Planning and Zoning Commission - workshop

All right, we will start the special studies session of the Planning and Zoning Commission at 628. Welcome to our Planning and Zoning Commission study session. As the name implies, planning and zoning study sessions are an opportunity for the commissioners to study issues facing the city. It is a time for the commissioners to receive information from the invited presenters. Study sessions are intended to provide the commissioners with information on current city matters, to educate on new ideas, or to address zoning restrictions and regulatory impacts. From time to time, study sessions will include discussions of mutual interest with a city partner it is in these meetings that the planning and zoning commission listens learns asks questions and formulates recommendations for the city council regarding recommendations for zoning restrictions regulations and questions regarding the location of trades and industries and the location of buildings designed for special uses in relationship to the city's comprehensive plan. Citizens are welcome to attend these sessions to learn alongside the Planning and Zoning Commission. If you have questions or would like to provide feedback on any study session topic, please reach out to the Planning and Zoning staff representative, Diane Albrecht, City Planner. And the Planning and Zoning Commission also welcomes visitors to its regular meetings held on the second Wednesday of each month at 6 p.m. in council chambers in City Hall 201 South Franklin Street, Kirksville, Missouri. The Planning and Zoning Commission thanks you for your attendance, invites all citizens to listen and learn with them. It is just as a side note reiterating what Dan said earlier. This is just a discussion point for us at this point. We're not creating any ordinance or anything of that nature tonight. So there won't be any citizen input at this point. It's just a discussion. So with that, I'll hand it over to Diane.

Again, thank you, commissioners. This is something I have been doing a great deal of research on. I have deep dived. I have spoken with city planners and council people and citizens from I don't even remember how many different areas, mostly in-state, some out-of-state, just to get an idea of what everyone else is finding. I gave you a lot of information to look over. I hope you had a chance to at least look at some of it. I will try not to go too deep into this tonight, but The City Council did pass a resolution on July 27 declaring their intent to work with the Planning and Zoning Commission to determine the land use standards and zoning regulations What we're hoping to do tonight is kind of get a feel for where you would like to see that go and On the September 9th meeting, we'll do a public hearing before and talk about what we've put together from what came out of tonight. And then it will come to you for official recommendation at the September 9th meeting. Like many, many other counties and municipalities, right now data centers are not listed on the city's permitted use table. That means that currently the use is unregulated and it can be developed by right. By right development means I own the property. I can do that. And what we're wanting to do is proactively establish a framework to make sure that any future development does align with our comprehensive plan and is in the best interest of the city. Okay. I want to be very clear that at this point, no developers have approached the city. The council stated that and wanted to make sure that everybody was aware. The first thing we need to do is come up with the land use definition. Our permitted use table, we have to define what a data center is. This is a suggested one. It was one of the ones that I saw for many. It was probably on one of the ones I sent you. I just thought it covered a lot. We can obviously work with that. On July 13th at the council meeting, there were many city and county residents there that spoke. in opposition of data centers. They were mainly focused on water consumption, the electrical grid impacts, environmental, and potential health risks. Several of the residents said that we should just do a complete ban on data centers. The Missouri Municipal League strongly advises against doing that because a total burn revision would open the city up to a lot of liability. Instead, we can regulate it. Another thing that was suggested was a moratorium. And I know a lot of places are doing that. The problem with that is it really doesn't address the issue. And also, there is still some liability because we do have no zoning. From there, I thought I would point out that staff and council is very much in favor, if we add this, of doing it in the M2 heavy industrial zone. That would be where that land use would be permitted. And that would be up north, Long Industrial Road, with the requirement of a special use permit. And that would be the way it would be on the permitted use table. That way you could specifically address the concerns. I gave you a list of some things that maybe we want to consider tonight. It's by no means a comprehensive list, but it's the basics. I also want to point out the city's current code, our basic code, already covers a lot of this. It is in our code that You cannot drill a well to get water in the city limits. That was something that a lot of people were concerned about, the data centers getting water by drilling a well. That's not allowed already. We already require that any industrial place coming in, that they would submit site plans, that they would submit stormwater plans, that they would submit Uh, some of the required plans that we are looking at so.

Do you mind if I interrupt? Oh, go ahead. So I was looking up how by right is defined, and my understanding is that it would be unregulated, but only in the fact that there's no zone specific for that. So things like no drilling of wells, they can't get around that. Anything else that is periphery, like a peripheral sort of regulation, they would still be required to meet.

Yes, that is correct. Another thing that we've already got in place, having come from another municipality, I am constantly impressed with how much work has already been done on the city's ordinance and code. Section 44-143 of our code states for M2 heavy industrial land use as shall be permitted only by approval of the City Council after report from the County Health Department, Fire Department, and the Planning and Zoning Commission, which does set precedence for more stringent regulations that we would do in our special use permit. So that's already been taken into consideration. And you can see on the map that it's a fairly limited area that is zoned M2. By putting that as the area, the M2, it is in accordance with our comprehensive plan. That is appropriate for that type of use. That's where the factories are located. It's compatible with the neighboring businesses. It doesn't take away from the small town feel that we got going here in Kirksville. Um, and by putting the regulations on, you can protect the resources and protect the citizens while still adding to the city's revenue and our infrastructure, uh, which also aligns with the comprehensive plan. Before we go into the specifics of what you would like to see on this, the council has been very clear that they want us to be completely transparent through this whole process. That's why everything is being done in public session. We're having the public hearings. We're talking about it multiple times. And again, there will be a public hearing at your meeting on the 9th regarding this. And before we go to council on the 14th. Council and staff would also like everyone to be very mindful of the fact We have absolutely no control over what is done in the county. The city cannot control anything that is put in the county, and they have no county-wide zoning. That was brought up at meetings as well. Council has also said, and wanted me to pass along, they are not interested in offering any type of tax abatement or incentive to any data center developers. Instead, they would be pursuing, they call them community betterment agreements, like where they would say, you know, we'll do this with the infrastructure. They might do scholarships, things like that. And that would be worked out separately. But they do not want to offer any tax incentives. And I also want to let you know that Mary May Kummer, who is here as my backup, and Anastasia Tiedemann with K-Ready did attend the Data Center Summit in June. MML and Missouri School Board and the Missouri Association of Counties hosted that. That's where a lot of the links that I sent you came from. Those were the presentations. There were five of them. So she will correct me if I'm wrong on anything I tell you. and might be able to answer questions that I can't from having been there personally. So all that being said, we have a list of things that we would like to address. It's on page two at any time if you have questions since this is just a discussion.

Can you give us the page number at the bottom? Like, you know, the packet's really well organized in that it's like page 14 to 47, that sort of thing. 16, thank you. I don't see 16.

I see 15 and I see 17.

16.

page 14 of 47 is on your agenda packet that was given to you tonight okay okay everybody found where we're at and again if you've got something else please

Yeah, I got a couple of preliminary... I got a little checklist here that we can... One thing is that I'm really glad that we're putting this in the framework of conventional tools and we're not like... targeting data centers in some special way. I feel like the tools we have at our disposal will let us keep this in line with where we need it to be with the city's goals. So I think that's great. I think the idea of limiting this to the M2 zone is perfect. It's spot on. It puts it in the right place. It gives you the right tools to regulate it. So I'm kind of like behind that all the way. One thing I wanted to kind of ask about is that the definition of a data center here is pretty broad, and that's great. And given today's technology, and there was a line in there about telco hotels, it occurred to me that like telecom stuff, like a switching center, it's no longer like ladies patching patch cords together, right? A telecom center that's basically your switches for the phone system looks pretty much exactly the same as a data center. It's a big building, air-conditioned, filled with racks of servers. They're just switching packets instead of whatever. So I just wanted to point that out and ask, is there any chance that we might inadvertently outlaw telephone switching centers with these kinds of restrictions?

Well, I think that's something that we can address either in definition or size.

I think services like that might also be covered under other aspects of the zone. What is that? The big table?

The permitted use table.

Yes, the permitted use table. Because I believe, like, for instance, the E911 service, I would think would be similar to that sort of service, like a telecom service. And they are not restricted, I don't think, to industrial. No. So things like that, I think there are carved outs in other areas of the plan.

Yeah, okay. I mean, just so long as it's clear, because I just know from looking at it from a hardware perspective, a data center and an internet service provider and a telephone switch, nowadays, they're all basically the same thing, right? It's a building with a room full of computers. So I think we just have to be careful that we don't like... inadvertently outlaw some guy that wants to come in and put fiber optic in the city because they can't locate their you know their nexus their center because we think it's a data center you see where i'm going yeah yeah so i don't think it's a big deal but it's just like let's be careful with the definition i agree and that is something that i had brought up when we were talking about it outside of here um

I was looking at a secure facility whose primary service is data processing or data storage. That kind of makes it seem like a more of a standalone data center, but that's something we can always work on as well. And then we have to decide at what point are we not going to split hairs and just say,

I don't personally mind that phrasing, if only because data storage can mean many things. And for instance, like your Netflix's of the world or Amazon Prime Video or whatever, that is effectively data storage. So I think it would be appropriate for them to also fit into this, you know, industrial zone.

And I was thinking that that language would cover us on the where the hospital has their server room it's not the primary that word primary service I think that phrase might help us there but you're absolutely correct those are by definition technically a data center but yeah it's a little weird right yeah so there's that like you can think of your car as a computer that has wheels on it nowadays

Yes, sir. Looking at the map, the current, the largest area that's currently zoned into, I believe, is Barcelona City, is it not?

It is.

Yeah.

So the question is, looking at these data centers, like even a micro data center, we're taking more space than we even have, it seems like. But I've been looking into these things. Even the micro-buildings are not that small.

Right now, as far as vacant ground, that would be the biggest tract. Otherwise, you've got like 4.4 acres up north of there on the industrial court. I mean, it could be done. It's just going to be a small one. And that's where you look at well, Is that something the city wants? We wouldn't have as much of the impact from having a large data center. And so if we get our regulation in place, it might suit somebody's use.

And it also covers the instance of what we were discussing earlier today, where if somebody wants to vacate a lot, then it could open up the space for a larger space, too.

Exactly. You know, they could say, hey, we'll buy you out, you out, and you out. So there is another reason, and thank you, Mary, for letting me point this out. I neglected to mention, by choosing this M2 district, there is only one residence anywhere close. We're already away from residential districts. And, I mean, that's something you can put in your setback is how far away from a residence. You saw that in the samples. But up here, it's not a residential area. There are very few houses, whereas anywhere else, that could be a possibility.

And that's a house on the west side of Industrial Road, right?

Right. Yeah. There is, you know, that one residence and we would want to, you know, setbacks for any resident, but that is the only one up there right now. So is everybody in agreeance with the M2 pretty much and the special use permit?

That seems to be the standard, like from the other four that you provided to us, they all had special use permits or they called them conditional use permits, but it sounds like that's probably the same thing effectively.

It's something else that we can regulate, a minimum lot size and any setbacks. Do we want to establish a minimum lot size that we would consider?

Well, I think probably the I'm just guessing, but I think that the... lot sizes and setbacks that you would use for a warehouse holding boxes or you know i don't think we have to make a special one for this but any kind of warehouse or big building is going to have setbacks and minimum lot sizes or like you know the kraft heinz plan or something so i don't know that can we go with whatever those are for a generic industry would that be sufficient um

For the M2, currently, what the setbacks are is on the front, it depends on what road, what type of road frontage you have. If it's a federal or state highway, 60 feet front. A major street, 50 feet. Local or private street, minimum is 30 feet. If it's about the street with a right-of-way of less than 60 feet, then the minimum front yard depth shall be 60 feet from the center line of that right-of-way. Side yards and rear yards are 30.

That's right.

For anything in the M2. If we don't create a special requirement that we want more of a setback for the data centers... or a minimum lot size.

And of the four examples you gave, the smallest setback was 50 feet, and then the next smallest was 300 feet. And it sounds like, well, Branson had 50 feet from the property line, but 500 feet from residential zones. So I think realistically, the smallest setback is 300 feet from the other examples. So we would be quite a bit shorter than even the shortest example that we have.

That's right. If we want to maybe make like even a 50-foot setback. Or, Bruce, you don't look like... I mean... Or...

I think in the area that it's in right now, having a smaller setback wouldn't be the end of the world. But we also want to keep in mind, if Kirksville would ever want to designate a new M2 zone, would it cause any problems?

Yeah, I think in my mind anyway, the setback is kind of like a proxy for other things. And I think if you have... good restrictions around noise emanating from the property. I don't care what the setback is, as long as the noise isn't escaping the property and causing a disturbance or light pollution, right? I don't care what the setback is, but I don't want a light from this building shining in my living room window. So it seems like setting restrictions on noise, on vibration, on light emissions, on... you know, particulates, air pollution, all that stuff, functionally, that's going to do what you might think a setback would do, except more directly. That's just my thought.

Do you want to go with our standard? Are you thinking, you know, our standard setback is sufficient? And then do you want to maybe put something in there about residential in case...

I do think, yeah, I do think having a setback for residential districts, should we ever include a new M2 area?

You mean if it's adjacent to a resident?

Yes, yes.

Not necessarily a...

zoning but a resident yeah a zone like an r1 r2 that sort of thing so if there is any zoning not necessarily if there is a residence in an m1 yeah yeah i was gonna say that that is an m1 right that one person uh so yeah i'm thinking more like you know if it's if there's a if there were ever an m2 next to a residential r1 that sort of thing then i think having a good setback like three to five hundred feet minimum.

Sounds like 500 feet is the standard, right?

Yeah. And depending on how big it is, I think Camden County was 4,000 feet for the big ones. But going back to the other side of the problem.

We're going to be up in Hazel Creek Lake.

But yeah, I agree with the sound situation. The sound, I think, is going to be more important than necessarily having an enormous setback. And I really liked Warrensburg's policy of having essentially a 45 decibel You know, it couldn't penetrate into the residential zone more than 45 decibels, which is relatively quiet. Most of the other policies say around 60, 65. And once you're starting, well, first of all, 70 is where it becomes harmful to your hearing. So I feel like 60 to 65 is not good enough. But 45 is not bad. 60, 65, you're talking like, you know, a loud vacuum. And imagine if you're in your home And if you're vacuuming, you're expecting to make some noise, right? But imagine if your neighbor decided to barge into your house and start vacuuming 24-7, 365. That would be extraordinarily obnoxious, right? So, you know, I think personally 60 is not good enough. I think it needs to be more along Warrensburg's 50-45 at night sort of thing. So that's what I would say on the sound side of it.

Yeah, yeah. It needs to be real low because this isn't like some kid screaming for 10 minutes or, you know, your neighbor slamming a car door. As you point out, this is something that's there all the time. And so if it's going to be there all the time, it had better be really quiet.

I think in the very beginning that they had a sound study done.

It's not been anything recent, no.

That's why I was gathering from others. And also 45 is what was even one of the suggestions at the data summit.

The MFA facility during harvest time when they're drying corn would be an example. Again, I think Well, see, I'm just looking at where it's currently limited to and thinking, you know, nobody lives around there. It looks to me, if you expand, if you decide to add another 40 acres into the industrial zoning, it would appear to me there would be a lot of bells and whistles you might want to redo at that point. But at this point, it's pretty much out there where there's not much around it. And I view that as relatively safe. So I'm looking at it from an as-it-is viewpoint, not as it could be.

Well, we don't necessarily want to put ourselves... Let me put it this way. If we were to say, oh, it could be 70 decibels, like be pretty loosey-goosey with it, and that's damaging to your hearing, right? If a data center was like, well, we're going to be noisy, and we're going to look for somewhere that doesn't mind us being noisy, and they want to build a large place that wouldn't normally fit where we have M2 right now, they might approach us and say, we want to buy this tract and rezone it, and then they would have to come and request a rezone. We could say no, but we could say yes. We could be inviting someone to become a neighborhood pest.

Okay.

Well, I've actually got something about that with a suggestion further down, but we can go down there as far as noise limitations. What most places are doing is requiring from the property line of the data center, both pre-operational, before they really get going, tests, and then post-operational tests. So you can see how much it's going to be. This is something they would have to submit to us for evaluation. So it is something, and then if we needed to require it periodically, we could do that too. So that was already something as part of the preliminary, what should we do? We do have a noise as a nuisance in our code already. but it's fairly high.

And the other industries that might exceed that, generally my read of it is that it's those steady hums and that sort of thing, those are the things that really need to be quiet. But if you have a peak for an hour every day, that's where the big machines are hitting higher decibels, that's not quite as regulated too.

You have the noise you can hear, And then there is another type of noise that they measure, which is more the vibration noise, which actually can do more damage without you realizing it, you know, because you don't actually hear, you don't realize what's going on. So if we set a level on that and then just do the, the pre-operational and post-operational testing to make sure it stays within that. So you're thinking to go down a little bit from what our normal is.

I wouldn't necessarily mind having it be a little bit higher, but like I say, I like Warrensburg's approach of at least saying, effectively saying 45 decibels at night, I think is a good idea.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable to me. I guess one comment while we're on the subject here is that it would be nice to have the regulations have some actual teeth to them. I've known lots of cases where somebody will build a building three feet too high and people go, oh, well, they built it. We can't make them tear it down. And I get the point, but I think for these kinds of things, we need to have the... You know, like if some guy goes and tests the sound and it doesn't meet the sound limits, they shut down until they fix it. They don't say, well, we're going to do another study and we're going to go for six more months and maybe we'll retry it. Because...

And that would be addressed in the special abuse permit?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if they're violating the conditions of their permit, they stop operations.

What is the protection for voter and public living there? There, they would have to have, again, submit an impact study. Most of what your emissions that you're going to get from there would be from backup generators. We can require Tier 4 generators. with all the filters on them the new style which doesn't do that dnr also requires a permit from any data center wanting to come in and they have oversight on that as well and they've got a lot sharper teeth

If you don't mind, I'm going to knock out some of my comments and just get my stuff out of the way. So on the power requirements, I really liked Branson's guidance of saying that if, for instance, if there is a power outage, then the data center takes a backseat. They're secondary.

We can request. I actually brought this up to Ameren. We can request that of them, but if it is an Ameren issue, they're not supposed to show favoritism between customers.

Okay. Well, the other side of it is I would say that I like Camden County's approach where the micro centers can tap into the local grid, but the medium and large... think to an extent, the small centers as well, they have to provide some or all of their electricity generation, which might be difficult in this area, but you could still take the tiered approach to that. And they do it for both the water supply and the power supply. So I'm just thinking having less reliance in some fashion on the grid, because that plays into a number of things, including what happens during a powder outage and what happens possibly to the local resident electrical bills. So requiring them to have some sort of power generation should help buffer that need.

Yeah, that's kind of interesting. Because I was thinking the exact opposite, and I'll tell you why. I mean, you know, I can understand why an industrial facility would want backup power. That just makes sense. You've got to protect your business. But I don't want this to be a backdoor way for people to sneak power plants into town. I don't want somebody building a big gas turbine power generator plant and saying, oh, hey, I know I'm not allowed to build a power plant, but I'm hitching it on to a data center. So it's cool.

Well, and that's one thing with the generators, what I have seen done in several that I have looked at. Yes, you can have backup generators. There are scheduled test times. Otherwise, they can only be ran during 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. outside of a power outage emergency. As far as the renewable energy and them supplying their own, I think if we're going to do that, we probably want to look at To be realistic, a staggered approach, you know, like 25%, and then in five years, 50%, and bump it up. According to Amron, to be completely self-sufficient at this point is really not realistic.

Depending on how large the center would be.

Well, yeah, for something this size. So, you know, we might do something like that, maybe, if you were...

Well, but you see, the thing is, I mean, I'm trying to imitate my practical friend here. There's no way that a data center can supply its own electricity with renewables. They'd have to build a wind farm. Nobody's going to build a wind farm next to a data center. They'd have to cover an area equivalent to, like, twice the data center with solar panels. So we know that's not going to happen. If we require them to supply their own energy, it's going to be, well, nobody does diesel now. Nobody does coal, God forbid. But they put in these gas turbines. So it's like, if you say that the data center has to supply their own energy, what you're saying is you're saying the data center is going to build a gas turbine power plant. And if that's okay with you, then that's fine. But I don't feel like it's okay to use it as a cover to start building gas turbine power plants in town.

It would only apply to the data center in the industrial zone. But the other thing that you could do is maybe you don't say it's 100% of their power generation, but...

Well, the other thing that kind of sits wrong with me about it, and this probably is no basis in legality or whatever, is imagine a tornado comes through or there's some natural disaster or whatever, there's flooding, takes down the power grid, and the only thing in town that has power is the data center.

Well, that's not good, man. No. One of the nice things about them generating their own power, like in the cases of the ones that are saying 100%, is that rather than potentially citizens basically subsidizing the data center, the data center could at times be selling energy back to the grid, and that could benefit the citizens.

Well, I mean, I see where you're going, and it's a good point. I don't want to keep haggling about it. But one thing that I would say is to kind of bring it back to this idea of a public benefit. You could require that if they're generating their own power, that in the event of a natural disaster, if the town needs the power, they shunt their power to the town on an emergency basis to cover the citizens. They're paying it back. I mean, that would be a real nice... and would say, we're letting you build a power plant. We want it to serve the public when it's necessary.

See how that could be possible.

Well, what do you mean it's possible? We can pass any law we want, you know? Come on.

I get that, but tell them a private business, they have to sit down and say it's a power cut.

Yeah, I don't know. Private business, using private business as a cover to screw people is like a little bit beyond where I like to go.

I get where you're coming from, but...

I mean, yeah. Okay, well, on that note, we can look into that. Maybe, you know, asking for some renewable energy. And not so much generating your own as renewable whenever you're seeing those percentages. Like they're using, you know, not like a turbine center like you were talking about.

You've obviously been in discussions with Amerind. We've got wind turbines, we've got solar panels, we've got a hell of a substation just south of town. Do they feel that they've got access to electricity that would support a data center?

At this point, yes, but they will not say until they actually see. That's one thing that most everybody is requiring is what they call a willingness to serve or a will serve letter from the utility company. It verifies that. A couple other things since we're on the energy consumption. Senate Bill number four was passed in 2025. What it does is it puts large load user regulations on. It says that Okay, that one, if you're over 100 megawatt user, by law, you will pay for all infrastructure upgrades, any costs incurred by you operating. So it cannot be passed on to the consumer. Ameren's response to that is they established a large load tariff. And this is all public record. Google it, read it word for word. It is their standard if it's 75 megawatt peak load or more to where, again, they have to pay for all of their own charges. There is a different price class on the usage. Missouri has some of the strongest state legislation regarding data centers of anywhere.

Mm-hmm. Do you know how much, just for like comparison, a point of reference, do you know how much electricity something like a Walmart uses and how much the city of Kirksville uses?

But wait, there's more. I can't tell you how much the city of Kirksville uses. I can give you a couple of examples. A 75 megawatt peak load. When they are looking at it, load use, they're not looking at day-to-day. They want peak load. What is the max you're going to pull? I asked the guy, I said, okay, tell me what that's comparable to. And he started, what he was telling me wasn't explaining anything. I said, okay, explain it to me like I'm fine. He said, okay, 75 megawatt peak load would be probably about 35 or 40 Walmarts.

So that's a lot. That tells me that that doesn't really have a lot, the tariff doesn't have a lot of teeth.

I asked, when I was talking to St. Louis, the planning and zoning there, and I asked Ameren too, because I said, so what would be one of the biggest users in the state of Missouri? I'm trying to get something to reference. He said the GM plant in Wentzville is one of, it may not be the biggest, but it is one of, and it was around 30 something. And I asked the city of St. Louis, honestly, because I was curious if, you know, if my research was holding true. They said the same thing that, you know, that was one of the biggest users in the area. So that, I would say, is about right. But again, the 75 megawatt, that's for a hypercenter. You know, that's for the big ones.

Well, I guess my point is that they're required to build out infrastructure if they hit that, but that seems like a very high threshold.

Mm-hmm.

doesn't really matter on this lot on that four acre lot no it probably won't hit 75 unless they build up yeah you'd have to put an aluminum smelter on that site or something right so that's one thing we need to discuss building height do we because right now for m2 it can be 100 foot do we want to change the building height what's that like five stories No, it could potentially be almost 10, like 9 or 10. Now, from the plans that I saw of data centers, most of them have 16-foot ceilings, but I don't know that. I'm just saying in standard construction language.

Yeah, so 16-foot ceilings, 100-foot ceilings. That means basically you're multiplying. If you flatten that, you'd have five times the area. So you're taking five times the area and squishing it down and pushing it up just for a frame of reference.

So do we want to leave that at 100? Are you thinking we need to lower that or?

I think, well, I guess it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. But if it's about the things like what we were talking about with power consumption, water consumption, that sort of thing. If we took the approach, some of these other folks have said is, you know, you're responsible for the build out and they're not even dealing with Ameren's, you know, 75 megawatt pie in the sky thing. Yeah. If they're responsible for any build-out, then at least they would be held to account for their load.

The hypercenters are, all of them, are 75, some of them are even up to 200.

200 what?

Megawatt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really hard to conceptualize the difference in scale here for these things.

Even a sensory building has not been applied in such a way. They're huge.

Yes, I'm just saying, you know, we're picturing a small lot. I'm just asking if you wanted to keep it, if you thought it should be kept that way.

Well, there is such a thing as realistic screening. You couldn't build screening to go to that. That doesn't make sense.

I'm a little goofy over there.

Yeah, these guys never build multi-story buildings because they just go to some place where they can take up 75 acres. And so, I mean, conceivably, you could, you know, make your footprint five times bigger by stacking it. And that's what they have done in St. Louis. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, maybe it's a threat, but... I don't know. There aren't any structures that tall in Kirksville anywhere except maybe the MFA grain towers, right?

I think what Mary was saying was that there might be an imposed, basically an unsaid imposed limit because you can only go so high because these things need to be fenced in, have a facade.

That's where we're working with. The building height, the scale, the architectural standards, do it Do we want a facade? Do we make it look more than just a concrete block building?

I think a lot of the purpose of these facades, besides being for aesthetics, is to help with noise suppression.

And then you would get into requiring the fencing for it to be secure and for screening purposes. So if you've got a 100-foot tall building...

So, I apologize. Are we talking about a four-acre lot?

I'm just saying that is one vacant lot. Okay, that's... And then, but there's also 20-acre...

Okay, all right, because I'm thinking a four-acre lot, who would build a data center on a four-acre lot?

Well, as it happens, I pulled some articles because I get a lot of this stuff in my feed, so I didn't necessarily expect to go over this, but there was an article – The headline was, Google Data Center Announces Plan to Pave Over Protected Wetlands. And we were just talking about floodplains and stuff, right? So residents of Fort Wayne, Indiana may have to say goodbye to over four acres of federally protected wetland if Google has its way. As Wayne reports, Hatchworks submitted an application to purchase 4.26 acres... So it's that four acres of forested wetland outside of Fort Wayne. Of that, about 2.13 acres of the land may soon be paved over to build three new buildings, as well as a labyrinth of wastewater pipes and electrical infrastructure. So their only plan is to use two acres.

Okay. All right. I just figured four acres isn't much.

No.

No, but if you've got 50-foot setbacks or 60- and 30-foot setbacks... and make use of the space, especially going vertical, you can get more.

Well, I guess, you know, here's what zoning is for. If the idea of a building that's five stories tall taking up most of a four-acre lot fills you with horror and is something we don't want, then we should say we don't want it and put in a height limit. If it's fine with us, then it's fine with us.

Right now, our zoning says it can be 100 foot. but then you've also got to factor in if we require screening, and they may not.

I think it'd be a good idea to require screening, because again, it does help with things like noise suppression, and then that would be effectively their requirement. They wouldn't be able to build much higher than that because they'd have to deal with the noise.

What about if I put in an asphalt plant like the city has, and I got a big barrel thing where they heat up the asphalt that's going 50 feet in the air? Do I have to build 50 feet of screening around that? I haven't seen that anywhere in town.

You're just talking about special abuse permit requirements for data centers. Right. Okay. Otherwise, MFA, I don't know if Chuck said MFA, you know, they have issues because they're well over.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is strictly requirements that we would put on the special use permit for the regulations on the data set.

Yeah, I mean, I understand that, but I guess what I'm trying to say is if we think 100 feet is too much, we should say it. We shouldn't say, oh, 100 feet is okay, but we got this sneaky little thing about screens that's going to make it so you'll never build that. I don't think it's sneaky to say that this is for sound suppression. Well, okay, maybe I chose the wrong word, but my point is if you don't want 100 feet, then say you don't want 100 feet and be done with it.

Well, my thing, I don't necessarily care how tall it is. I don't really mind if it's 100 feet, but I think it should have sound suppression around it, and that effectively accomplishes the same thing without adding extra laws to the books.

Yeah, okay.

And everybody was in grants that there should be some type of built-out facade. You can require landscaping like trees or something that would also eventually be sound suppression.

Well, I don't like the word eventually. Like my prior comment, I don't want them to plant little 13-foot trees and say, well, it'll meet sound requirements when these trees grow out in 50 years.

I think in those examples, there was a requirement on the diameter of what they can plant. Right, but you get my point, right? Okay, we've already talked about the noise and operational, and again, this would have to be tested and They would have to submit the results to the city with corrective measures taken if it did not meet the requirements. Water consumption and conservation.

I think it's really interesting that Camden County basically said that they needed to harvest the water off the roofs. That's a very interesting way to do it. I think with the footprint that we're dealing with, at least right now, again, that may change in the future. But the footprint that we're dealing with right now, I don't think harvesting the rainwater off of that small of a building would be enough to deal with that.

And what got a lot of places and caused a lot of problems in earlier days, they used evaporative cooling. Now, many of them have went to, and it's something we can require in the special use permit, that they use a closed loop system for their cooling. So it works like a radiator. It doesn't have to have water in every day. It greatly reduces the water use.

Does that use underground pipes and that sort of thing? Is that what you're talking about?

A closed loop. So in computer terms, if you have a physical computer sitting in front of you and it's got a water cooling system in it, you've got a block, a radiator block, basically. It's a heat sink attached to the central processing unit, the CPU. That provides most of the heat that's generated within the computer. So that heat sink pulls it away. It's got water running through that block. it goes out to a fin array with fans attached to it, and the fans blow that heat away, cooling the water, and then it loops back around. So I don't know if that's exactly what the data centers are doing, but that is a closed loop water system.

I do not know the exact configuration of it, I guess. John, do you have anything?

Yeah, I think he's right about that. So it's almost like a chiller system.

I say chiller system is what I have seen it referred to where I have seen.

So the pipes would basically be going routed through like a refrigerator, basically.

And you're right, the air is cooling it off. The only time you get water after initial start of everything is during evaporation. where they have to add some water because the water doesn't evaporate, especially if it's moving. Or they have also, they have these purge cycles they have to do. And I don't know how many purge cycles they have, and how much water is being dumped out. There's also, on that link, if you look in there, there's some places, I think Loudoun County was requiring a filter system before it was being dumped out. So the water, the city water, okay, a city is clean.

coming out so a lot of things we can we can do with that so that that happens so but yes to your point yes till the systems just cool your water down and they get even some systems you can reclaim that water and just basically keep recycling it to a certain degree i'm sure at some point you've got to add more but the water use is not like what it was like in loudoun county in the beginning or in some of the earlier data centers and by requiring that closed-loop system.

So if you're not allowed to drill a well and extract groundwater in the city, and these things need a whole ton of water, I mean, I'm sure the closed-loop helps, but the scale of these things is just unimaginable. What happens when they connect to the city water supply and the city just simply doesn't have the capacity to supply that much water?

Again, they would have to get a will serve letter prior to even starting the project. They would have to submit their plan, their water usage plan, and then it would go through public works and engineering. And they would determine if we can handle that.

Okay, and so if the city can't handle it, they just say, no, we can't do it.

Yeah, exactly.

All right. That seems pretty straightforward.

And by requiring all of these plans and all of these reviews and the will serve letters, it takes a lot of the what ifs out.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we talk about them not building a data center on these little piddly pieces of land. I don't have good enough water pressure in my house. So if the city's going to, the city doesn't have the capacity to put water into one of these things.

All of the examples that you gave, I think, said that they required a closed-loop system. There is still a water consumption concern with that, but I think my bigger concern is any kind of waste disposal, any kind of thing like that, because we don't want them dumping who knows what into Thousand Hills, for instance.

And that's where the wastewater plan would come in. I know with other entities here in town... There's testing required just to make sure that nothing's getting put into the sewer system that it's not supposed to be.

So there would be permits. We have a craft and several others have on their effort. They have to do treatment, testing, and then if they don't meet the numbers, they get fined.

Okay. So that's already in place.

And also, again, DNR monitors that as part of their permitting.

That's a whole nother... Water doesn't degrade the town, but improves it. Someone