TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Pima County Planning and Zoning is working on new sets of standards that would affect future data centers.
When Pima County surveyed almost two thousand people more than 86 percent worried data centers will use too much water. The survey found concerns almost as high over energy use, noise and overall health effects.
Pima Supervisors put a short term hold on permits for new data centers. That gives time to develop zoning standards to govern how data centers will be built and where they can be. The rules would not affect the Project Blue data center because it is already approved.
The draft ordinance covers lots of fine detail but key points include:
Data centers will only be in zones meant for heavy industry.
Anything larger than 25 thousand square feet—about one-fourth the size of Costco— will require a hearing and approval by the Planning and Zoning Commission, and the Pima Board of Supervisors.
No data centers can be within a half mile of where people live.
And centers must meet limits on noise.
Planning Commissioner Bob Cook was the one vote against the draft zoning ordinance. He’d like to ban data centers altogether.
“I don't think it's in the county's interest to, to support the development of data centers in our large county and with the energy crisis, with the water crisis, with the affordability crisis, and when you're you're contemplating A new industry that has surprised us all and will have impacts decades into the future, a future where scientists are telling us we are bumping up against planetary limits in terms of our basic ecosystems, our basic support systems.”
Planning Commissioner Valerie Lane supported the draft ordinance but says data centers can strain water and power resources across an entire region so governments should set uniform standards for data center zoning.
“If the city of Tucson and Pima County create zoning regulation that's very robust and aligned with each other and then there's a neighboring county that has much looser regulation, that one is going to become the target for where data centers will find it easier to implant themselves and so regional approach where the regulations are very similar to each other doesn't make um one county or one jurisdiction sort of easier to get through.”
The Planning Commission will meet in early December to fine tune the proposed ordinance, then send it to Pima Supervisors for a final vote later that month.
