The data center company QTS is eyeing the small city of Clinton on the Mississippi River to build a $10 billion hyperscale data center campus. That would make it one of the largest — if not the largest — data center investment to date in the state.
Ahead of a formal proposal from QTS, Clinton is trying to create its first data center ordinance. Some residents would like it to be one of the most restrictive in the state.
City attorney Patrick O’Connell presented a draft ordinance to Clinton’s City Planning Commission Wednesday night. He said it draws on similar measures adopted in other parts of eastern Iowa.
“While this ordinance is more comprehensive than all of those ordinances — it covers more territory, it has more constraints, more regulations, more requirements in it than any of the other ordinances I reviewed — any one of those sections of the ordinance could be more strict than it is, and more detail could be added, and more requirements could be added,” O'Connell said.
That’s exactly what roughly 100 attendees asked the planning commission to do.
“A data center is not good for Clinton and nothing in this ordinance changes that,” said 40-year Clinton resident Carol McGuire. “It puts the wealth of a few over the health of many.”
The draft ordinance begins with the city finding that “data centers may provide substantial economic development benefits, including tax base growth, construction activity, long-term employment, and significant private investment in real property and utility infrastructure.”
The economic development nonprofit Grow Clinton is actively advocating to bring data centers to Clinton County to help build a sports complex and “ensure future growth.”
Residents who attended the draft ordinance’s introduction prepared specific requests for stronger reporting requirements around well monitoring, noise pollution and air quality. Multiple people who spoke asked to change the permissive “may” in phrases like “may require periodic water use reporting” or “may require a Road Use Agreement” to the mandatory “must.”
Ultimately, most attendees wanted stricter language upfront, rather than leaving the details to a development agreement that the city would negotiate further down the line.
“The most pertinent change that should be made throughout the ordinance is that there is far too much council discretion,” said Theresa Andrews, who would be a direct neighbor of the data center.
After listening to about two hours of public comments, commissioner David Brown immediately echoed the other suggestion that residents kept repeating.
“This is so much to absorb, wouldn’t it be better off to just table the meeting and discuss at the next meeting?” he said. He was immediately interrupted by applause.
The commission will take the next few weeks to consider requests and revisions. They will reopen the public hearing at their next meeting in August. They need to finalize their recommendations before sending the ordinance to the city council for a vote.
