Prospective data-mining facility to undergo two-step zoning review; safety and grid questions raised

Jackson County supervisors were alerted on Jan. 21 that a proposed data-mining operation will follow the county’s two-step conditional-use process: an initial appearance before the zoning commission to identify an appropriate district, followed by a board of adjustment hearing to set special conditions for operation.

Laurie, a county staff member, said the application in question is from a different company than the one that previously spoke to the county; the new applicant submitted an application shortly after the county’s moratorium on such facilities was rescinded. She said Manchester has approved a site with roughly 50 server “boxcars” in a single industrial-park location — a scale the county has not routinely seen.

Supervisors and staff discussed safety and reliability concerns after a data center in Grundy Center caught fire. Laurie said county staff had spoken to Nick Schulte at Coconut Valley Electric Cooperative about the risk that a local fire could disrupt power to other consumers. “He says very slim because everything has like a circuit breaker…that facility's breaker is going to stop everything and it's not going to compromise the grid,” Laurie reported, paraphrasing the cooperative’s explanation.

The county will receive the data-mining application at the zoning commission and, if advanced, the project would next go to the board of adjustment where conditions such as fire-suppression, setbacks, and other operational limits could be imposed. No board-level approval or denial occurred at the Jan. 21 meeting.