Logan City may welcome data centers — provided they stay out of neighborhoods, don’t use too much water or electricity, and are at least 50,000 square feet smaller than the community’s new Target.
Those potential rules, presented at a public open house on Oct. 5, came about four months after Logan City Council passed a 6-month moratorium on the centers so staff could research and propose new ordinances.
At the open house, city officials shared what they have come up with so far. This was Logan’s second open house about data center policy, with the first happening in August.
Them’s (not yet) the rules
The suggested rules can still change and need approval from the planning commission and City Council before they can be finalized. Here are highlights:
- Data center sites in Logan could not be larger than 8 acres. The facilities themselves couldn’t be larger than 100,000 square feet. For reference, Logan’s new Target is 148,771 square feet.
- Data centers could only be built in industrial park zones and would have to obtain conditional use permits from the city.
- The centers would need to be twice as far back from their property line as the distance required for other structures in the city, and they would have to be at least 1,000 feet away from any homes.
- Any data centers in the city could not use over 10 million gallons of water a year. They could not rely on open-loop cooling systems and their electrical load would need to be below 10 megawatts.
Logan plans to make data centers pay for increased power costs they bring to the city, said Mark Montgomery, the executive director of Logan City Light and Power.
“We’re currently working on … a special rate,” Montgomery said. “If a fairly sizable data center for Logan city’s power resources came in, we would have to go buy more contracts and power on the market.”
To make sure other Logan residents don’t have to shoulder that financial burden, Montgomery said his department is working on a rate that would hand the expenses to the data centers.
Regulating versus rejecting
Logan City Council Chair Mike Johnson explained that the city can’t outright ban data centers, though it can regulate them to the point where few would want to build one within the municipality.
But some residents, he said, told him Monday that they thought the drafted restrictions were too restrictive.
“Our goal with these meetings and with this code is to create that framework and to hear from the public, what do they want,” he said.“I think it’s interesting because I regularly hear that nobody wants data centers,” Johnson said, “but even tonight, I’ve had numerous people come to me and say, ‘I think your code’s a little too restrictive in this area and this area.’”
The council’s 180-day moratorium on data centers, passed on June 30, came after people throughout the state had been shocked to learn that the Stratos Project — a massive data center backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary — was set to be built in Box Elder County.
‘Before it’s a problem’
Several people attended the meeting to see how Logan’s policies have come together, and to offer their thoughts to city officials.
Janiel Nixon said data centers are part of the future, but must be managed to have the least possible negative impact on communities and the environment.
“I like that they’re doing this open house and trying to address this before it’s a problem,” she said.
Elishka Johnson said she thought the city’s proposed policies are a good start, but she had some concerns.
“I asked about CO2 emissions and electricity generation — that’s not mentioned anywhere at all in this ordinance — that I think our city council members should be thinking about,” she said. “We also have some migratory bird populations that fly through Logan, so the effects on wildlife should be, I think, included in the ordinance as well.”
