 'general processing,' allowing the data center to proceed without additional rezoning or variances; it was the company's third appeal after prior rejections of 'scientific research laboratory' and 'warehouse' classifications. · source - 2026-01-30lawsuit
On January 30, 2026, Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (CLEAN) and FLX Strong filed an Article 78 petition in New York State Supreme Court against the Lansing Zoning Board of Appeals and TeraWulf, seeking to annul the ZBA's December 2025 'general processing' classification as containing errors of law and procedural violations. · source - 2026-04-27hearing
Lansing Planning Board reviewed TeraWulf's site-plan application, deemed it incomplete, and requested additional documentation (lease details, construction traffic data, landscaping clarification). · source - 2026-04-29ruling
Court ruled that petitioners in the environmental groups' January lawsuit challenging the Zoning Board's permit interpretation have standing to proceed; arguments scheduled for June 18, 2026. · source - 2026-06-17protest
On June 17, 2026 a coalition of Finger Lakes organizations held a press event outside Lansing town hall to deliver the 'Reject the Development of an AI Data Center on Cayuga Lake' petition, which had gathered roughly 20,000 signatures (about 17,000 from New York State residents). · source - 2026-06-25protest
Opposition groups No Data Center FLX and FLX Strong hosted a public presentation on June 25, 2026 at the First Unitarian Society in Ithaca about data-center harms and the Lansing proposal. · source - 2026-07-14moratorium
As reported July 14, 2026, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order No. 62 establishing a statewide moratorium halting state permitting for data centers of 50+ MW pending a Department of Public Service environmental review; the order exempts local-government permits, and TeraWulf said it does not change its Lansing plans. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- New York State DEC — Division of Air ResourcesThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Environmental Notice Bulletin (weekly filings)Searchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Lansing (Tompkins County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Lansing (Tompkins County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- NYISO (New York) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- New York Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 42.570, -76.530 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- New York briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in New York
- Project Double Reed (Stream US Data Centers at STAMP) — Alabama (Genesee County), 101 mi Awaiting decision
- Anthropic Lake Mariner — Barker (Somerset), 115 mi
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “TeraWulf Cayuga data center (former Cayuga Power Plant)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/terawulf-cayuga-lansing-ny, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).