The Coffee County Planning Commission along with a professional planner working as a consultant and the county attorney discussed possible restrictions for the newly enacted zoning resolution on data centers.

The resolution is one of the first across the state, and according to professional planner Amanda Harrington with Rhinehart Consulting Services, the county is further along in many aspects of the discussion.

County Attorney Mark Williams pointed out that currently there are no plans that the county knows of to locate a data center here. The commission also pointed out that the county

cannot legally create legislation to prohibit any legal land use.

During its July meeting, the County Commission passed a zoning resolution that restricts any proposed data center to be located in an M-2 Special Impact District, a catch all district for land uses like quarries, explosive plants and adult entertainment businesses. Any company seeking to locate a data center in Coffee County would almost certainly need to have any proposed site rezoned to M-2 by the County Commission.

Discussed during the meeting were potential regulations on data centers that included setting setbacks, noise and vibration pollution, water usage, power usage, public safety concerns from county Emergency Management Agency personnel and the possibility of facility decommission bond requirements.

Harrington cautioned the board against creating special setbacks for data centers that differed significantly from other uses in M-2. She instead advised the board to draft a proposed amendment that would increase the overall M-2 setbacks.

“What I caution other municipalities that I work with is that you don’t want to be very far out of line with the conditions that you have in the same district,” she said.

“If your setback for a rock quarry was 200 feet, you don’t want to condition a data center to be 600 feet because theoretically the impact from a quarry would be greater than a data center,” Harrington explained.

Commissioner Sammy Anderson pointed out that the county would have to get the distance figured out correctly before anything was built.

“Once it’s built, we can’t tell them (they’re) too noisy and are going to have to back up,” Anderson said.

The board generally favored changing the current setbacks for M-2 abutting any different district from 200 feet to 500 feet when M-2 touches residential, 300 when it joins any different zone and a like kind joint, where M-2 meets M-1 General Industrial to 150 feet.

Rhinehart and Williams cautioned commissioners against attempting to restrict data centers from connecting to local water utilities.

County Mayor Dennis Hunt suggested a requirement for a closed loop cooling system. Using a similar principal as a car radiator, the closed loop system would not have the water demand of an evaporative cooling tower type system or total discharge system.

Planning members agreed that the data centers should be required to perform regular testing to confirm that there is no negative impact to the surrounding areas. Rather than provide a list of approved testing companies, the county would need to have a competent engineer review the test results to “check their homework.”

EMA has previously voiced concerns to the committee that additional equipment and training will be needed. Members felt that a potential developer should front the costs of any equipment needed.

Williams will present a draft of the items discussed at the August Planning meeting. Any amendments to the zoning resolution will go before the full commission.