Trumbull’s AI Data-Center Upgrade Falls Outside New Two-Year Moratorium

Trumbull has paused new data-center development for two years, while a plan to convert its existing facility into a high-density, AI-ready site sits outside that rule. The contrast puts focus on whether promised operating limits can provide protection before the town establishes a way to enforce them.

An old site, a new use

365 Data Centers and Aphorio Carter are evaluating a conversion of the data center at 80 Merritt Blvd. The facility has operated for more than 50 years and is Trumbull’s only data center, making the proposal an upgrade to existing infrastructure rather than a new project on a new parcel.

Residents had petitioned the town council to include the modernization in its restriction. But the two-year measure covers the establishment and development of new data centers, not proposed upgrades to Trumbull’s current site.

Limits without a binding mechanism

First Selectman Vicki Tesoro says the prospective operators accepted four limits intended to contain the upgrade’s local effects. The town, however, is still determining how to make those commitments enforceable if the facility later seeks to expand.

The commitments Tesoro says operators accepted

• No increase in electrical draw beyond the site’s existing capacity.
• No increase in noise or water use.
• No expansion of the building footprint.

Those assurances frame the project as a bounded update to infrastructure already in place. Residents have nonetheless raised concerns about noise, energy and water use, along with whether the project will produce enough economic benefit.

The capacity question remains unsettled

The public outline is still limited. When Connecticut Public sought 365 Data Centers’ letter of intent, a company representative declined to provide it, describing the document as confidential and non-binding and saying there was no timetable for a future public announcement.

Yale environmental and energy economics professor Kenneth Gillingham said Connecticut has several data centers but no known AI data centers. He put the Trumbull facility’s current capacity at 15 megawatts and said AI data centers’ more powerful processing units can make them more energy- and water-intensive than conventional facilities.

For Trumbull, the immediate issue is not whether to approve a new campus. It is whether a data center’s shift toward AI computing can proceed under commitments whose enforceability has yet to be settled.