Springfield's Planning and Zoning Commission voted to recommend two proposals relating to data centers at its Oct. 15 meeting.
Applications and reviews of any potential data center proposals in Springfield have been paused since June to give city staff time to craft regulations and gather public feedback. As a first step for more thorough regulations, the commission reviewed a data center definition to add to city codes and considered an extension to the moratorium currently set to expire Nov. 17.
If approved, the extension would extend the moratorium until Feb. 24, 2027. The commission voted unanimously to recommend the extension, which will go to Springfield City Council on Oct. 26. Multiple people spoke in favor of extending the moratorium,
in some cases to a year.
John Bottorff, who is affiliated with the organization CleanEarth4Kids.com, emphasized the importance of ensuring that enough time is given to consider all of the impacts of a data center.
"From a moratorium standpoint, 120 days is not enough time to give those types of concerns — the greenhouse gases, noise pollution, air pollution — there's all kinds of stuff that needs to be discussed and made sure that Springfield is not held, at the end of the day, with massive, unfinished projects that will never be occupied and will never be completed. That's bad for the city, that's bad for planning commissioners, that's bad for everyone."
Cecil Ince, who is running as the Libertarian candidate for Sen. Lincoln Hough's District 30 seat, expressed his doubts about extending the moratorium to the commission.
"A (moratorium) is just a ban, it's just a nicer name for it. The original (120) days expires on Nov. 17. Let it expire. Zone data centers like any other industry ...," Ince said. "We don't need another four months or a year, we need to be welcoming commerce. But we don't need pollution, we don't need taking advantage of our resources and exhausting them. That's what zoning and planning is all about, implementing those regulations on those industries."
The commission also voted 6-1 to recommend the amendment to city code. Commissioner Helen Gunther was the sole no vote. Commissioners Randall Doennig and David Jacquez were absent.
The amendment would define data centers as "a building, or a room or portion of a building, used to house Information Technology Equipment for the storage, management, processing, or transmission of digital data, including server farms, artificial intelligence training or processing, image processing, cloud computing, email services, cryptocurrency or other digital-asset mining, and similar uses."
The definition presented to P&Z Thursday further categorizes data centers into three different classes: an accessory data center, a micro data center and a large-load data center. An accessory would be inside the principal building, taking up no more than 20% of the gross floor area, serving only the owner or tenant and using less than 1 megawatt of power. A micro data center would be no larger than 10,000 square feet in size and use less than 5 MW. A large-load center would be anything beyond either of those measures.
The 5 MW threshold matches what City Utilities is using to define large-load customers. The utility has put together a large load taskforce to review any applications for new large load customers and ensure the costs of any upgrades to infrastructure necessary to accommodate a development like a data center would be covered by that business. The city's code amendment also includes a definition of Maximum Power Demand as the highest electric demand that a data center is design to draw at any moment at build-out of all phases.
The code amendment also includes safeguards to prevent large facilities from being divvied up to fit a smaller class or from being categorized under the utility use.
The proposal in front of P&Z on Thursday did not pertain to where data centers are appropriate to be located or what design standards they would be required to follow. According to city documents, actual regulations are anticipated to be presented to council in January.
Both the definition and moratorium extension will have to go to the council for a public hearing and an official vote before becoming final. That is expected to happen Oct. 26 and Nov. 16, respectively.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Springfield P&Z recommends data center definitions, extended delay
