Residents urge Cathedral City to ban large data centers; commissioners ask staff for clear definitions and standards

During the June 17 workshop, data centers emerged as a contentious land‑use topic. Multiple public speakers urged the commission to remove standalone data centers from the draft development code or to recommend an immediate moratorium, citing concerns about water consumption, electrical grid strain and localized heat‑island effects.

One commenter summarized published figures and asked the commission to act: "A single medium sized data center can consume roughly a 110,000,000 gallons of water per year for cooling," the speaker said, adding that such facilities can raise local ambient temperatures. Commissioners agreed the city should not allow unbounded warehouse‑scale server farms but differed on the drafting approach: one view favored an explicit prohibition (list the use with no allowable zones), another favored listing the use with no zones (dash‑dash) or prescribing size and location requirements that large operators could not meet.

Consultants recommended creating a clear, technology‑neutral definition for standalone data processing centers that distinguishes accessory computer rooms (for businesses or hotels) from large, independent facilities, and then enumerating objective limits (for example, maximum building size, minimum setbacks, water use and lot size) or prohibiting the largest scale of projects outright. Legal staff noted there is no special statutory protection for data centers and that cities may prohibit uses provided the definition is clear and defensible. The commission asked staff and legal counsel to draft options for the revised public‑review draft that would either prohibit large scale data processing centers or impose standards that make them impractical to site in Cathedral City.