Board approves short pause on large external data centers, asks staff to draft conditional‑use rules

County Attorney Melanie Marsh presented a draft ordinance establishing a temporary moratorium (with defined exceptions) on the construction or expansion of data center facilities in unincorporated Lake County to allow study of infrastructure and environmental effects. Marsh said the ordinance includes exceptions for internal server rooms, disaster‑recovery/cloud services dedicated to single organizations, incidental AI processing for internal use, and an errata‑added telecommunication/communications carve‑out.

Public commenters gave mixed views: some urged a permanent ban to protect water and privacy, others warned about economic impacts of moratoria. County staff and several commissioners noted the proposed ordinance was intentionally narrow to exempt hospital, emergency communications and internal operations while pausing large outward‑facing computational facilities. Marsh summarized the proposal: "The terms of the ordinance would be a 12 month moratorium or not to exceed 12 month moratorium" as originally drafted, and commissioners later agreed to return with revised wording and a 90‑day pause from second reading while staff develops conditional‑use criteria and other regulatory options.

The board directed staff to bring back a clarified ordinance on second reading that uses language equivalent to a temporary pause, and to pursue parallel options — including adding a conditional‑use requirement for data centers beyond the carve‑outs — so that applications above defined thresholds will come before the commission for case‑by‑case review.