Data centre growth drives locals to fight for more say

WASHINGTON There'd been no votes or public hearings. The first phase of the data centre project under development there only required administrative approval from a few city officials, based on the building permit application and state laws

- Madyson Fitzgerald, Tribune News Service

In an Aerial view, an Amazon Web Services data centre is shown situated near single-family homes, in Stone Ridge, Virginia.

(Tribune News Service)

When local activist Frank Arcoleo found out over the summer that a data centre was coming to his neighbourhood in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he said he was furious.

There'd been no votes or public hearings. The first phase of the data centre project under development there only required administrative approval from a few city officials, based on the building permit application and state laws. “So these data centres are going in, and guess what? The public gets nothing to say about it because the city’s already approved it,” Arcoleo said. Now, Arcoleo is backing a zoning ordinance under consideration by the Lancaster City Council that aims to ensure residents have a say in the future. The ordinance would require data centre projects to undergo a special exception hearing from the city's zoning hearing board. It would also require data centres to adhere to the city’s noise ordinance and for developers to submit a report detailing the project's planned electricity and water use for the city to review.

Similar efforts are underway across the country, as municipalities move quickly to enact ordinances about where and how data centres are built. A few communities have turned to ballot measures or lawsuits. But at the same time, some state lawmakers are rushing to pass legislation that would accelerate the development of data centre infrastructure. More data centres are being built nationwide to meet the demand for digital services, including power-hungry artificial intelligence systems. Data centres, which house thousands of servers, are able to store and transmit the data required for internet services to work.