St Cloud Live reports...

The St. Cloud City Council will have the chance to approve an ordinance that would place restrictions on the location, design and water usage of new hyperscale data centers during its meeting on Monday, Oct. 19.

If approved, hyperscale data centers would be required to use the city’s water system and must be at least 1,320 feet away from abutting road right-of-ways and residential zoned properties as measured from property line to property line. Permits for all data centers would require land use compatibility and traffic impact study, noise and vibration study, environmental impact study, and community impacts study.

All proposed data centers would also have to come with confirmation that sustainable energy use, water use and designs will be incorporated into the project. A decommissioning plan would also be needed.

The ordinance divides data centers into two groups: hyperscale data centers and on-site enterprise data centers. On-site enterprise data centers are defined as having 2,000 or fewer servers, taking up at most 10,000 square feet and using at most 50 megawatts of energy. Any data center above those limits is classified as a hyperscale data center.

The ordinance comes straight from the St. Cloud Planning Commission, which delayed a vote on a data center ordinance in September because members didn’t believe they had enough information about data centers and their community impacts. The commission then advanced this current ordinance on Tuesday, Oct. 13, in a 4-2 vote.