The Finger Lakes and Watershed-Scale Computing

The public hearing for a development moratorium at a recent Lansing, New York town board meeting was contentious. Representatives from the cryptocurrency and AI data center company TeraWulf were in attendance, in addition to a packed house of locals. TeraWulf has secured a lease for Milliken Station, a retired coal power plant located on Cayuga Lake, one of the "Finger Lakes" of the eponymous region of Upstate New York. The data center capex boom that I have previously written about has come to my own backyard.

At the meeting, a TeraWulf representative claimed that the data center won't use lake water for cooling purposes. I find this hard to believe. TeraWulf's own press release from August makes explicit reference to such a benefit (emphasis mine):

Located on the site of a former coal-fired power plant, the Cayuga property features robust existing electrical infrastructure, an industrial-scale water intake system, and redundant fiber connectivity – critical components for supporting enterprise-scale computing workloads.

I am well aware that cooling could be achieved only mechanically with fans or via a closed-loop system - they are not strictly required to pull water from the lake for operations. However, I personally believe they are lying through their teeth, and let me explain why.

What the Hell Is a Finger Lake?

The Finger Lakes are eleven, glacially carved lakes in Upstate New York. For a rock and dirt nerd like me, they are a marvel. Cayuga Lake - the home of Milliken Station that TeraWulf wants to repurpose - has a maximum depth of 435 feet, dwarfed only by its bigger brother Seneca Lake whose maximum is 618 feet. For comparison, Lake Erie is only 210 feet at its deepest, with the next-deepest Great Lake being Huron at 748 feet.

That is a lot of cool fresh water, especially because the actual surface area of the two largest Finger Lakes is small in proportion to their depth, reducing evaporation. They make for an excellent source of temperature-stable water.

Additionally, the watershed of the Finger Lakes comprises a large geographic area:

It may not be the size of the Ogallala Aquifer, but it doesn't need to be. Unlike the Ogallala and the other aquifers out West, the Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier is not at imminent risk of running out of water. In fact, our problem is that we have too much.

My gut instinct tells me that as the years go by the Finger Lakes will be seeing ever greater amounts of total precipitation thanks to climate change. Presently, the trend isn't conclusive:

That data is from the NRCC's CLIMOD 2, using total annual preciptation recorded at Cornell University. Here's the Gist with the data and plotting code.

Suffice to say, if I were an investor, I'd be making inroads now to prepare for the future. Wall Street is obsessed with quarterly earnings, but a good capitalist thinks ahead so that they may continue accumulating.

If only Peter Mantius were still around.

What Comes Next?

The vote on the moratorium was moved to next month's meeting, and its result will be an interesting sign of things to come. I don't suspect TeraWulf will give up even if the vote doesn't go their way.

The existing infrastructure at Milliken, and its sister plant Greenidge on Seneca lake (presently a Bitcoin mine), are attractive investments. Building an entire data center from scratch on the lakes is a massive task, but I feel like a vote against the moratorium could open the proverbial flood gates.

I believe there's a reason Paul Prager and TeraWulf picked Milliken beyond the benefits of the facility itself. The abundant cool lake water is an invaluable asset that reduces capex and opex. If I were a data center developer, I would be licking my chops at the potential of the Finger Lakes based on what climate change has in store for us.

The only hurdle to overcome would be the NIMBYs and the hippies, but you can just lie to them.