Eastport's 180-day pause shows how a small fishing town can slow an underwater AI data center

The Eastport City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to enact a 180-day moratorium halting progress on a proposed tidal-powered underwater AI data center planned for the Bay of Fundy off Eastport, Maine. The same week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sent the developer a letter listing the deficiencies in its preliminary-permit application, including missing tribal contact information, an oversized 400-acre "operational envelope," and maps that extended beyond the project boundaries the statute requires.

The two actions landed within days of each other and put the project on a two-track clock. The local track is the 180-day zoning pause, with the Eastport Planning Board reviewing two citizen-initiated ordinances aimed at preventing data center projects. The federal track is FERC's preliminary-permit review, a step that allows engineering and environmental testing but doesn't authorize construction. Eastport is a Passamaquoddy Bay fishing city of roughly 1,300 residents on the Maine–New Brunswick border, sitting on one of the world's highest tidal ranges, and the votes and letters are now landing on the same developer in the same week.

The project is from Louis Wolfson, a luxury real-estate developer from Needham, Massachusetts, and the managing member of DeepGreen Holdings LLC, which was formed in Delaware one month before applying to FERC. In February, DeepGreen filed a 48-month preliminary permit application for a tidal-powered underwater AI data center in the Bay of Fundy. The idea has a precedent: Microsoft ran Project Natick, a research program that put small server vessels on the seafloor off Scotland and later California, before winding the work down in 2020.

FERC's deficiency letter, reported by The Maine Monitor, found the application failed to identify all Tribes affected, failed to specify all physical dimensions and configurations required by statute, included maps that extended beyond the required project boundaries, and offered no detailed technical explanation for a 400-acre "operational envelope" against a much smaller active infrastructure footprint. The 400-acre envelope is the area where infrastructure could be placed during the study, not the area the developer intends to build.

The local mechanism is just as direct. The Eastport Coalition for Healthy Oceans (ECHO) submitted the two citizen-initiated ordinances aimed at preventing data center projects by amending the city's Zoning and Shoreland Zoning ordinances, framing the changes as protecting "the character of the city." Councilors said the 180-day pause gives them time to consult with the Eastport Planning Board on the zoning impact.

Passamaquoddy tribal officials are strongly opposed to the development, alongside Eastport residents. The FERC letter found that the application had not identified all affected Tribes, a gap that tracks the concern tribal officials have raised publicly. The 400-acre operational envelope sits in waters that tribal nations have used for fishing and navigation for generations.

The 180-day pause is not a defeat of the project. DeepGreen is still in the regulatory process and has already submitted a revised application in response to FERC's letter, having reduced the size and scope of the project. The company also has a parallel Maine project, DeepGreen Western Passage SVP, and a second project in Alaska's Upper Cook Inlet that has drawn its own local resistance.

Eastport is a working coastal community with a fishing-and-cannery economy, and the zoning question is local long before it is federal. The next milestones are dated. FERC will rule on whether the revised preliminary-permit application meets the statutory floor. The Eastport Planning Board has 180 days to review the two ECHO ordinances and recommend language to the council. If the ordinances pass and the federal application is found sufficient on resubmission, the two tracks will speak at once again, this time on construction, not study.