Iroquois County board adopts one-year moratorium on data centers, warehouses to study grid and water impacts

The Iroquois County Board voted on April 16 to implement a temporary one-year moratorium on new data-center and warehouse development applications so county staff and elected officials can study potential impacts on the electrical grid and water resources and update county ordinances accordingly.

Planning & Zoning committee members told the board they recommended the moratorium to provide time to evaluate site impacts and to bring the county’s wind, solar and battery-storage ordinances into compliance with recent state legislation. The committee’s recommendation passed unanimously at committee and the full board moved to adopt a one-year pause on accepting or approving new applications in the affected categories.

Public commenters at the meeting praised the decision. One commenter thanked the board for pursuing a moratorium and raised long-term concerns about water use and “urban crawl” near towns including Joliet, Lockport, Plainfield and Manhattan.

The moratorium will allow the county to form a working group to prioritize required updates (including provisions that must be in place by June 1 for battery-storage under state law), hold workshops for committee members and the public, and draft ordinance language addressing interconnection timing, landscape buffers, decommissioning assurances and other site conditions.

Next steps: Planning & Zoning and county staff will draft moratorium language and a schedule for the impact study and ordinance updates, with the goal of returning proposed ordinance language to the board for review within weeks. The moratorium is temporary and intended to preserve county options while staff completes required analyses.