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Commissioners weigh data-center rules: power limits, closed-loop cooling and heat reuse
Summary
Commissioners discussed allowing small 'edge' data centers with closed-loop cooling, tying capacity limits to Power & Light technical guidance (power consumption rather than a fixed count), and explored incentives for waste-heat capture and district heating; public commenters pressed for noise, safety and discharge planning.
Commissioners debated draft principles for a data-center ordinance focused on limiting environmental and infrastructure impacts while allowing small edge facilities.
One commissioner proposed three core principles: allow only small-edge facilities, require closed-loop cooling systems, and restrict concurrent data-center load so municipal power capacity is not exceeded. "I would like to see that in writing that we have only 1 no more than 1 data center in the borough at any given time," one commissioner said. Others recommended a capacity-based approach: "rather than say limit by the number of data centers, it should be by the power consumption of the data center," a commissioner said, adding that Power & Light should provide a technical limit the borough can reference.
Commissioners and staff flagged related safeguards: require closed-loop cooling to minimize fresh-water use and avoid coolant fluids that contain PFAS; require the data center to bear costs for any extraordinary power-supply surcharges; and encourage (or incentivize) colocation and district-heating strategies to capture and reuse waste heat. One commissioner noted a Finnish "district heating" model as an opportunity for symbiosis between data-center heat output and local building heating needs.
Public commenters asked technical follow-ups. A resident urged the borough to obtain an FCC-verified RF monitor and noted anonymized hospital data could be used to look for health clusters (with legal safeguards). Susan Martinez asked specifically how a closed-loop system's initial charge and periodic flushes would be handled and where that discharge would go; she warned initial charging could require thousands to tens of thousands of gallons.
Commissioners agreed that Power & Light is best positioned to provide technical limits on capacity and that staff should coordinate with the utility department before drafting prescriptive ordinance language. The commission asked staff to consider these principles for an ordinance draft and to return recommended language and thresholds for later review.
