North Country Colocation Services Data Center, Massena, New York

North Country Colocation Services, backed by Coinmint/NYDIG, wants to expand its bitcoin mining and data center site in Massena, St. Lawrence County, New York, on the old Reynolds/Alcoa smelter site along the St. Lawrence River. The project is on hold: New York's one-year moratorium on new data center construction, the Responsible Data Center Development Act, took effect July 14, 2026, and blocks new work at the site until July 2027.

On September 16, 2026, the Massena town board separately voted 3-2 against its own proposed six-month local moratorium, but that vote does not lift the state freeze.

NCCS's original plan called for three buildings totaling close to 1.5 million square feet and 635 megawatts of power, drawing from the New York Power Authority's hydroelectric supply. After community pushback, the company dropped a building and cut the footprint by about 400,000 square feet, redesigning to the 400 megawatts now listed for the site. The company says the project would use a closed-loop cooling system that does not draw from or discharge into local waterways.

Councilmember Jared Hollander, who voted against the local moratorium, said of the developers: "I've had a chance to speak to the developers. They've seemed willing to work with us and earnestly try to make the community better." Fire Chief Tom Millar backed the project for the jobs it could bring, saying "we gotta get jobs here, so the fire department, the rescue squad, can flourish again." Bill Fiacco, owner of Gristmill Brewery, said "the only thing a moratorium does is start scaring the developers away from the area."

Marina Johnson Zafiris, of Akwesasne, told the board: "We presently do not know the long-term social, environmental, and political risks of allowing hyperscale data centers into our communities." A resident group, Massena Data Center Watch, says capped smelter contamination on the site, including PCBs, dioxins and metals, sits next to a federal river cleanup that construction could disturb. The group also disputes the developer's jobs figures, noting Coinmint promised 150 jobs within 18 months but employed only 65 by 2020 and about 60 today, against a projection of 200 permanent jobs.

St. Lawrence County stopped short of its own moratorium on June 1, 2026, instead passing a resolution affirming local control over data center siting. Because the state moratorium runs through July 14, 2027, no new construction can begin at the Massena site before then unless the law changes.