The city of Warren could consider enacting a temporary moratorium on data centers and join other Michigan cities that are reviewing their zoning ordinances to prepare for data center applications.
Warren City Council Secretary Mindy Moore placed a request for temporary moratorium on data center facilities on the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. Moore said recent storms have put pressure on Warren’s electrical grid.
“There’s nothing in our zoning ordinances that would cover anything like a data center as we know them today,” she told The News. “So I think that we need to get a zoning ordinance in place that will deal with this issue … if anyone ever applies to the city to develop one.”
The council could vote on Tuesday to direct its legal counsel to prepare and present for the council’s consideration a resolution establishing a temporary moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval and development of new data center facilities and similar technology-related industrial uses in Warren, according to an email Moore sent to Deputy Council Secretary Mary Kamp about the agenda item. Warren would review its zoning ordinances while the moratorium is in place.
Proposals for data center facilities have cropped up across Michigan, often drawing pushback from residents. The centers are warehouses for computing equipment used to power the internet. Several communities, including Howell, Springfield Township and Sterling Heights, already have temporary moratoriums in place to give them time to update zoning ordinances.
Moore said that on July 3, severe storms caused widespread power outages in the region, and Warren was hard hit, with over 60 power lines down. She said some homeowners went several days without power. She noted that Warren has historically experienced disproportionately severe power outages due to aging infrastructure.
“Any proposed data center facility would place a tremendous additional strain on the electrical grid,” she said in an email. “A moratorium is needed to get ahead of potential data center proposals before Warren has ordinances in place to address facilities that consume enormous amounts of electricity.”
Moore said Warren’s zoning ordinance doesn’t contain specific definitions, zoning regulations, locational standards, and other standards and criteria applicable to data center facilities. A temporary moratorium is necessary, she said, to preserve the status quo to allow the city to evaluate and adopt appropriate zoning ordinance amendments to address these uses and their potential impacts.
Moore told The Detroit News that the infrastructure and energy demand from some of the data centers is “a concern for everyone.”
“We have to have protections in place so that we’re not bearing the burden of infrastructure overload or water overload … if one of these centers were to be built in Warren,” she said.
asnabes@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Warren council could consider a temporary data center moratorium
Reporting by Anne Snabes, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Anne Snabes, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
