Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Energy Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Commission declines to pursue wind/solar/data‑center ordinance at this time
Summary
After staff presented interest in updating ordinances for wind, solar and data‑center projects, commissioners raised concerns about water and power demands and decided not to proceed with a specific ordinance change now.
Planning staff brought a non‑hearing discussion to the commission about whether to update county ordinance language to address modern projects such as solar with battery storage, wind, and data centers.
Chair summarized his view: these technologies “do not fit in our county” and raised environmental and resource concerns for data centers, saying they require large amounts of power and water. County engineering/staff witness Tom Aemet reviewed technical constraints and said data centers pose three major obstacles — power, cooling/water and design — and noted that in many cases large companies buy or site their own power generation to meet demand. “Data centers ... take tons of power. They take tons of water for cooling, and they don’t provide a lot of jobs,” he said.
Commissioners discussed trade‑offs between potential revenue and resource strain. After an extended discussion and staff input, commissioners indicated they did not want to develop a new ordinance for these uses at this time and directed staff to monitor interest and bring specific proposals back only if warranted.
No formal ordinance was proposed or adopted at the meeting.
