The Nicollet County Board of Commissioners is pausing development of data centers as county staff look to study how their environmental impacts and energy consumption may affect local infrastructure and nearby residents.
The year-long moratorium, approved July 14, prohibits the construction of large-scale data centers and applications to build them while county staff draft study their impact and zoning regulations tailored to the facilities.
In a public hearing Tuesday morning, Nicollet County Zoning Administrator John Zehnder, told the commissioners that data centers raise a number of issues that could prove problematic for county land if left unregulated. Their demands on the energy grid and hefty consumption of water, plus their potential for heat generation and noise could have potential impacts that Zehnder said the current zoning ordinance is unequipped to handle.
Zehnder recommended the county approve a 12-month moratorium on data center applications while Nicollet County staff develop new regulations specific to data centers. A year is the maximum length of time the county can pause data center development while evaluating changes to the zoning code.
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