Green T-shirts with “No Data Centers” written in big block letters have become a common sight at Clinton City Hall.
For weeks, the grassroots group Clintonians Against Data Centers has bird-dogged city council meetings as the industrial community on the Mississippi River tries to write a data center ordinance.
Developer QTS is eyeing Clinton for a $10-billion data center campus. Opponents are demanding city leaders address their concerns about water use, air pollution and noise.
“We are not against technology, innovation or progress,” Christine Voss said as she testified to the Clinton City Council in August. “We are for transparency, accountability and protecting what matters to our community: Our land, our water, our voice, our future. No data centers. Let the people decide.”
Clinton isn’t unique. Data center development is expanding rapidly across the state thanks to Iowa’s cheap land and energy. Now, communities are trying to figure out what they can do when faced with proposed hyperscale projects.
The data center debate isn't entirely new
This is not completely uncharted territory for the state.
“The amount of land that is required for data centers is pretty similar to wind energy," said Mae McDonough, an instructor at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. "Certain industrial uses, certain types of factories have similar considerations, as far as water and energy use."
But McDonough said data centers have some distinct differences. Linn County Planning and Development Director Charlie Nichols agrees.
“I do think data centers are different from other heavy manufacturing uses. I don't think that they are more destructive or more negative than other heavy manufacturing uses,” Nichols said. “They're essentially very large computers that need access to all this infrastructure. I think the concerns that communities and residents are having are really around the use of infrastructure.”
Nichols said counties are more likely than cities to field requests from developers, which is another thing that sets data centers apart from typical manufacturers.
“Industries like to locate in cities, where they have access to transportation networks, employer base, employee bases, things like that,” he said. “Data centers don't have to locate in cities; they have to locate near a high transmission line and digital infrastructure, and that's in the counties.”
What can local government do if a data center comes knocking?
It’s up to local governments to decide how to navigate data center development. They currently have limited options. Neither cities nor counties have the authority to ban data centers the way some opponents would like.
“You can't use zoning code as an overall ban on data centers or any other type of industry,” Nichols said.
What local government can do is write zoning rules to set specific standards for data centers. If they feel pressed for time, they can put a moratorium, or a pause, in place while they research what to include in the ordinance.
Ten counties in Iowa have data center ordinances already in place. More than 40 counties are in the drafting process.
As city attorney for Clinton, Patrick O’Connell helped create the initial draft ordinance for the city. He introduced it to the city's planning commission in July.
“This is 16 pages long. It's very difficult to wrestle with this issue because for each of the 10 years or so that these data centers have been built, new and emerging problems have been found,” O'Connell said.
The growth of hyperscale data centers poses new questions around water consumption, power usage and noise pollution. To combat that, ordinances can require data centers to do water studies, pay for their own power or be set back a certain distance from residential areas.
Ordinances can be very specific. For example, if a data center needs more power than the grid can provide, an ordinance can dictate what kind of power the data center can bring onsite. Clintonians Against Data Centers are trying to prohibit QTS Data Centers from bringing diesel generators as backups.
But since a lot of these questions are new, communities are struggling to find the research they need to draft specific requirements, like which water cooling systems are most efficient or what level of constant vibrations affects nearby residents?
Jennifer Terry, who leads the University of Iowa's Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative, worked with McDonough to build a data center decision toolkit. Their team interviewed Iowans across the state in hopes of providing them with resources.
“What we’re hearing from communities is they wish they had more credible, reliable information about long-term jobs, long-term impacts and usage of water and energy,” Terry said.
Water is an especially tricky subject. An ordinance might require data centers to have “efficient” water use. But Johnson County Urban and Regional Planner Joe Wilensky told the Iowa Chapter of the American Planning Association in a virtual webinar that efficiency might not be as protective a word as some people think.
“Efficiency does not mean they’re not drawing large amounts of power and water — just that they’re efficient with its use,” Wilensky said. “So you can have a huge draw and they can still be very efficient, according to industry standards. Efficiency does not mean low amounts.”
It's hard for communities to know how much water they can afford to give a data center. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is responsible for water-use permitting. But Nichols said the DNR doesn't have much up-to-date information on how much water the state has, which is an issue for data centers and beyond.
“There’s questions about how much water can a community or an area sustainably give to industrial uses, not just data centers,” Nichols said.
What are the benefits of a data center development?
While local officials are searching for information, data centers are offering a lot of money to the communities they want to build in.
Developers usually pay to improve failing infrastructure, which they say can decrease residents' utility bills.
Data centers also typically offer tens of millions of dollars in benefit packages that the community can use for things like cleaning up contaminated areas or building sports complexes, bike trails and parks.
All that money is in addition to tens of millions of dollars data centers pay in property taxes. And due to a new Iowa law that restricts increases in property tax revenue, Nichols in Linn County said that infusion could be a lifeline for cities.
“What the property tax change does is it makes it very clear to local governments — and that includes school districts — that if you are not growing, you are shrinking. You're going to be cutting,” he said. “So it now makes it imperative that communities proactively try and plan for growth.”
Data center property tax may seem impressive enough. But the facilities actually pay less tax in Iowa than they do in other states.
Iowa exempts computer equipment from assessed valuation, which determines property tax.
“So they already have a massive, massive property tax cut, which, in my opinion, should be repealed,” Nichols said.
Critics of data centers often say the campuses don’t offer many full-time jobs once construction is over. Just considering the tech company workforce in the data center, that’s true. But when QTS announced a $5 million workforce development investment, Jebediah Novak at the Cedar Rapids Electrical Training Center said continuous upgrades at the facilities offer job security to other local tradesmen.
“About the time they get done building the building, they’ve already got planned retrofits to come in and start renovating and start upgrading all the systems,” Novak said. “Energy efficiency is such a huge thing anymore that we’re constantly going into the new building. The jobs are temporary but the career is a lifetime.”
At Clinton's last August city council meeting, lobbyist Dylan Gramlich with Laborers' International Union of North America testified in support of the QTS data center.
“Virtually every union in the state of Iowa supports the responsible development of new data centers,” Gramlich said. “I respectfully ask the mayor and city council to embrace an approach that allows for the construction of these projects so that the Clinton communities can realize these benefits and not other surrounding communities.”
Who should decide if a data center can be built?
Competition over data center development, as Gramlich said, is not theoretical. O’Connell, the Clinton city attorney, also brought it up when discussing Clinton’s need for an ordinance.
“This positions Clinton also to compete for significant economic development opportunities, if we find good ones that we want,” he said.
But if competition for growth becomes too fierce and developers threaten to take their business somewhere with fewer restrictions, communities can end up in a race to the bottom.
Take a situation west of Clinton. Google has been in talks with both the city of Palo and Linn County to site a data center somewhere near the Duane Arnold nuclear plant. Although elected officials on both sides stressed cooperation, some Palo residents have accused Google of pitting two jurisdictions against each other to avoid stricter Linn County rules.
Nichols’ Linn County planning department is now taking a more proactive approach.
“We're now working with the city of Walford here in Linn County on a ‘fringe area agreement,’ where we agree to, if a data center developer wants to locate within the 2 miles outside of Walford, here’s how we will coordinate on the front end so we don't end up in a situation where we are competing against each other,” Nichols said.
Nichols and others stressed their desire for a more regional approach for siting data centers. While economic benefits respect municipal boundaries, environmental impacts don’t.
"It's becoming more apparent to me that it's a regional project, and there needs to be more regional cooperation around them," he said.
For now, residents of individual communities are left trying to fight for what they think is best for their community. Clinton resident Carol McGuire was there when the city council ordinance was first introduced.
“A data center is not good for Clinton and nothing in this ordinance changes that,” McGuire said. “It puts the wealth of a few over the health of many.”
