The tech industry is quietly staking a massive physical claim across New Jersey. Giant windowless facilities pull industrial levels of electricity and water from local supply lines to process artificial intelligence networks and cloud storage.

The true scale of this corporate extraction is rarely publicized because developers routinely classify their resource consumption as proprietary secrets. By mapping the largest operating centers and pulling public filings for upcoming projects we can calculate the toll this takes on the public grid.

Because exact utility bills are shielded from public view the following consumption figures are estimates based on known industry resource requirements. A single megawatt of data center capacity running year-round requires about 8,760 megawatt-hours of electricity. Standard cooling systems demand roughly four to five million gallons of water annually per megawatt.

Here is what that looks like on the ground today:

• 165 Halsey Street (Newark): This historic telecom carrier hotel functions as a massive colocation data center. The 1.2-million-square-foot complex operates with a power capacity exceeding 80 megawatts. It demands up to 700,800 MWh of electricity and 320 to 400 million gallons of water annually.

  Digital Realty EWR12 (365 South Randolphville Road, Piscataway): This 730,000-square-foot campus operates with 34 megawatts of total power capacity. It consumes up to 297,840 MWh of electricity and 136 to 170 million gallons of water annually.

• Iron Mountain NJE-1 (Edison): Operating at a 25.6 MW capacity it demands up to 224,256 MWh of electricity and 102 to 128 million gallons of water annually.

• Centersquare EWR2 (300 Boulevard East, Weehawken): A 25 MW site using up to 219,000 MWh of power and 100 to 125 million gallons of water every year. Centersquare is the April 2024 rebranding of the merger between Cyxtera and Evoque.

• Centersquare EWR3 (3 Corporate Place, Piscataway): Operating at 18 MW.

• Centersquare EWR5 (15 Enterprise Ave North, Secaucus): Operating at 12 MW capacity.

• That existing footprint is tiny compared to what tech monopolies are planning next.

Future complexes are explicitly designed for heavy AI workloads. These upcoming projects require exponentially more power than standard cloud servers.

Public filings reveal a wave of hyperscale developments targeting our municipalities.

• DataOne and Nebius Campus (Vineland): A planned 300-megawatt development in Cumberland County. DataOne is the sustainable infrastructure developer building the site and Amsterdam-based Nebius is the AI cloud company acting as the primary tenant. Developers utilized a "rapid deployment" model with Phase 1 rising in just 20 weeks. The developer plans to operate an islanded microgrid powered by roughly 36 Bergen medium-speed natural gas engines. During recent legislative committee hearings Vineland resident Zac Landicini testified that public developer materials show the site requires immense power to operate.

• CoreWeave Kenilworth Campus (Union County): Developers broke ground on a massive 250-megawatt $1.8 billion data center project at the former Merck campus at 2000 Galloping Hill Road.

• Chirisa Technology Parks PNJ-01 and PNJ-02 (Middlesex County): A 90 MW complex expected to come online this year.

  ON3 Data Center (Nutley/Clifton): Prism Capital Partners received approval for an 11-acre facility at Kingsland Street and Cathedral Avenue. It features a 10-megawatt co-hybrid power plant recently modernized with PSE&G support.

To understand the sheer volume of this drain consider that the Kenilworth project alone demands enough electricity from the grid to power more than a quarter-million homes.

Lawmakers in Trenton and Washington are finally attempting to build regulatory guardrails against this corporate offloading.

The State Senate Environment and Energy Committee advanced bill S-3379 earlier this year. Sponsored by Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex/Hudson) the legislation forces data center operators to submit comprehensive water and energy usage reports to the Board of Public Utilities twice a year.

"New Jersey is a hub for innovation, but that growth cannot come at the expense of our residents' wallets or our environment," Ruiz stated following the committee vote. "This bill is a commonsense measure to give policymakers the tools needed to protect consumers and manage our resources responsibly."

Another legislative push aims to stop working-class ratepayers from subsidizing the grid upgrades required by these tech giants. Bills S-4307 and A-5462 require the Board of Public Utilities to develop special tariff rates for "large load data centers" demanding 100 megawatts or more of electricity per month. The legislation specifically mandates that these facilities must pay no less than 85 percent of their service costs.

This is not a theoretical debate. Lawmakers passed a similar version of this bill in January. Former Governor Phil Murphy pocket-vetoed the legislation by letting the session expire without his signature before leaving office.

Trenton is now moving aggressively to bypass that roadblock. On Thursday, February 12, the new versions of S-4307 and A-5462 advanced through both Assembly and Senate committees with unanimous bipartisan votes. Lawmakers are fast-tracking the bills to get them onto the desk of new Governor Mikie Sherrill.

State Senator John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester/Salem/Cumberland) is a lead sponsor.

"Putting a tariff system in place will provide a means to have these large energy users pay their fair share and offset any extra costs that get imposed on residents," Burzichelli said. "We need to make sure that the expenses of these energy-consuming centers aren't falling on non-data center customers."

State Senator John McKeon (D-Essex) co-sponsored the bill to protect local residents.

"New Jersey is experiencing a dramatic expansion of data centers that is impacting residential customers," McKeon noted. "We need to make sure these centers are compensating others paying for their energy consumption and that non-data center customers aren't subsidizing them."

During the February 12 committee hearings lawmakers made it clear who they are protecting.

"Data centers are going to be a part of our future, and we are going to deal with it, but this bill is strictly for protecting our ratepayers," Assemblyman Rob Karabinchak (D-Middlesex) stated.

Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo (D-Mercer) testified about the sheer scale of the threat. He warned that a single proposed Amazon data center across the river in Pennsylvania could require twice as much power as the entire municipality of Hamilton.

New Jersey Rate Counsel Brian Lipman publicly backed the bill during the hearings. Lipman testified that the measure is necessary to reduce the data center impact on residential bills.

At the federal level currently elected representatives are also demanding accountability. U.S. Representative Rob Menendez (NJ-08) introduced H.R. 6983 known as the Preventing Rate Inflation in Consumer Energy (PRICE) Act. The bill demands data centers generate the electricity they consume and transition to entirely renewable sources by 2040.

Menendez pointed directly to the material cost hitting his constituents.

"While AI innovation is promising, we must ensure that our constituents are not negatively impacted because of the industry's continued growth," Menendez said. "New Jersey families have seen their electricity bills increased by 20% because of the rapid growth of energy-intensive AI data centers."

State Assemblywoman Andrea Katz (D-Burlington) sponsored A2770 to establish a grid modernization surcharge targeting large data centers. She wants the tech sector to feel the financial weight of draining peak-hour electricity.

"They're not going to want to pay those dollars, right, they're going to want to be more efficient and they're not going to want to use energy at those peak hours because they won't want to pay that surcharge," Katz argued during an on-the-record interview.

The physical extraction is massive and the legislative battle has begun. In Part 2 we will investigate the exact mechanism forcing New Jersey families to subsidize the power grid upgrades demanded by these private tech monopolies.

Correction: An earlier version of this article omitted 165 Halsey Street in Newark from the list of major operating data centers. The 1.2-million-square-foot facility operates with a power capacity exceeding 80 megawatts. Additionally the initial report listed Data One and Nebius as two separate upcoming projects in Vineland. They are the same planned 300-megawatt development. DataOne is the site developer and Nebius is the primary tenant. The text has been updated to reflect these facts.