Woodbury County leaders are working to impose a moratorium on data centers in unincorporated areas until they can draft regulations.
The issue emerged after the town of Salix voluntarily annexed 900 acres of farmland in April. Last week, MidAmerican Energy confirmed the site is being considered for a data center.
At Tuesday’s meeting, resident Janet Yanak urged the county board to pass the moratorium, even though it doesn’t have jurisdiction over the potential project.
“To ensure that another project doesn’t appear before the supervisors have enacted strong regulations to protect our county and our environment,” Yanak says. “No data center is worth the life and health of one person.”
Other neighbors of the project testified that they weren’t notified of the annexation, and supervisor Mark Nelson responded.
“The county was blindsided as well,” Nelson says, “and so, we’re trying to create a process where people can help us dictate what happens to the rest of the county going forward.”
Supervisors plan to put the moratorium on next week’s agenda and ask the county attorney to look into whether Salix leaders correctly followed state law.
The board supports a one-year moratorium on data centers to gather public input on an ordinance to regulate them.
Meanwhile, Salix would still need to rezone the property for the project to move forward.
MidAmerican Energy released the following statement:
We understand people have questions and MidAmerican has been trying to provide information as early and as directly as possible. The development site that’s under consideration is within the Salix city limits and not in rural Woodbury County.
On June 8, MidAmerican delivered a letter to the mayor and city council explaining our role and the status of the site. We also made printed copies available at the meeting and had representatives there to answer questions in person.
The main point is that the site is being evaluated as a possible data center location, but no end-use customer has been selected. MidAmerican is in confidential discussions with prospective customers. If the process advances to a single customer, that will be identified publicly.
It’s also important to be clear about what this is and what it is not. MidAmerican’s involvement to date has been focused on identifying and securing a site that could work for a large electric customer.
If a project does move forward, it would only do so under a structure that protects our existing customers. Any customer at this site would be required to pay the full cost of the infrastructure needed to serve it, and any questions on local land-use would be addressed through the normal public process.
Again, we recognize people have questions that deserve to be addressed openly and directly.
(By Sheila Brummer, Iowa Public Radio)