Iowa County Rolls Out Extensive Zoning Rules For Data Centers (insideclimatenews.org) 38
Linn County, Iowa has adopted what may be one of the nation's strictest local zoning ordinances for data centers, requiring detailed water studies, formal water-use agreements, 1,000-foot residential setbacks, noise and light limits, and infrastructure compensation. "But seated beneath a van-sized American flag hanging from the rafters of the drafty Palo Community Center gymnasium, residents asked for even stronger protections," reports Inside Climate News. "One by one, they approached the microphone at the front of the gym to voice concerns about water use, electricity rates, light pollution, the impacts of low-frequency noise on livestock, and the county's ability to enforce the terms of the ordinance. Some, including Dorothy Landt of Palo, called for a complete moratorium on new data center development."
Landt asked: "Why has Linn County, Iowa, become a dumping ground for soon-to-be obsolete technology that spoils our landscape and robs us of our resources? While I admire the efforts of the Board of Supervisors to propose a data center ordinance, I would prefer to see all future data centers banned from Linn County." From the report: The county is already home to two major data center projects, operated by Google and QTS. Both are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa's second-largest city, and are therefore subject to its laws. The new ordinance would apply only to unincorporated areas of the county, which make up more than two-thirds of its geographic footprint. [...] In drafting the ordinance, [Charlie Nichols, director of planning and development for Linn County] and his staff drew on the experiences of communities nationwide, meeting with local government officials in regions that have seen massive booms in data center development, including several counties in northern Virginia, the "data center capital of the world."
As data center development balloons, many communities that initially zoned the operations as warehouses or standard commercial users are abandoning that practice, Nichols noted. The extreme energy and water demands of data centers simply cannot be accounted for by existing zoning frameworks, he said. "These are generational uses with generational infrastructure impacts, and treating them as a normal warehouse or normal commercial user is just not working." [...] The Linn County, Iowa, ordinance goes one step further than tightening existing zoning rules. Instead, it creates a new, exclusive-use zoning district for data centers, granting county officials the power to set specific application requirements and development standards for projects. No other counties in the state have introduced similar zoning requirements, said Nichols. In fact, few jurisdictions nationwide have. [...]
From its first reading to final adoption, the ordinance has expanded to include language setting light pollution standards, requiring a waste management plan, including the Iowa DNR in the water-use agreement to address potential well interference issues and requiring an applicant-led public meeting before any zoning commission meetings. "I am very confident that no ordinance for data centers in Iowa is asking for more information or asking for more requirements to be met than our ordinance right now," said Nichols at the final reading. The Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance has said that it strongly supports current and future data center development in the area. The new ordinance is not an effective moratorium, Nichols said. He said he "strongly believes" that a data center can be built within the adopted framework.
Landt asked: "Why has Linn County, Iowa, become a dumping ground for soon-to-be obsolete technology that spoils our landscape and robs us of our resources? While I admire the efforts of the Board of Supervisors to propose a data center ordinance, I would prefer to see all future data centers banned from Linn County." From the report: The county is already home to two major data center projects, operated by Google and QTS. Both are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa's second-largest city, and are therefore subject to its laws. The new ordinance would apply only to unincorporated areas of the county, which make up more than two-thirds of its geographic footprint. [...] In drafting the ordinance, [Charlie Nichols, director of planning and development for Linn County] and his staff drew on the experiences of communities nationwide, meeting with local government officials in regions that have seen massive booms in data center development, including several counties in northern Virginia, the "data center capital of the world."
As data center development balloons, many communities that initially zoned the operations as warehouses or standard commercial users are abandoning that practice, Nichols noted. The extreme energy and water demands of data centers simply cannot be accounted for by existing zoning frameworks, he said. "These are generational uses with generational infrastructure impacts, and treating them as a normal warehouse or normal commercial user is just not working." [...] The Linn County, Iowa, ordinance goes one step further than tightening existing zoning rules. Instead, it creates a new, exclusive-use zoning district for data centers, granting county officials the power to set specific application requirements and development standards for projects. No other counties in the state have introduced similar zoning requirements, said Nichols. In fact, few jurisdictions nationwide have. [...]
From its first reading to final adoption, the ordinance has expanded to include language setting light pollution standards, requiring a waste management plan, including the Iowa DNR in the water-use agreement to address potential well interference issues and requiring an applicant-led public meeting before any zoning commission meetings. "I am very confident that no ordinance for data centers in Iowa is asking for more information or asking for more requirements to be met than our ordinance right now," said Nichols at the final reading. The Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance has said that it strongly supports current and future data center development in the area. The new ordinance is not an effective moratorium, Nichols said. He said he "strongly believes" that a data center can be built within the adopted framework.
Re:The most shocking part... (Score:4, Funny)
Did you reckon they go hunting for corn without flashlights?
Re: (Score:2)
Did you reckon they go hunting for corn without flashlights?
Everyone knows you don't go hunting for corn. In modern Iowa, after all the GMO modifications of current crops, corn hunts you.
Re: (Score:1)
A bunch of jobs for the duration of construction. Then whittled down to about 6 employees to keep it running on site.
So space (Score:3, Insightful)
Since the Earth is full of party poopers that don't want to build stuff anywhere, space is the only viable option.
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Since the Earth is full of party poopers that don't want to build stuff anywhere, space is the only viable option.
That’s certainly one creative way to convince Skynet that its mission is justified. Who needs party poopers that don’t want to build stuff anywhere.
The irony of Skynet destroying humanity for the purpose of mining the last shitcoin, better not be lost. Fucking blockchain from hell better be encoded to spit out “42” at that moment. As an epitaph sig.
Re:So space (Score:5, Informative)
Here, have a sobering dose of reality: https://taranis.ie/datacenters... [taranis.ie]
Re: (Score:2)
Even in orbit they can't help screwing up the planet.
https://hackaday.com/2026/03/0... [hackaday.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Space is pretty much the least viable option.
The burden of hosting 2 or 3 of current GPU servers in space would be solar and radiator profile the size of the ISS solar and radiator. So the plan to go to space suggests hundreds of thousands to millions of facilities the scale of the international space station being put up there.
Meanwhile, at least based on how things are around here, there are *plenty* of local city governments that will let the datacenter operators roll over the local community no matter
1000 feet is no where far enough (Score:3)
Re:1000 feet is no where far enough (Score:5, Interesting)
I live 600 ft from an Amazon DC in Northern VA. There will be FOURTEEN DC complexes within 1/4 mile of our development.
It ain't fun.
This Business Insider video has a really good example of the sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
One thing that makes this really hard is that sound waves, like water waves, bounce. During the last big snow, it changed the sound profile so much that I could literally feel my hardwood floor vibrate. Normally it's low end grunt noise but that was even lower.
Because of this, regulations need to 'over protect' residential areas, because literally every home will have a unique sound level. Unfortunately, that's going to be a hard sell against Million$ in DC political money.
And worse, *multiple* DCs nearby, the sound is additive. Two 50 db speakers produce more than 50 db in volume. If the ordinance is 55 and the additive is 57 - who do you blame? In a river, we measure each polluter at the source - So far, getting sound meters installed AT the DC property lines has been a no go.
Light polution? (Score:2)
I live in Georgia, and my local utility has just replaced, yesterday, the streetlight in front of my house with one that is LED and shines nearly all of its light onto the street. Before, the sodium vapor lamp lit all of our yards as well as the street. I think their power companies need to upgrade their lighting.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is the light type whose ballasts start making an annoying magnetostriction buzzing sound? God that was annoying.
Re: (Score:3)
That was a failure mode of the old sodium lights. Very annoying, I agree.
The new LEDs have an even more fun failure more... they just start to strobe wildly. It's great for your street party rave.
Don't plan on tricking the voters into agreeing. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
At macro scale there's some truth to that. But at ground level, public sentiment will almost always trail the action by multiple years.
And since these get built BEFORE that sentiment resonates with even a plurality, you're stuck with them.
Our County Board members are part-time and as of 2020, made $40K (now ~75K). These same members are receiving up to $200,000 EACH in political donations. Nice part time work if you can get it.
Oh and in the span of 10 years, the county receives $300 million annually in
Honestly it could be easier (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to force out data centers, make any utility connections over 5MW enter a 20-year power purchase agreement with all infrastructure costs paid up front. Do the same for water. Give the city/county the power to shut off said utilities and block access to the facility if they create a public nuisance
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If you want to force out data centers, make any utility connections over 5MW enter a 20-year power purchase agreement with all infrastructure costs paid up front. Do the same for water. Give the city/county the power to shut off said utilities and block access to the facility if they create a public nuisance
Define “nuisance”. Framed by the legal precedent of say, Flint water. Will the 8% increase in electrical costs for all year after year be a “nuisance”, or will that merely be dismissed as “societal costs”?
This is the inherent problem of our world today. Every idea is overheard by a damn lawyer who is richly rewarded sustaining this insane status quo. A American cannot even consider inventing anything without facing the headwinds of those armed with Patent War Chests,
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Yeah ... but jobs!
Sincerely,
Your local elected official.
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What's sad is that even though many local officials absolutely should know better by now, they at least act like they don't. I can forgive when hyperscalers started build out and the local governments had a certain square footage to employment ratio in their mind and folks didn't know better, but it's been published time and time again about rural municipalities saying the jobs don't actually appear in these facilities.
They can claim the very temporary construction business, but longer term they traded some
Re: (Score:2)
*Traded Valuable Real Estate* - In Prince William County VA, they are pulling in $300 million more per year than they were just 10 years ago. Most County budgets don't get a new 20% in 10 years.
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Yup, by now you'd have to be one dumb motherfucker to think that data centers bring jobs to rural communities. A single fast food restaurant probably creates more long-term jobs than a massive data center.
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Yeah ... but PAC Donations!
Sincerely,
Your local elected official.
FTFY
They learned from the (Score:1)
...housing NIMBYists.
Re: (Score:2)
Because we all know...
Conservative issues are under local/state jurisdiction.
Democratic issues are under federal jurisdiction.
My Datacenter (Score:2)
Based on their definitions in that legal document, I have might have a "small scale" data center, because I have a dedicated space where I have a couple servers sitting in them.
If you shove a couple of servers in a garage? You're now a data center by their definition!
Sucks to suck homelabbers (myself included, but I live elsewhere)
Re: (Score:2)
Playing with the definitions legally is fun, especially when there are silly typos in the rules. Such as in Amsterdam where they banned additional construction of hyperscale datacentres. A "hyperscale" datacentre is defined as a datacentre consuming more than a certain amount of power AND consuming more than a certain amount of land. Microsoft's solution? Oh our hyperscale datacenter is not a hyperscale datacentre because, we're building skyscrapers and making the datacentre vertical. It'll still consume a
It doesn't do any good at county level (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason the elites don't like federal government is that it requires so much consensus to build a federal government that it tends to do a pretty good job protecting people's civil rights and can't easily be bought off. Don't get me wrong it can be bought it just can't be done easily because it's just too much money involved at the national level.
But if you go all the way down to the county level the Epstein class doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
A fun game is asking people who their State level reps are.
A staggering percentage have no idea...and also wonder why laws get passed they don't like.
Data Center Repellant (Score:2)
I suspect the most effective means of preventing construction of a data center in some locality is for that locality to legislate that it had to show four 40' US flags on the four corners of the building and have one flag ever 1000 square feet inside.
{O.O} But, even *I* am not vile enough to suggest that....