Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Water And Cooling topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Residents urge closed-loop cooling and water protections for data centers
Summary
Multiple residents urged the township to prohibit evaporative cooling and require closed-loop systems, baseline well testing and repeat sampling after operations; staff said water-use studies and will-serve letters are required but enforcement of utility supply is constrained by state regulators.
Several residents told the board they were most concerned about water impacts from data centers and BESS facilities.
Steve Kane, a resident of 7035 Sleepy Hollow Road, asked the township to prohibit evaporative cooling for new data centers and instead require closed-loop cooling (for example, glycol-based systems). "You should not be drawing water for these things and we should have that in our ordinance," Kane said, citing examples of closed systems used elsewhere. Kane also urged quarterly transparency reports and a township right to order immediate shutdown if a pollution event occurred.
A committee member and staff said the draft already requires a water study and a will-serve letter from public water suppliers to assess system impacts. Staff noted, however, that oversight of public water supply and costs falls largely to the state agencies (the Public Utility Commission and related regulators), limiting the township’s ability to unilaterally dictate utility operations or costs.
The board agreed to document all specific public concerns and to evaluate them during legal review; staff said the ordinance includes wastewater and reuse provisions where applicable, but that specific technology mandates can be difficult to make enforceable in zoning language and may require careful drafting or complementary state-level policy action.
