Emmet County’s Board of Supervisors has unanimously adopted a one-year moratorium on new data center developments.
Supervisor Lisa Hansen of Armstrong, chair of the board, said the county now has time to investigate the issue. “We have to have some rules and regulations on the data centers. Several counties have already got their policies made,” she said. “There are 116 bigger data centers in Iowa, and in about 14 different areas, and so eventually there could be a possibility of them coming to our county and so we have to set regulations for them to come into our county.”
Hansen said the county has not been contacted by a company planning to build a data center in Emmet County, but residents are raising questions about a data center’s use of electricity and of water, and what would happen during a drought. “If they’re sucking up all the electricity and we have a blackout because they’ve taken all the electricity out of the area, residents are going to be a little upset then,” Hansen says, “so those are some concerns we have to look into and actually see if they’re true or not.”
Emmet County officials are currently working on an ordinance governing the placement of solar panels in areas outside of cities and towns in the county. Hansen said the one-year moratorium gives Planning and Zoning officials and the board of supervisors time to complete that project, then develop guidelines for a data center ordinance.
(By Ed Funston, KILR, Estherville)