Data Centers

Most of the project’s details and its impacts are largely unknown to the public, to the New Castle County Council, or to the vast majority of the state’s electricity ratepayers. Yet Starwood has tried promising short-term, high-wage union jobs, despite the likelihood of few well-paying, long-term jobs, but with the almost-certain long-term harm cited for similar projects across the country.

The Delaware Coalition for Open Government, as well as other nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations that strive for public accountability and awareness, believe the public needs to know what is at stake.

Higher Electricity Prices

Numerous news reports continue to highlight how electricity rates across the country have increased dramatically in recent years when mega data centers have been built. These data centers’ demand for power has outstripped electrical generation capacity, driving up prices. Without local or state requirements for data centers to pay their fair share or produce their own electricity, demand will continue to drive electricity prices ever higher.

The cost of utilities has become an increasing burden on Delaware families, and the Starwood proposal would shift their electrical costs onto residential costumers without any public recourse to ensure these data centers pay for their increases to electricity generation needs.

Starwood officials stated at an August 2025 community meeting in Delaware City that they will not produce even one kilowatt of energy and will instead rely on the market to meet the demand. In other words, since Delaware produces less than one-third of the electricity we consume, our electricity rates will rise substantially, especially as more large data centers come into New Castle County and other areas of the state.

Delaware’s Public Service Commission and the Public Advocate already are struggling with this issue. The dire projections are that Delaware will be in such short supply of electricity in a few years, brownouts will be implemented. Yet we want to build a 1.2 gigawatt energy-consuming data center? Several legislators are in the early stages of addressing this issue, but we, the public, need to demand a place at the table.

Environmental Damage

About 25% of the land area of our small state (tidal and non-tidal) is wetlands, which are often permanently covered by water (fresh, salt or brackish) that are not only critical for food security but, according to the World Wildlife Fund, “are the planet’s natural wastewater treatment facilities and carbon-storing champions,” providing “flood control, clean water, shoreline and storm protection, materials, medicines, and vital habitat” for birds, animals, and fish.

The proposed data center site – consisting of two tracts that straddle Red Lion Creek and are near the Delaware River – is land covered by the Delaware Coastal Zone Act, established to protect wetlands and our environment. This act, which was meant to increase public oversight, has been gradually undermined by projects such as data centers. Of the two parcels, which include flood zones in the Red Lion Creek watershed, the south parcel nearest the Delaware City refinery is zoned as a heavy industrial site.

Starwood has given the proposed 6.1-million-square-foot data center the name of Project Washington in an effort to reflect its importance if connected to the Delmarva power grid situated between Washington, D.C., and New York City.

The magnitude of this project, which involves hundreds of large diesel generators and the use of tremendous volumes of water, could damage our fragile wetlands and return the warmed water back into the environment, adversely affecting plants and wildlife. And the enormous amount of electricity the proposed data center would consume – at least as much or more than all of the existing homes in the entire state – raises many serious health and environmental concerns.

Health Impacts

The health of many residents, especially those with PTSD or on the autism spectrum, can be harmed by prolonged exposure to loud noise. Other health consequences, such as aggravation of cardiovascular conditions, reduced quality of life, and impairment of cognitive performance that can result from persistent 24/7 exposure to low-frequency noise.

We – and the general public – don’t understand why, when there are so many serious questions about harm from data center operations, that so few New Castle County Council members are willing to demand further evaluation of this issue. Nor, it appears, is Delaware’s Department of Health and Social Services, which is responsible for the health of all Delawareans, looking at the grave health dangers of the proposed data center project.

Oversight Is Needed

Despite these and other issues being raised, many members of the New Castle County Council have failed to seriously consider the data center ordinance draft proposed by fellow Councilman David Carter that would establish strict standards – covering all data centers in New Castle County, including this project – for location, energy efficiency, water use, and noise, with a regulation for a 1,000-foot buffer from residential communities.

Members of the public have been largely ignored because under the current land use review process, WE, the public, are cut out of the process of considering the first phase of the project. Under the “by-right” provision of existing land zoning and usage, this entire phase is essentially invisible to us and removes the public from being able to raise concerns and have them considered.

That’s right, despite this being one of the single largest industrial projects ever in Delaware, New Castle County makes no provision to mandate consideration of legitimate health and environmental issues raised.  The only way these issues ever will get a fair and thorough hearing is through the passage of Councilman Carter’s data center ordinance at the state level.

Meanwhile, Starwood Digital Ventures, New Castle Campus Development LLC (owner of the land for the data center), and their advocates are well underway with a publicity campaign to make Project Washington sound like a win-win situation for all Delawareans.

Starwood began its publicity campaign in August 2025, at a public information session in Delaware City. Starwood never divulged much about this massive project, choosing to make vague responses in response to questions about the source of the 1.2 gigawatts of electrical capacity it will consume while evading answering who its artificial intelligence clients/customers will be. Starwood and other project
representatives filed documents with the County Land Use Department and state officials in June 2025. Because the Project Washington application beat Councilman Carter’s August introduction of his data center ordinance draft and because of the “by-right” zoning provision, Starwood officials consequently believe they can argue that the ordinance shouldn’t apply to Project Washington and the public shouldn’t have a say in it.

Starwood Application Raises More Questions

Because the public has little insight into this serious matter, most Delawareans are unaware that the June 2, 2025, engineering letter submitted to the New Castle County Land Use Department requesting a “pre-application” meeting states: “The project will be phased and is being submitted in 2 concurrent applications. . . .” But based on a review of the project documents, that seems not to have happened. In its June 4 letter to the general manager of the land use department, Starwood Digital Ventures provided “a high-level overview of the proposed Project” but goes on to describe only phase 1, which is focused on the parcel known as the South Campus, at 825 Governor Lea Road. But there is no mention of phase 2, referred to in other documents as North Campus, a site on a completely different parcel on the north side of Red Lion Creek and, thus, will require a public hearing because it would involve rezoning.

Further, the only application filed with Delaware’s Preliminary Land Use Service (PLUS) is for the South Campus, but the filing includes details about the North Campus. This may pertain to the need for multiple “electrical yards” in the North Campus area, which is zoned for suburban use and for the project to work, requires some administrative actions invisible to the public. Again, the public and the New Castle County Council seem to be largely unaware of these filings, actions, and their lasting consequences.

Delaware residents across the state should all be concerned. Why these filings contain details and unexplained maps and drawings that are not part of Project Washington? The details are not discussed in the key project letters and the PLUS application. One example is an adjoining parcel on the east side of the South Campus known as 755 Governor Lea Road, which shows drawings that include additional buildings, while another parcel further east, known as 750 Governor Lea Road, shows an undisclosed 353,500 square-foot building. Even more perplexing is one document that clearly notes it is not to be used or relied upon in making decisions about it! So then why are these parcels and buildings that supposedly are not to be part of the project even included in the drawings?

What We Need Now

Delawareans need to demand that the Delaware General Assembly take charge and open up this process to full public disclosure and participation. We no longer can be kept in the dark and continue to sit back while something as massive and impactful as Starwood’s Project Washington happens without answers and forward thinking.

Every citizen in the First State has a stake in this enormous project and should work toward raising a collective voice to pause any action until we clearly understand what’s going on, what the possibility of more data centers would mean for our future, and with the knowledge that responsible government oversight is in place.

The time to think things through and to make responsible decisions is NOW . . . while we still can.