Owatonna’s People’s Press reports…
After being asked 100 questions by Owatonna, Northfield and Pine Island residents about data centers, the Owatonna Planning Commission moved forward with recommending its proposed ordinance amendments, including defining and regulating data centers.
“It’s a 0.001% area of what we’re doing,” Community Development Manager Greg Kruschke said about data centers during the open house before Tuesday’s planning commission meeting. “The code was last updated in the ‘80s. There’s been updates through there, but the last major overhaul (was in the 1980s).”
Changes to the Zoning Ordinance include cutting about 50 pages, updating zoning districts, adding a shoreland ordinance and modernizing home occupation standards, among others. …
During the open house, Planning Specialist Emma Bransford said Owatonna updated its comprehensive plan a few years ago, and with that comes updating the Zoning Ordinance.
The public chimed in…
The public hearing on the ordinance amendments during the meeting lasted over an hour.
“While you have a definition, which is substantially more than what Pine Island had, the definition in and of itself is insufficient and incomplete for a data center ordinance and will not provide the layer of protection that’s actually needed,” Aubree Derksen of Pine Island said. “You need to also remember that whatever is in front of you has exponential impacts that you might have no control over.”
Derksen and six others read the planning commission a list of 100 questions to ask before a data center comes in, which the city needs “solid answers for.” If officials didn’t have answers to the questions, Derksen said a moratorium was needed “so you have time to figure them out.”
“After living the last 13 months in a lawsuit dealing with Google, … I don’t recommend it. The burden that has been placed on residents has been immense and completely unfair,” she said. “You also have to take into account the stress, the mental health impacts on the residents when they have to do all the due diligence that wasn’t done first.”
The complete list of questions is available at stopthepineislanddatacenter.org/blog-1/request-a-moratorium, and spanned topics like understanding what a data center is, vetting the developer, legal preparedness, fiscal analysis/financial risk, infrastructure/utilities, public safety/emergency preparedness, zoning/land use/code readiness, construction impacts, end of life and decommissioning, transparency/process integrity, readiness/due diligence, tribal governments/ecological knowledge and water sustainability.