North Tonawanda Data Center, North Tonawanda, New York

DigiPower X, the company formerly called Digihost, wants to turn its cryptocurrency mining data center at the former Fortistar gas power plant on Erie Avenue in North Tonawanda, in Niagara County, New York, into an AI data center, and the city has extended a moratorium that blocks it. On June 8, 2026 the company presented a plan for a two-story, 80,000-square-foot building on the property to replace its cryptocurrency mining computers with AI supercomputers.

The $250 million building would replace much of the existing site and employ 50 to 70 people, against 17 today, according to the company's application to the city planning commission. The application proposes removing the computer fans "that were previously creating higher than desired noise levels", and says the new design would use emergency-only backup diesel generators and closed-loop air-cooled cooling towers. The company bought the rarely used 55-megawatt Fortistar gas plant in 2022 with the approval of the state Public Service Commission.

Noise is what neighbors have fought for years. The site's cooling fans produce a loud, droning noise, according to a class-action lawsuit that residents filed in federal court in Buffalo in April 2026 on behalf of everyone living within three miles. "My family and I are under attack," plaintiff Mark Polito said in the lawsuit. Of the AI plan, Polito said: "None of us want an AI data center, none of us want the crypto data center that's there now". Deborah Gondek, a local advocate, said the company "didn't have a lot of specifics" about whether the change would bring the noise within the city's new ordinance. Police cited the company for exceeding the nighttime noise limit in July 2025, but in June 2026 a city court dismissed three of the four citations because the old ordinance had since been replaced; the company pleaded not guilty to the remaining one, issued in June under the updated law.

The state climate law is a second front. On May 28, 2026 the Appellate Division, Third Department, ruled that the Public Service Commission must examine the emissions impacts of the 2022 plant sale under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, and found the commission still had not completed that analysis. The ruling was a win for the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York and the Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice.

North Tonawanda's Common Council first passed a two-year moratorium on new data centers and expansions of existing ones in July 2024, and in June 2026 voted to extend it by a year while the city rewrites its zoning. Mayor Austin Tylec said: "I think we're in a good position now to have controls in place to make sure we're not the guinea pig anymore with new industries coming in." The company could still seek the moratorium's "extraordinary hardship" exception, Tylec has said, and the city planning commission has made itself lead agency for the project's environmental review and referred it to the Niagara County Planning Board. At least seven data centers operate in Erie and Niagara counties, and more are planned, including a $2 billion AI data center at the old Tonawanda Coke site.