Petersburg planning commission to vote next month on one-year data center ban

Data centers of any size would be banned across Petersburg Borough's Service Area 1 for one year under ordinance language drafted aloud at the Planning Commission's table Tuesday. The commission set the measure as an action item for its next meeting, September 8, when members will vote on whether to send the Title 19 amendment to the Borough Assembly, which holds final authority to adopt it.

A commissioner drafted the language and said the borough should slow down before writing permanent rules. "I support a total data center moratorium for 1 year, and by total I mean any data center of any size, for 1 year while we can get our regulations together," the commissioner said. He noted the borough could not do the same for cell towers, saying federal statute required processing a tower request within 150 days, unlike a data center ordinance.

Borough staff attorney Liz Cabrera said the borough had never adopted a moratorium that she could recall, but that the tool appeared available. "You could just add a provision saying data centers are prohibited in all districts from this date to this date," Cabrera said. On her suggestion, the draft was reworded to prohibit rather than ban, running one year from the effective date, and to cover all properties in Service Area 1, since not every parcel in the borough is zoned.

The absence of rules is the point, Cabrera said earlier in the meeting. "If there's nothing in place, then if somebody wants to put one on industrial property, there's nothing to stop them," she said. She added that uses not specifically prohibited have generally been read as allowed in industrial zones.

Two residents asked for exactly that pause. Mary Evans said she was "asking the Planning Commission to pause this process and allow time for meaningful due diligence and community discussion before Petersburg establishes a precedent that may be very difficult to reverse." Becky Knight asked the commission to "authorize a moratorium on all such centers until at least our community can develop policies on them."

No application has reached the commission. "We the Planning Commission have received nothing," Knight said, repeating what a commissioner had told her.

A proposed 2 megawatt data center at the former Ocean Beauty cannery site has already drawn testimony over noise, power availability and growth. Backers told the Borough Assembly in May that the project could stabilize electric rates and generate millions of dollars in annual revenue. Carl Hagerman, speaking for the project at that meeting, said it "falls into the amount of power that we have" once system improvements from the regional utility are factored in. The commissioner said a facility built before regulations take effect would not be subject to them.