Governor Sherrill’s data center bills aren’t guardrails. They’re green lights.

New reporting requirements do little to slow data center development, while a $250 million tax award for CoreWeave remains in place.

Governor Mikie Sherrill says New Jersey needs “guardrails” for the data center explosion. On Aug. 27, she signed S3379, the data center reporting bill, along with S4390/A5165, the so-called “End Data Center Tax Credits Act.”

But these bills don’t stop the data center boom. They don’t protect communities from it. And they don’t undo one of the worst and most controversial data center deals in the state.

What the Governor is calling guardrails are really green lights.

The data center reporting bill doesn’t regulate data centers. It requires them to report how much water and electricity they use twice a year. That’s it.

No cap on water use. No cap on energy consumption. No statewide siting standards. No restrictions on where these industrial facilities can be built. No protections for the Highlands, Pinelands or other environmentally sensitive areas. No protections or limits for Environmental Justice communities. No requirement for clean energy. No limits on fossil-fuel infrastructure. No new environmental standards. No moratorium.

Transparency is not regulation. Reporting is not enforcement. And studying environmental damage is not preventing it.

A $250 million corporate giveaway still stands

While Governor Sherrill talks about ending data center tax credits, she left the biggest one on the books.

The End Data Center Tax Credits Act eliminates the remaining $250 million in uncommitted tax credits under the state’s Next New Jersey program. But the $250 million already awarded to CoreWeave for its massive AI data center in Kenilworth remains in place. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority approved that award in November 2025.

That project is one of the most controversial data center developments in New Jersey, with significant public opposition, major concerns about its environmental community impacts, and very few permanent jobs.

The $250 million is to help create 143 permanent jobs, or $1.75 million per job. If you include temporary construction jobs, it’s $350,000 per job. The money hasn’t been handed over all at once. The award is performance-based and can be distributed over five years starting in 2027, if the company meets its requirements. But the unnecessary subsidies remain. 

If Governor Sherrill really wants to end data center tax giveaways, she should pull back the $250 million in EDA money for CoreWeave instead of grandfathering this dirty deal. You can’t claim you’re ending corporate subsidies while protecting the biggest data center tax break in the state. Kenilworth shows her commitment is worthless.

The Legislature shut the barn door after the horse got out. CoreWeave is still inside the barn, with a $250 million check waiting.         

If this is such a great project, they would not need the subsidies, or this money is just to enrich the Big Tech Billionaires.

This project has some of the worst and most controversial environmental impacts in the state. It should not be protected by a grandfather clause simply because the state made the deal before public opposition caught up with it. The State of New Jersey is subsidizing the destruction of the environment and Kenilworth. 

Counting the damage while allowing it to happen

The data center reporting bill is a data-collection bill about data centers dressed up as environmental protection.

It is like saying you’re going on a diet because you’re counting calories while sitting on the couch eating Doritos and donuts. You’re keeping track—but you’re still eating everything in sight.

That is exactly what New Jersey is doing with data centers: counting the damage while allowing the damage to happen.

The Governor’s plan calls for monitoring, reporting, studies, and transparency. That might make for a nice press conference, but it is not environmental protection.

A six-month report is not a safeguard. It is a receipt for the damage.

Studying someone falling off a ladder instead of holding the ladder doesn’t make much sense. Neither does documenting a starving kitten for three years instead of feeding it.

By the time Trenton finishes collecting its data, the trees could be gone, the concrete poured, substations built, transmission lines expanded, water consumed, and electric bills higher. Monitoring environmental destruction after it happens is like installing a smoke detector after the house has burned down.

There is no cloud

Data centers are not harmless “clouds.” They are massive industrial facilities—warehouses packed with servers, cooling systems, substations, backup generators, and electrical equipment.

They consume enormous amounts of electricity and can consume enormous amounts of water. Their demand can trigger new transmission infrastructure and new power generation. And somebody pays for that.

New Jersey ratepayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize an industry whose profits are private while its infrastructure and environmental costs are dumped on the public.

There is no cloud. There is concrete, steel, water, power lines, and utility bills.

New Jersey is falling behind

The most embarrassing part is that other states are recognizing the problem while New Jersey is busy studying it.

New York has imposed a temporary moratorium on large data centers for a year. Virginia and Michigan are moving legislation to put the brakes on development, while lawmakers in Pennsylvania and other states have introduced moratorium proposals.

Pennsylvania is moving to remove data centers from fast-track permitting while New Jersey is moving in the opposite direction.

Other states are putting up stop signs while New Jersey is putting up speed-limit signs. We should be slowing this down until we understand the impacts, not stepping on the accelerator.

Meanwhile, New Jersey communities are being forced to protect themselves because the governor won’t. Now at least 39 municipalities across the state have passed bans or restrictions on data centers, with at least 6 more pursuing them.

These local bans aren’t happening because towns are anti-technology. They’re happening because Trenton failed to act.

When the state refuses to put up guardrails, communities are forced to build their own. That is not statewide planning. That is 564 municipalities being left to fight the data center industry one bulldozer at a time.

Where is the planning?

The governor’s plan still doesn’t answer the most basic question: Where should these facilities go?

There are no meaningful statewide rules protecting drinking-water supplies, aquifers, wetlands, forests, farmland, the Highlands, the Pinelands and other sensitive resources from data center development.

There are no enforceable statewide limits on water use or energy demand. There is no requirement that data centers provide their own clean power. There is no comprehensive plan for the infrastructure they will require.

Instead, New Jersey is essentially saying build first, study later.

That is backwards.

You don’t let someone build a highway through your backyard and promise to study traffic after the road opens. You don’t let the bathtub overflow and then hold a hearing about where the water came from. And you don’t let an industry reshape the state’s energy and water demands before deciding whether it is sustainable.

We need a moratorium, not another study

More than 60 New Jersey organizations have called for a statewide moratorium on new large-scale data centers. Public concern is widespread, with water, electricity, PFAS, noise, land use and community impacts all driving opposition.

The most troubling moment came when the leaders of certain environmental groups attended Governor Sherrill’s press conference where she signed these bills that do little to address the enormous environmental threats posed by data centers. Their presence helps create the appearance of environmental support as the administration continues to advance policies that actively promote the industry’s expansion.

What Governor Sherrill is offering is not regulation. It is not planning. She is not taking back the $250 million for CoreWeave. It is not meaningful environmental protection. Fake reform is no reform while it undermines the grassroots groups fighting data centers. It is greenwashing and political cover.

The governor continues to oppose a moratorium on new data centers. She has not rescinded the $250 million in Economic Development Authority subsidies available to the industry. She ignored that demand. Instead, she signed another reporting bill and preserved the state’s biggest data center tax giveaway.

New Jersey needs a statewide moratorium now, not another study, another report or another task force. We need to determine the cumulative impacts before more facilities are approved and built. Once the bulldozers arrive, it is too late to study whether we should have stopped them.

A moratorium is not anti-business. It is not anti-technology. It is pro-planning, pro-water, pro-environment and pro-ratepayer.

Governors in New Jersey have a long and proud history of using moratoriums when our environmental resources are threatened. Over the last six decades, when it comes to the environment, 10 governors used at least 16 moratoriums to call time-outs so laws and regulations could catch up with emerging environmental problems. The moratoria were on many issues, from the Pinelands and Horseshoe Crabs to uranium mining and Wetlands. The time is now for data centers.

The state should establish enforceable statewide siting standards, hard limits on water and energy use, real clean-energy requirements, protections for environmentally sensitive and Environmental Justice communities, and rules requiring data centers to pay all of their infrastructure costs.

And if Governor Sherrill really wants to end data center tax credits, she should end all of them, not protect the $250 million CoreWeave giveaway.

Until then, Governor Sherrill should stop calling S3379 a guardrail. A guardrail keeps you from going over the cliff. S3379 just puts up a sign telling us how fast we went over it.

These aren’t guardrails. They’re green lights.