Athens-Clarke County weighs new data-center rules as residents urge moratorium extension

Athens-Clarke County planning staff presented a package of zoning text amendments on Feb. 17 intended to make data centers an explicit, automatically reviewed Level 3 industrial use and to add technical standards intended to protect local resources.

Planning Director Bruce Lonnie told the mayor and commission staff’s goal was to regulate the features the county controls — primarily water, stormwater and land-use impacts — and to require any data center to apply for a special-use permit so the county could impose binding site plans, conditions and annual performance reporting. ‘‘Data centers are being slotted as a Level 3 use in this proposal, so they will automatically be considered for special use,’’ Lonnie said, adding the ordinance would require closed-loop cooling systems and call for reporting on water, wastewater, noise, hazardous materials and phasing.

Why it matters: commissioners and many residents said the technical, environmental and equity impacts could be substantial. The county currently has a moratorium on new data-center applications adopted in December; that moratorium is scheduled to lapse March 6. Community members and several commissioners pressed staff to extend the pause and to seek additional technical review and state input before any final vote.

Public input at the meeting was sharply focused. Sally Coonan, an Athens resident, asked the commission to ‘‘pause before voting on the Planning Commission’s recommendation’’ and to ‘‘extend the moratorium a few more weeks so that we can have more time to investigate and explore this extremely complex and consequential issue.’’ Lexi Torres, a senior director at Microsoft who said she lives in Athens, urged caution while offering industry expertise: ‘‘Please take your time. Please look at your resource allocation and management and capacity and do not over pivot on this hyper scale build for data centers,’’ she said. Other residents urged an indefinite extension or stronger local controls, citing potential electricity- and water-use burdens on nearby neighborhoods and calling for energy-use reporting, stronger public notice, and a citizen oversight group.

The Planning Commission recommended approval of the text amendments with revisions. Notably, the Planning Commission removed a staff-proposed 5-megawatt threshold that would have linked larger builds to required on-site renewable energy, and instead treated all data centers as a special-use category while asking staff to develop more detailed data-center-specific special-use criteria.

Commission discussion centered on process and legal authority. Commissioners asked staff and the county attorney to research whether the county can outright ban data centers or require on-site renewables, and to prepare memos on authority over pollutants from backup generators. Multiple commissioners said they favored extending the moratorium long enough to see if the Georgia General Assembly acts this session and to give staff clear direction on additional issues to study. County staff advised that any moratorium extension must be time-determinate under Georgia law.

Next steps: commissioners discussed remanding the draft back to the Planning Commission with clearer study instructions, and staff said they will post slides and materials online and prepare follow-up memos for legal and technical questions. No formal vote to extend the moratorium was taken at the agenda-setting meeting; that action would require a future formal vote at a scheduled voting meeting.

Quote: ‘‘We were seeing two trend lines for data center development. One toward smaller decentralized centers and one toward larger hypercenters. Both bring their own sets of concerns,’’ Lonnie said.

The commission concluded the agenda-setting discussion by listing follow-up items for staff — including legal research on local authority, generator pollutant controls, negotiation with the Public Service Commission, and options for a time-limited moratorium extension — and indicated the Planning Commission could be asked to refine special-use criteria before adoption.