The Poweshiek County Board of Supervisors has banned data centers within county limits for 12 months, or until permanent zoning ordinances for data canters are established.
On Sept. 28, the Board of Supervisors passed Resolution 2027-11, joining a growing number of municipalities across Iowa passing moratoriums against data centers.
Statewide, data center development is spreading, with the Data Center Map showing that there are currently 116 data centers in Iowa, including ones run by Meta and Microsoft.
The board approved the resolution in a 2-1 vote, with Vice Chairperson Jacki Bolen casting the sole “no” vote. Bolen, in an interview with The S&B, said that she favored a shorter six-month timeline, but said that the moratorium will be lifted as soon as the ordinances are established.
The Poweshiek County Zoning Commission has begun taking steps towards drafting ordinances to govern how future data centers may operate. J.D. Griffith, sanitation and zoning administrator, said the process of drafting zoning ordinances will be collaborative, with hearings for public comment to influence the final rules.
“There will probably be a few meetings with the commission and the Board of Adjustment, where they can express their views on them,” Griffith said of the zoning ordinances. “Once I have something kind of set in stone, then I take it to the supervisors and they have a series of public hearings to adopt it.”
Both Bolen and Board Member Jeff Tindle said that no formal data center proposals have been submitted in Poweshiek County, and that the aim of the moratorium was to be proactive.
“Being approached with a data center is inevitable,” Bolen said of Poweshiek County. “As far as a fairly large, hyper-scale data center, we don’t really have the resources for that, so I really can’t see them bringing that to the table. But the smaller ones, I definitely see that happening.”
Tindle said the ordinance would ensure that the data center companies, residents and Poweshiek county government are all on the same page.
“It’s about protecting quality of life and being a good neighbor,” Tindle said of the ordinance. “I think it’ll be accepting, not too stringent, but yet protect what we have so someone can’t just move in here and do whatever they want.”
In a recent Grinnell College National Poll, 57 percent of respondents said they would not support having a data center built in their community.
Tindle and Bolen said that they were concerned about the potential strain a data center could pose on resources such as water and electricity.
“I am personally not interested in one coming to Poweshiek County and using up our resources,” Bolen said. “That’s been a big concern for people, and as it should be.”
Bolen said she thinks the ordinance will include certain restrictions, such as the amount of megawatts or water used and how far a data center would be from a home. Griffith said the same restrictions would likely be included in the zoning rules.
Tindle and Bolen both said that closed-loop systems for cooling a data center may be better for water consumption.
“I think that makes more sense for our community,” Bolen said of closed-loop systems. Bolen said that unlike traditional open-loop cooling systems that continuously evaporate large volumes of water, closed-loop systems recirculate water, glycol or dielectric coolants within a sealed circuit, significantly reducing continuous water consumption.
Both Tindle and Bolen said that the impact of major property tax cuts and spending restrictions for local governments from Senate File 2472, signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds in May, would make potential increased economic activity from data centers ever more beneficial.
“Since they put a two percent gap on the state level for growth, it’s going to make it very hard to sustain county government,” Tindle said. “So you’ll want new growth to stabilize the budget.”
In an email to The S&B, Assistant Professor in Policy Studies Godfreyb Ssekajja wrote that data centers may not provide large economic benefits for local communities.
“Data centers bring significant upfront capital investment and add to the local property tax base without placing heavy demands on local public services,” Ssekajja wrote. “However, there are major economic trade-offs. Once built, data centers are largely automated and create very few long-term jobs relative to their large physical footprint.”
Ssekajja wrote that Iowa’s large tax exemptions, in addition to local tax incentives to attract developers, may reduce economic gains from data centers at the local level.
“The actual long-term financial gain for local taxpayers can end up being fairly small compared to initial headline investments,” Ssekajja wrote.