Woodbury News Net reports…

Woodbury’s City Council approved a moratorium Sept. 23 on new data centers and expansion beyond existing approvals, giving the city up to a year to study water use, electricity demand, noise and possible zoning changes.

Before voting, council members worked through which changes would require new permits and which activities existing approvals already allowed.

Woodbury has no active applications or conversations with data center developers, City Planner Eric Searles said. The city intends to study the industry before another proposal arrives.

More on local data centers…

Before approval, council members broadened the restriction to cover building permits and other city permits, including electrical permits and permits for work in public rights of way.

The ordinance presented to the council blocks related rezoning proposals, comprehensive plan amendments, conditional use permits and variances, along with applications to establish or expand data centers. It also covers proposed water or sewer users whose annual consumption would place them among the city’s largest users. It takes effect upon adoption and publication and can end before a year if the city repeals it or adopts replacement regulations.

Woodbury’s three existing data centers include two IronGate facilities and a Medtronic facility at 515 Bielenberg Drive.

The city identified the three centers as similar or like uses and does not regulate them through conditional use or other zoning permits, but the future study could establish regulations and rules for permits that would affect existing facilities and future development.

At its existing Woodbury facilities, IronGate lists 15 megawatts of capacity for computing equipment at 401 Bielenberg Drive, its east campus, and 6 megawatts leased at 500 Bielenberg Drive, its west campus. The company describes both campuses as fully leased. Its website does not report either facility’s actual electricity use or capacity for future expansion.

Operators of the facility at 500 Bielenberg Drive had told the city they were at electrical capacity, although space remained available inside the building, Searles said. City officials did not provide exact electrical capacity figures for each facility at the meeting.

This is the second in a growing series. As data centers have been an increasingly hot topic, I’ve posted informational articles, events (announcements and notes), decisions and counter decisions. In July, I began collecting editorials that crossed my transom with minimal curation to share with readers in chronological order. Again, this is the second edition in this roughly monthly series.

It’s meant as a quick scan of what topics are rising to the top for others. I will likely continue to collect and post in the future. I usually try to be balanced, but this is more illustrative of what crosses my path.

Port: Refocus the data center debate from hysteria to reality: They’re getting built
Aug 17, 2026 InFORUMN
Demand for data centers is being driven by our demand for digital services, including AI. Those who think we can stop their construction are kidding themselves.

Other View: Building data centers in space a crazy but great idea – Duluth News Tribune
Aug 21, 2026 Duluth News Tribune
From the editorial: “Orbital data centers may prove to be a completely irrational business venture. That’s no reason to oppose them.”

Letter: Debunking the case against a data center moratorium
Aug 22, 2026 InForumn
Carter Hass of Valley City writes about positives and negatives of data centers, not the politics.

Letter about Harmony data center…
Aug 24, 2026 Fillmore County Journal
“For Harmony, the central question is simple: What concrete economic benefit do local residents receive, and who carries the risk if the projections prove wrong?”

Letter: Data center comes at Pine Island’s expense
Aug 25, 2026, Post Bulletin
“Pine Island belongs to the people — not to Google.”

Other View: Secrecy a surefire way to lose public trust on data centers – Duluth News Tribune
Aug 26, 2026, Duluth News Tribune
From the editorial: “While NDAs aren’t unheard of in the public sector, using them to fuzzy up the details of a topic of such intense public interest is arguably never appropriate.

National View: Data-center moratoriums penalize public schools, taxpayers
Aug 31, 2026 Duluth News Tribune
From the column: “With two decades of data-center growth, Loudoun (County, Virginia) has maintained its pastoral character and remains a destination for many … who want good jobs and a better quality of life.”

Data centers, community growth, and looking ahead
Sep 3, 2026, Isanti-Chisago County Times
“At the same time, local communities have every right to ask questions.”

Letter: Look to the facts in data center disputes
Sep 3, 2026 Hometown Source
“Most of us use a data center every day without thinking about it.”

Data centers, cameras and AI
Sep 4, 2026, Pine County News
We all want the technology that helps make our lives easier and safer, but we need to consider the tradeoffs to our health, environment and civil liberties.

McFeely: Data center propaganda in full swing
Sep 7, 2026 InForum
Polling shows data centers increasingly unpopular, but ND Republicans and pundits don’t want to hear it

Data centers, cameras and AI
Sep 7, 2026, North Pine County News
“We all want the technology that helps make our lives easier and safer, but we need to consider the tradeoffs to our health, environment and civil liberties.”

Some Data Centers Are Good
September 08, 2026, Twin Cities Business
“There’s a way to win here, and it’s not by going the route of the moratoriums. We need to start by agreeing that some data centers are good.“

Opinion | Before a data center moves forward, Minneapolis must listen to the river
Sep 10, 2026, Minnesota Star Tribune
“We need to know how the proposed data center in the old Minnesota Star Tribune printing facility would impact the Mississippi River.”

Interim councilor says ‘don’t close your mind’ on data center discussion
Sep 11, 2026, Faribault Daily
“Anderson also warned about misinformation plaguing the conversation around data centers and thinks the community should dig deeper as it weighs the pros and cons.”

They Agreed, So I Read It Twice: The View from Up North
Sep 12, 2026, Minneapolis Times
“Lisa Demuth and Amy Klobuchar have found rare common ground on data centers: let communities decide, insist on transparency and make developers answer the hard questions.”

Data centers can be built responsibly
Sep 15, 2026, MinnPost
“We’re not having a full, balanced conversation about the risks and potential benefits of data centers in Minnesota.”

Ramstad: AI won’t kill us, and government won’t save us
Sep 16, 2026, MN Star Tribune
“Stop elevating AI executives as gods and expecting politicians to do things they don’t understand.”

MINNEAPOLIMEDIA EDITORIAL | Minnesota’s Data Center Boom Is Becoming a Test of Energy, Water and Local Democracy
Sep 17, 2026, MinneapoliMedia
The arrival of large data center proposals in Minnesota was initially presented as a straight economic development story… That framing is no longer adequate.

Artificial intelligence
Sep 17, 2026, Timberjay
Time to put the brakes on a technology with too many questions

Statewide View: Minnesota cannot afford to sit out data-center investments
Sep 19, 2026 Duluth News Tribune
From the column: “Prosperity comes from building things, attracting investment, and creating an environment where businesses want to grow.”

Cal Thomas: Will AI cause Doomsday in the world?
Sep 10, 2026, West Central Tribune
From the commentary, “AI should be taken seriously, but we probably need not panic as with so many other doomsday predictions.”

Candidate’s View: Vote for a legislator who knows how to protect public dollars
Sep 20, 2026, Duluth News Tribune
From the column: “My vote in the Minnesota Senate will belong to the people of Senate District 7 — not to any party, special interest, corporation, or political insider.”

MinneapoliMedia shines a Minnesota lens on federal activity…

A federal proposal intended to protect electricity customers from infrastructure costs created by large data centers is advancing as Minnesota communities debate the energy and water demands of proposed technology developments.

The U.S. House approved the Ratepayer Protection Act by a vote of 417 to 3. The legislation calls on state utility regulators to consider requiring large electricity users, including data centers, to bear the additional infrastructure costs created by their operations.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he was discussing the legislation with Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

The bill’s central principle is that households and existing businesses should not be required to subsidize new power plants, substations, transmission lines and other infrastructure built primarily to serve exceptionally large electricity customers.

The proposal is directly relevant to Minnesota, where communities including Pine Island and Hermantown have confronted questions about data center energy use, water demand, tax incentives and the extent of public participation before projects advance.

Utilities must often make major investments before a large data center begins operating. If a project is delayed, reduced or abandoned after infrastructure is built, other customers can be left carrying some of the resulting costs unless regulators and utility contracts provide adequate protections.

Supporters of stronger ratepayer safeguards argue that data center operators should provide financial guarantees, pay for dedicated infrastructure and accept electricity rates reflecting the actual cost of serving them.

Critics of the House legislation say its language may not be strong enough because it largely directs regulators to consider protective measures instead of imposing a uniform national requirement. An attempt to move the measure quickly through the Senate was blocked by Sen. Martin Heinrich, who argued that the proposal relied too heavily on voluntary action.