(Radio Iowa) – Dubuque County will hold its first data center information meeting tonight (Tuesday) after a supervisors meeting Monday where they disagreed on what a data center ordinance should say. K-C-R-G- T-V covered the meeting where Dubuque commercial airline pilot Matt Moore said he is worried a data center could be an electromagnetic hazard to the Dubuque Regional Airport.
“We focused so many years on tourism, building up our community back from what it was in the 80s, and now we’re going to give it all away to these seven corporations that are running this S&P 500,” Moore said. The county approved a 12-month moratorium on data center development in May so they can develop the ordinance. Supervisor Wayne Kenniker said the county needs to create a workable ordinance, not a ban.
“We need to set a good ordinance to do this right. I respect people’s opinions, ‘No data centers.’ That’s not a practical way to word this,” Kenniker said. Supervisor Ann McDonough said the process can’t rule out a ban on data centers. “The answer from this process may be when you open up our ordinance it says, ‘We don’t find any hyperscale data centers would be possible to happen in our community.’ That has to be an okay position to end in,” McDonough said. Moore said he wants the ordinance to preserve the county’s character.
“What kind of place we want to live in? I could live anywhere. I could live anywhere in the country. I choose to live here. I’m from here. I choose to live here because I want to live next to farms, not server farms,” Moore said. The supervisors agreed that the process is necessary to evaluate how a data center could impact environmental preservation, water and resource usage, utility and power infrastructure, and more.
The county will host weekly work sessions and at least four public town hall meetings by October 1st with the aim of releasing a draft ordinance in four months. A final ordinance draft will be released in about ten months after additional public hearings.
