The Stream Under the Turnpike, and the Data Center Over the Barnes Aquifer

Image source https://tinyurl.com/2t3kumjt

When my Dad drove me, he let me out at East Mountain Golf Course. He said to be home for supper. I said I would. He drove off and I went down to the water.

I was ten when I first fished it. The stream came out of the woods below the golf course. It was small and cold and clear. You could step across it in three places. I fished it downstream, one pool at a time, and I kept low and quiet. The brook trout were native and they had been there longer than the golf course, the turnpike and the town. They were dark on the back and orange on the belly, with white edges on the fins. I kept a few. I put the rest back.

I never saw another person on it. There were no boot prints in the mud and no line in the branches. No beer cans, no bait tins. The golfers stayed on the fairways and the people in the cars on the turnpike never looked down. I think I was the only one who ever fished that section. I told no one. My friends did not know. I kept it to myself and the trout stayed where they were.

There was a pool in the woods where the stream bent against a root bank. It was deep on the outside of the bend and slow. A big brook trout lived there. I saw the fish the first time as a shadow that moved when I moved. I put a worm over the edge of the current and let it drift under the roots. The trout took it hard.

It was the biggest brook trout I had ever seen. Its belly was deep orange. Its back was dark green with pale spots, and the red spots had blue rings around them. I held the trout in the water and it stayed there a moment, then it went. I let it go. I could have kept it. I let it go anyway.

I caught the trout several times that way. I knew it by the size and by the pool. Each time I let it go. Nobody else knew it was there, so nobody else would have let it go.

The woods got thick below the pool and I followed the stream through them. Then the Massachusetts Turnpike came over the top and the stream went into a tunnel. Trucks ran overhead and the concrete shook a little. Inside it was dark and loud and the water was colder than outside. I waded in with the rod held low. The big brown trout lived under there. They held in the current, facing upstream, and waited for the water to bring them something to eat. Sometimes I could see them. They were always hard to catch. I caught a few over the years and let every one go. The one I remember best, I lost. I had hooked a big brown and I had no net. I never carried a net because it tangled in the brush. I had the trout in my hand. It flipped its tail and spat the hook. I was going to let it go anyway. Still. I stood in the dark a while after that.

On the other side the stream came out into the light and ran on to the railroad tracks. There I left it. I climbed the cinders and walked the rails home to 342 Holyoke Road. The ties were spaced wrong for my legs. I walked them anyway.

When my Dad did not drive me, I went the other way. I left the house in the morning and cut through the woods to the tracks. I followed the rails until the stream passed under them. I started there and fished upstream toward the tunnel, and then on to the pool. My Mom knew the time to expect me and that was enough.

The water was cold in July. It came out of the ground that cold and stayed that cold all summer. I never wondered why. A boy does not wonder about water that works. I know now where it comes from. It comes from the Barnes Aquifer, and I fished it for years without knowing its name.

The last time I fished the stream was (I think) the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. That was about fifty years ago. My parents' house sold, and I doubt I will fish it again. I wrote about the sale and the empty rooms.

Thousands of cars cross the stream every day on the turnpike. I doubt anyone knows it is there. I always look. I can see a small section of it. It looks like beavers have dammed part of it. They found the stream too.

I do not know if the brook trout are still there. The big one is gone. Brook trout seldom live past five years. I do not know if the water is still cold in July.

A data center campus is now proposed over the aquifer. In 2021, the Westfield City Council approved a $4 billion campus at 199 Servistar Industrial Way, 1.8 miles from my childhood house. The vote passed 9 to 3. The site sits partly on wetlands and directly over the Barnes Aquifer, the region's municipal drinking water source. In July 2026, the council voted unanimously for a one year moratorium on new data centers. The campus would draw 274 megawatts.

Servistar says it plans a closed-loop cooling system. The reporting I reviewed does not name the cooling vendor or design. NVIDIA's current liquid cooling design uses dry coolers and claims zero water consumption on site. Dry coolers can demand 10 to 35 percent more electricity than evaporative towers. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that 92.5 percent of a data center's water footprint comes from generating its electricity. Servistar's plans include natural gas generators. I covered the engineering in more detail in my post on NVIDIA's cooling design.

State certification standards will require the developer to disclose cooling method, power source, and noise mitigation before construction proceeds.

I do not know what the campus will do to the stream. Brook trout need cold water, and that stream ran cold because of the aquifer. I never told anyone about it. I am telling you now, so that when the disclosures come out, you know a stream runs under the turnpike on that water.