This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Tech companies’ search for sprawling open space ripe for conversion into artificial intelligence data centers has brought them to the doorsteps of farmers across the country.
Several have rejected multi-million dollar bids for their land, like Kentucky landowner Ida Huddleston, who declined $33 million for her 650 acres, and Mervin Raudabaugh, a Pennsylvania farmer, who turned down $15 million.
It doesn’t seem likely that the same tech companies would look to locate a data center in Canterbury, but residents like Logan Snyder don’t want to be caught off guard either. Inhabited by just over 2,000 people, the town has limited commercially and industrially zoned areas and little infrastructure to support that kind of construction.
And besides, Snyder said, “we’re also really, really not a place where people of the town are going to want it.”
Related: It's town meeting time in NH. Here's what's at stake, how it works and how to vote
Snyder and other members of the town’s planning board wanted to put the issue before voters in the form of a zoning amendment to explicitly forbid data centers. The question will be decided on Election Day, among more expected zoning items, like accessory dwelling units, wetland setbacks and cluster subdivisions.
If the article passes, the ordinance won’t restrict the use of personal computers of “typical home-based businesses,” according a plain-English explanation released by the board. The article was brought forward “proactively due to potential impacts to environmental resources associated with such facilities.”
Snyder said their environmental concerns are “significant.”
“We’re hearing more increasingly alarming information about the amount of damage they do to water supplies and clean water availability, and that’s something we’re going to have to reckon with globally over the next few years if something drastic does not change,” Snyder said.
Like many towns, Canterbury has permissive zoning, meaning projects of any nature are allowed until and unless they’re explicitly forbidden, planning board chair Brendan O’Donnell explained at one of the board’s January meetings.
Preempting future developments, regardless of whether they seem feasible for the area now, could protect the town from engaging in expensive litigation if residents decide to resist a data center down the line.
“It’s really aimed at large commercial deployments, think the multi-acre buildings that are going up around the country that take a ton of electricity and raise electric rates, that take a lot of water and result in pollution,” O’Donnell said in January.
Those explanations seemed insufficient to Rich Marcou, the board’s vice-chair, and Clifton Mathieu, an alternate on the board. Both voted against sending the warrant article to the town’s electorate, citing concerns that the article’s language doesn’t differentiate between AI and traditional data centers and disputing the article itself as frivolous.
“I just don’t think that they’re coming here,” Marcou said.
New Hampshire currently ranks as the state with the third fewest data centers in the country, according to the tracker site Data Center Map. As of March, 2026, the Granite State was home to 10 such centers: five in Manchester and one in Keene, Lebanon, Littleton, Laconia and Portsmouth.
Ultimately, the will of Canterbury voters will prevail. Election Day is Tuesday, March 10. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Old Town Hall. To view the sample ballot, visit the town website at canterburynh.gov.
Town meeting will take place at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 13 at the Canterbury Elementary School.
