AURORA | City council will discuss on Monday potential data center regulations to address water usage and limit facilities from being located in certain areas.
One proposed regulation would ban evaporative cooling, which is a type of cooling system data centers use that can be water-intensive, in multifamily, industrial and commercial buildings. The other would prevent data centers from being built in mixed-use office-industrial zoned areas, which can be located next to or include residential units.
City council will discuss these specific regulations, as well as what other potential regulations on data centers they would like to see, at the Monday study session.
At the Aug. 10 council meeting, city lawmakers approved a resolution directing the city manager to create new data center regulations, including a prohibition on evaporative cooling and a requirement for setbacks and landscape buffers for data centers in certain areas.
The council ultimately narrowly opposed a similar proposal that included a moratorium on new data centers while the code is adjusted. Public commenters at the meeting were overwhelmingly in support of the moratorium.
The approved resolution left the door open for other regulations, as recommended by the city manager. The city manager has 35 days from the approval to bring back recommended changes.
Other potential regulations include a requirement for data centers to complete regular noise testing and implementing setbacks from residences and landscape buffers. Another proposal would update the definition of a data center in the city code to account for differences in size and scale.
The city has said there are five data centers in the development process and nine already established. Some regulations for data centers are already in place.
Data centers are restricted in location to areas that are zoned industrial, airport districts or mixed-use office-industrial. Data centers can be built in certain mixed-use zoning restrictions under the conditional use process, which has additional requirements for public hearings and city council gets the ultimate decision.
Water use for data centers is governed by the city’s large water user guide. For noise pollution, the city’s unified development code restricts the noise level at data centers to the same level as other businesses, with different allowances based on zoning and time.
If we could, we should shutter all data centers. What the hell are we doing with data centers in a severe drought in a dry climate the promises to get hotter and dryer. This is like taking aim and knowingly shooting yourself in the foot. It’s just dumb!
Mikey – Data Centers store, process, and route the digital information behind everyday online activities, from streaming videos and sending texts to running business networks and powering artificial intelligence.
Core Functions
Data Storage: Hold massive quantities of files, user photos, emails, and corporate databases on rows of hard drives.
Data Processing: Run the complex software, calculations, and computations required for websites, mobile apps, and online banking.
Traffic Routing: Use routers and switches to move data swiftly across the internet between users and services.
Cloud Hosting: Provide remote computing power so companies can rent space and run applications without building their own hardware.
Still think we should shutter all data centers?
It now seems like our seemingly socialist leaning City Council will continue to spend a majority of their time telling developers and business leaders how to locate and run their business. Data centers are a business for the future, I wish the Council would look to the future. Budget problems will intensify, exponentially.
And Kane, aka Mickey, continues to show he doesn’t have a real feel for those things that aren’t from Iowa and college grants. But for a change he didn’t blame the Donald. Not once, in his comment. Well done Kane.
But lets be 100% honest and forthright. The City of Aurora can’t fund its way out of a wet paper bag and its primary tax base belongs in rehab.
The moratoreum initially proposed reeked of the exact same mistake Danielle Jurinsky made in killing a business tax — no assessment of the financial impact to the city. But this time, the near miss happened while Council is asking voters to approve three increases to the sales tax rate.
With the three increases to the sales tax rate covering only 13% of the infrastructure need, the only moratoreum that would benefit the city would be of further council actions hostile to the already failing tax base.
Aurora is not Lone Tree, Castle Rock or Denver. Beggars can’t be choosers. Council can’t just ignore the $1.8 billion in unmet infrastructure costs.