A data center in Bow?

Good morning, New Hampshire, and welcome to Wednesday. Today, Molly Rains reports on a potential new neighbor for a the people of Bow: a hyperscale data center. Also, Stateline’s Kevin Hardy looks at how SNAP cuts could affect children’s school lunches. And, from States Newsroom’s Jacob Fischler, a U.S. Postal Service whistleblower raises new concerns about the potential for a “catastrophic disruption” affecting the midterm elections. Thank you for reading, and for supporting our work. — Dana

By Molly Rains

A massive data center could be headed to the town of Bow, according to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission filings and a social media post from New Hampshire’s consumer advocate. The public filings describe an agreement for a preliminary, exploratory study on the “viability” of connecting a 350-megawatt project to the grid. The study, according to the filings, was to be conducted by Eversource Energy, which owns the region’s electric transmission system, at the request of Granite Shore Power, LLC, owner of Merrimack Station, a former coal-fired power plant in Bow.

By Kevin Hardy

Cuts to the nation’s largest food assistance program will likely spill over into schools, causing students to lose access to free breakfast and lunch. More than 1 million American children have lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, following a recent federal law. Now, as schools gear up for a new term, a portion of those children could be at risk of losing free meals — viewed as crucial supports for both childhood hunger and classroom learning. But the changes in cafeterias could affect even families who have never participated in the federal food stamp program.

By Jacob Fischler

The U.S. Postal Service rushed the development of electronic tools to comply with a Trump administration policy placing new restrictions on mail-in voting, and defied a court order to stop work on the system, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint published Tuesday by Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The unnamed whistleblower predicted the result could be “foreseeable catastrophic disruption to our coming nationwide elections based on the reckless pursuit of readying a new, insufficiently tested, poorly planned mail-in ballot screening system.”