Local Leaders Advised to Prepare for More Data Center Applications

Turner has produced a white paper listing 15 practices designed to protect the interests of local governments so they can  derive the most benefits and ward off negative impacts from data center development. As a  featured speaker at the New York State Association of Counties' Fall Conference in Syracuse September 28, Turner outlined those standards as well as strategies for dealing with data center developers.

"Data centers are not good and they're not bad,' said Turner, stressing that any proposal can be improved if there is robust engagement on the part of local elected officials who insist upon full transparency of all the financial and technical details of any project put forward for review.

"The community leaders, the decision makers, are the ones who make it good or bad." Turner said, adding: " I personally believe county government is the front line right now going forward in this massive sector shift. We have to be experts. We have to know what's coming to our communities." He stressed it is crucial for county government officials to "do our homework" so they are prepared to respond when constituents ask probing questions about the applications.

It behooves local government leaders to get developers to commit to a community host agreement that will ensure the projects conform to zoning requirements and objectives the local governments envision from the planned data center, Turner said.  

"Everyone of these situations is different," said Turner, making a point for which Matt Chase, CEO of NACo and also a member of the panel, offered amplification.

Chase noted the companies pitching data center projects come with different incentives and represent different types of corporate cultures. "Whether it's the developer or the end user will really dictate how they approach the community."

Chase said it's become clear the need for more and more computing power is "going to continue to grow." Two companies, Amazon and Google, now collectively derive more than $500 billion in revenue from their data operations propelled by huge investments in Artificial Intelligence infrastructure.

Investment in data centers is expected to reach  $10 trillion by 2032, he said. This year alone, companies are expected to pour $800 million into data centers, a sum equivalent to the entire non-defense discretionary federal budget, Chase pointed out.

At the heart of the 15 best practices touted by Turner  are six areas that often get the greatest attention from host communities and their residents -- noise levels, power needs, water requirements, emissions, setbacks and physical appearance.

In addition to his responsibilities at Loudoun County, Turner , as chair of the National Association of Counties' Environment, Energy and Land Use Committee, plays a key role in framing national policy for NACo.

For Loudoun County, 2022 became a tipping point year, with Open AI's launch of Chat GPT fueling expansion of the data center industry. 

Northern Virginia, once home to former internet giant America Online, is now the hub for an estimated 70 percent of global daily internet traffic. After initially treating data center projects as if they were business parks, the county government now requires  applications to be routed through a Special Exception process, involving close scrutiny from county staff as well as public impact hearings and final approval from the county Board of Supervisors.

Turner suggested that applications for data centers should be rejected if closed-loop water cooling systems are not stitched into the plans, to avoid impacts on local water supplies. He also suggested that local government officials spurn any overtures for the projects to be governed by Non Disclosure Agreements, suggesting such pacts only invite suspicion and public opposition.

"If any supervisor on the Loudon County board tried to sign a non disclosure agreement, we would be impeached and thrown out of office," he advised.

Moderating the discussion for NYSAC was Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon, current president of the New York State County Executives Association.

McMahon has been playing a leading role in bringing Micron Technology's $100 billion semiconductor campus to the town of Clay in his county. 

"It's inevitable, our communities will have projects that will want to be here, especially in the Northeast, because we have water and we have infrastructure; so there will be decisions that communities will have to make," McMahon said in introducing the panelists. It will be imperative, he added, that local government leaders are armed with the questions that will need to be asked when developers come knocking on their doors.

Chase, in his leadership role at NACo,  has personally met with technology executives and visited counties across the nation that are dealing with data center controversies.

"We're living in the second Gilded Age," Chase, an upstate New York native, said. "This is the 1880s and 1890s with the Rockefellers, the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts. We are living through that. And that's where the populace still matters. These companies may have unlimited access to the federal level and even the global level. But they are still showing up in communities."

Counties will independently determine if a data center proposal  is a good fit for their region, Chase said. For instance, a county with a nuclear plant and plenty of available power generation may be able to host a large data center. But a county that puts the accent more on preserving agricultural land may decide it does not want to embrace such facilities, he added.

"That's the point we're trying to make to these companies. Do you want to win the battle or do you want to win the war as a company -- meaning, you can come in and bully a community and get a private property owner to sell you the land. But what type of neighbor do you want to be? Do you want to be a company that has to have guards and security for protection? Or do you want to be a company where you're investing. and you're welcomed and have a wingman partnership. And what we're finding is every company is different."

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul imposed a one-year moratorium on hyperscale data centers in July. It is the nation's first such ban. s. The moratorium also directs state agencies to put together a framework that ensures data centers pay into a grid fund and follow zoning requirements.