LAPORTE — Data centers must locate strictly in areas zoned for industrial purposes under a new ordinance adopted in LaPorte County.
The LaPorte County Commissioners unanimously approved the ordinance, which was more than six months in the making, to keep data centers away from residential neighborhoods.
“We want people to have their same quality of life maintained and not have something just dumped right in their backyard,” Commissioner Joe Haney said.
Another stated purpose of the ordinance is to preserve farmland, which is often used to construct data centers.
Commissioner Steve Holifield, a farmer from the Mill Creek area, is worried there won’t be enough farmland to feed the entire population someday if such ground continues to be developed into data centers, solar farms and other uses.
“We want development,” he said, “but we want to use our brains as to where we put this development.”
Kingsbury Industrial Park along U.S. 35 is considered a prime location for a data center because there is plenty of space and it’s mostly concealed from the general public.
“If we can put them out there, they will not be bothering anybody,” Holifield said.
Under the ordinance, any data center wanting to go into an industrially zoned area will still have to be granted a zoning variance by the LaPorte County Board of Zoning Appeals as an extra layer of protection.
The ordinance contains setback requirements, outdoor lighting restrictions and other things like maximum noise levels similar to the volume of a kitchen refrigerator.
The ordinance also calls for studies to forecast the impact of any dewatering on the environment and ground water levels at surrounding properties.
Dewatering is done if there’s a need to keep a site dry while it’s under construction.
Holifield said any dewatering in the plans would also have to be explained to the BZA as part of the standard information gathering before decisions are made on projects.
“We wanted one more step in the process,” he said. “One more guardrail.”
The ordinance, applying to only the unincorporated areas of the county, was approved before any data centers were officially proposed.
The ordinance has some areas where it can be improved, Haney said, mostly in terms of language, but getting it in the books now was important so it can be applied just in case any data centers seek permission to build in the future.
“It’s not the final set of guardrails that I’d like to see,” he said. “There’s definitely more that we need to do, but it’s a great first step.”
Resident Deborah Bell, who lives on the south side of LaPorte, expressed support for the ordinance while denouncing a Microsoft data center that just recently started going up and another one Microsoft has planned next to it not far from her home.
Among her concerns is having to listen to the “constant hum from these data centers,” she said. “The data centers are not in my back yard, but they’re pretty close.”
The ideal spot for any data center wanting to locate here is Kingsbury Industrial Park, said Commissioner Connie Gramarossa, who was instrumental in forming a data center committee in the fall to help put together the ordinance.
“There’s a place for them,” she said. “They just have to be put in the right spot. This is not something we want next to somebody’s home.”
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: County commissioners restrict data centers to industrially zoned land
Reporting by Stan Maddux, Special to The Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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