‘No’ to data centers in Union County

With news of a data center potentially being built in Union County, supervisors are pushing ahead to create a moratorium for the projects, effectively suspending the projects for the foreseeable future.

While any ordinance or moratorium has not been drafted or approved, Wednesday’s meeting signaled Union County won’t see one built any time soon as supervisors instructed the drafting of a moratorium.

A discussion was held during the meeting where the supervisors presented their thoughts on their personal research and offered the chance for representatives from Southern Iowa Rural Water Association to speak on the topic.

A data center is a facility which houses IT servers and infrastructure. This can include data storage for services like cloud storage, or telecommunication. In recent years, data centers have begun popping up across the U.S. as companies began investing more into artificial intelligence.

The issue came to the heads of Union County when news of a planned data center was discussed at a Union County Farm Bureau meeting.

According to the supervisors, the data center is proposed to be built on the northwest corner of Kingfisher Avenue and 240th Street. This land belongs to the Southwest Iowa Rural Electric Cooperative. They would be leasing this land to a company planning to build a data center. The land is currently used as an Arispe substation.

Supervisor Rick Friday said he was focused on the electrical inputs of the data center. Citing a source of Bloomberg News, he said electric costs in the area could increase at least 267% over the next five years.

The source said the average U.S. electric bill could increase 8% by 2030 due to data centers and cryptocurrency mining. Friday said the planned data center would be used for Bitcoin mining.

“There are plans for more,” Friday said. “This is a time we need to be discussing these data centers and how it’s going to affect our county.”

Supervisor Dennis Hopkins was concerned about the water supply which would be needed for cooling in a hypothetical data center. Union County has three potential sources of water: Three Mile Lake, Twelve Mile Lake and Green Valley Lake.

Hopkins said a medium-sized data center would use 110 million gallons of water a year just for cooling. Friday noted that REC said the planned data center would be oil-cooled, but Hopkins insisted water coolers in other areas might come down the road.

“Green Valley averages roughly 1.3 billion gallons of water as I understand it,” Hopkins said. “Twelve Mile is roughly 3.3 billion, and Three Mile’s about 4.5 [billion].”

Hopkins said that these three sources could see their water completely drained within 5.3 years if it’s used to cool a large data center. He noted this only accounts for a situation where no more water would be added to each lake, but said the timeline is a concern.

“We’re a farming community, and I think it’s important that we maintain our water levels,” Hopkins said. “So, while I’m not necessarily against data centers, I don’t know enough yet.”

Hopkins suggested following the lead of Fulton County, Indiana, who established a moratorium suspending development of data centers for a year. In the interim, the county created a data center committee to study the environmental and economic impact of data centers in similar communities.

“People deserve a moratorium to make sure that, long term, we’re protecting our resources,” Hopkins said.

County supervisors weren’t the only ones to comment on the topic. SIRWA general managers Jeff Rice (systems) and Brenda Standley (administration) both commented on data centers and gave a hard stance against them.

“SIRWA’s not in the business to sell water to large industries. Never will be.” Rice said. “Our board is very strict. We’re here for the local communities and, like you say, farmers, residents, but that doesn’t stop the worry of, would [data centers] go to the DNR and get a permit to pull from Three Mile, Twelve Mile, Green Valley on their own or go upstream in the watershed and build something that stops the flow coming into our drinking water lakes.”

Supervisors were not enthused about county resources being used for cryptocurrency. These essential resources being used for such a confusing endeavor didn’t sit right with them.

“Crypto[currency] makes no sense,” Hopkins said. “There’s nothing there. There’s nothing physical.”

A moratorium is likely to be drafted for the next meeting on Wednesday, March 18. A data center committee is also likely to be created, with applications opening at some point following the moratorium’s approval.

In other Union County news...

A section of 130th Street is planned to see an upgrade. About 3,850 feet of the street connected to the High Lakes Shooting Range will be improved through a road agreement splitting the cost with the range. A public hearing on the section will take place during the meeting on April 1.

Supervisor Dennis Brown became the sole bid for a county-owned vehicle. The supervisor abstained from the vote which accepted his $435 bid for a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT with 188,000 miles previously used at the county’s CARE facility.

Jamie Travis resigned as a Lincoln Township trustee, with Kevin Lents approved to be his replacement.

Union County Roads will buy a Volvo semi tractor with 322,000 miles for $20,000 in a local purchase.