Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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All right, I called to order the Lynchburg Planning Commission meeting for Wednesday, May 27th, 2026. The first order of business is the approval of our May 13th minutes. Anybody had a chance to see them? Any changes or recommendations or motion? Motion? Second, okay. All in favor of approval, say aye. Aye. Anybody not here, opposed? okay great our next order of business is uh to consider the amendment uh on data centers and i'm gonna ask it's long so i'm gonna ask rachel to present that please uh thank you mr chair uh vice chair members of planning commission

For I guess some background and just a refresher, Planning Commission directed staff to look into possible data center zoning ordinance updates last fall on September 10th. We also held a work session last month on April 22nd where we discussed potential updates and just tried to do a pulse check of what the Commission was looking to regulate. Again, as I said at that meeting, Lynchburg has not had specific inquiries or proposals for data centers at this time, but we do think there's potential that we could get a request for one of these facilities in the future, and we just want to be prepared for that. These are kind of the guiding principles that staff presented last month and what we used to draft the ordinance. We wanted to, you know, if a data center were to be proposed, how do we mitigate impacts to residents and the surrounding land uses? How can we preserve our commercial and business districts for true commercial uses? And how can we evaluate data center proposals on a case-by-case basis when they do come in in the districts that we're proposing? As a reminder of where we are currently with data centers, in our ordinance, data centers fall under the definition with data processing and management, hosting and related services. They are allowed by right in all of our business districts, all industrial districts and institutional district too. By right uses mean that planning commission does not get to make a recommendation on them and city council would not be able to approve or deny them because they are by right. We also don't have any specific land use standards for data centers right now, like buffering or special setbacks, that sort of thing. So to get into the draft updates, we would start with defining a data center. This is the definition that we discussed last month, basically a premises in which the majority of the use is occupied by computers and or telecommunications and related equipment for processing, storing, or transferring information. That also includes ancillary utility substations, generators, and other supporting equipment associated with the primary data center use. Once we define data center, we then need to make sure that we would distinguish this use from the category that it currently falls into. So we would strike the term computer data storage from this description and explicitly say data centers as articulated in the definition section to figure out what those are. This is kind of the most important part. I would say by amending this description, this is what removes data centers as a by-right use in all of our business districts, all of our industrial districts and the IN2. We would then add another use, LCBS 4244A, specifically articulating data centers and making them by conditional use permit in the industrial districts and the IN2 district. This map shows that change. So here's kind of currently where they are allowed. This is where they would be allowed by CUP. You know, again, being by right, which means without council approval in this scenario, the proposed ordinance would take out the commercial districts and only allow them by conditional use permit in the industrial and IN2 district. So that summarizes the changes to the districts themselves. And we then get into the land use specific standards. The proposed section 35.2-72.29 would first set requirements for information needed as part of a CUP application. Basically, number one is saying we need to look at the sound profile of, you know, the impact on any residential units or schools within a certain amount of feet of a buffer from the property. Site assessment showing impact on, you know, water resources, agriculture, historic sites, forest land, et cetera. details of any new or existing substations that would be serving the data center, the transmission voltage needed to serve the data center, and the anticipated route of any transmission lines needed to serve it. And number four, the details of the water usage, essentially, how they will be cooled, whether the facility will use potable or reclaimed water, and what's their anticipated need of the water, and how would they purify their own wastewater? Just to make sure that, you know, as part of the CUP application, we understand what the needs are and what the potential impact is on, you know, our utilities. Yeah, we would need that as part of the CEP application so that when we bring it to you, they've articulated all that. Continuing that section, setbacks and screening requirements would be set. We had discussed a required setback from residential zoning at our work session last month. And I do have some maps to show you. We looked at a 250 foot, a 500 foot and a 1000 foot buffer that I'll display here in a minute. One thing to note is that industrial and institutional districts can be pretty intense, and especially industrial districts may not be really appropriate near residential districts regardless. So that's just something to keep in mind as we look at those maps. The next section would describe the, you know, windows when generators can be tested. You know, basically weekdays during working hours. The section then goes on to talk about noise and noise monitoring. Another discussion point from the work session was the frequency of the noise testing. So I've highlighted that here on this slide. You know, I think we had initially said every few years it was suggested to make it an annual requirement. So that has been reflected here. and the maximum height was something we had also discussed. I wrote it for 45 feet. And again, I wrote it for a thousand feet from the residential. So, you know, council, I mean, excuse me, the commission can still tweak those things, but I thought we'd start with a number and you can work back from that. It was suggested to be 40 feet. It seemed like 40 feet was about the minimum on the data center. So I said, okay, 45, give it a little leeway, but it's ultimately up to the commission to make a recommendation. This is the map showing the buffers. So this is a 250 foot buffer. The orange areas are the areas where Essentially, they would be precluded from locating based on the residential district. It looks like a lot because a lot of our city is zoned for residential use. So you can see there are pockets of industrial areas where the data centers could still be permitted by CUP. Going up from there, so this is 250. This is 500. Not much different. And this is 1,000. really doesn't look that much different either but um so that those are some options for the residential buffer if you choose to include that piece as part of the ordinance And that, even though it was hundreds of pages, that is really what it boils down to, is changing these things from a by-right use to conditional use permit, limiting the districts where they can go, and setting the standards for if one were to be developed. So I think we'll have the public hearing, and then we can discuss as needed.

Okay. Thank you very much. I don't see anybody here who wants to speak, and I don't know if anybody has contacted the office about this. I did contact a couple council members, and I think it's kind of under the radar, which is what we want to do is be ahead of the ballgame. So I think we'll close the public hearing, and let's go ahead and shoot some questions out.

the industrial two area, what could realistically go there?

Industrial two?

Yeah.

Not institutional?

No, actually, I'm sorry, institutional.

Institutional. So the institutional two districts that we have are the Liberty University campus and the Lynchburg General Hospital campus. They are... Those districts are modeled around our B5 district, which is our general business district. The difference is that in the business districts, schools and universities and hospitals are limited to a certain cap on their size, but in the institutional district, they're not.

Does anything in the proposed resolution exclude University of Lynchburg or Randolph College from having a data center or having the ability to have such a facility?

So I don't believe so because what a campus of that size if you're talking about a data center it wouldn't be the primary use. It would be you know as as defined

Okay, since their primary mission isn't being a data center, they could have something that wouldn't qualify.

Yeah, a premises in which the majority of the use is occupied by computers and or telecommunications and related equipment.

A premises being defined as? How would we define a premises?

Well, if we don't define it in the ordinance, then we define it by Merriam-Webster. So we can check that.

Because you can certainly section off it. shed as it were on a warehouse on a given property and use it for that and it wouldn't be a primary use

I guess where I'm going is I just don't want to exclude those entities.

So we don't want to omit that, but the question came up, could they be? what if they want to farm this stuff out and that's kind of where the the question i have about a premises in which the majority of the use is occupied by computers because you could use one one hundredth of a university campus or framatome or somebody you know and set up a data center and sell the services and it still would be rather large but it wouldn't be the primary function so i guess what i'm saying maybe a little more more depth on premises would be helpful structures and land that make up a parcel of property but if it were the majority of these yeah if the main use is still a university or a hospital yeah if the main use for example if liberty is easy to use because it's a large campus say they've got a 20 acres on the back of the campus where they 100 800 500 acres and they sell it or contract it out and on that 20 acres they're going to put up a gigantic data center and want to

Well, so at that scale in the IN2 district, you could get a CUP for that.

You could do it.

Yeah. But I think what Commissioner Cox is referring to is something on a smaller scale, which I think it's an accessory to the university at that point. I don't think this definition would apply there.

Okay. Yeah, that's all I'm looking for. Yeah, I think that's...

Frankly, yeah. If we use the 1,000 foot, I mean, it's kind of... a moot point anyway. It's not going anywhere in the city except over there in Liberty side of town.

That's what it looked like.

Or an industrial park.

I was against $500,000. Please. There's $250,000.

There's $500,000. And there's $1,000,000. $1,000,000.

So that Mont View and the Liberty Campus is really where it would ultimately really be the only locations that it could possibly go. The industrial park in the corner, the 1,000 feet really just reduces that size of that industrial park to a very limited amount of space. Right, but the industrial park over there near their PFC Desmond Daws Highway, That 1,000 feet buffer really reduces the size of that.

So if you wanted to reduce it to 500, that's what it would look like. You'd still have some feasible sites there potentially. I mean, most of those are probably built out, but just in theory.

We're doing what we did with another thing is, at least in my opinion, everybody may not agree with this, but we're using the power of zoning to restrict these things in the city. I mean, they can say, look, we can't build a five acre, 10 acre building, but what we can do is take an old building and go vertical with it. And we talked about that, I think last time too. So this would affect the leave and preclude that except over on the Liberty side. And really these things tend to go from what I've seen in very large cracks of land they're getting ready to build one up north was it double the size of manhattan that's whatever in utah or something incredible yeah i think i'm massive so i mean it'll probably have to go into the county anyway so this this is really more preventative i think so this removes any by right correct that's what i understood yes okay

I think in terms of the buffer distances, because of our intentions here, I would tend to err on the side of the larger buffer distance. And if council decides it needs to be tweaked, it's easier to go the other direction than to realize we didn't make it large enough and we need to tweak it up. Yes. We can always scale it back down, but if it's too low to begin with, then there's not much we can do if we realize it too late. And it's not a big deal to, I don't think we've done it before, to revisit something like this in a couple of years, because it is a major addition.

It is.

And by then, in five, ten years, they may have better cooling systems. Sure. Do you have to do the EDA at all?

For the city? Because I think they're the ones, you know, from what I understand, you know, that area out there off 221, that's kind of a hot topic with EDA and, you know, how that land's used and what it's going to get used for. and it would be interesting to hear what they would have to say about restrictions on that land. And they might say, you know, we... Which land? It's the one, I can't think what it's called, but it's where Frito-Lay is. It's that gray spot on the corner.

Is that Lynchpin? Yeah. Not specifically, no. But we can do that.

Yeah, possibly. I mean, I think there are some areas in the industrial area in gray that are underused or not used that would be great sites for large things like that. But even so, these don't employ people. Yeah.

I mean, the possibility of them building one of these in the city is probably low.

Well, that's why I'm wondering if, like, the footprints are going to change. You know, like how many are going to be – I've been looking at them, and it's funny how some of them use a lot less water than others. Some of them might be big, and they're very quiet. Some are small, and they're really loud. You know, it just depends on the use. I didn't realize how many uses there were of these facilities, but – I mean, I think I agree with Dave, like just going with a larger buffer. And if council wants to push back on that, you know, or if the EDA says, hey, we need to try to use this land out here at Lynchpin, then that would be the time to address it.

Do we know the height of some of these buildings in these industrial parks? The limits on these other buildings, do we know what those are? If there are any.

Normally industrial districts don't have a height limit.

Did I see something here that limited the size of these buildings at 45 feet?

That was something we had discussed last time. If the commission doesn't want to regulate the height, we could take that out. We had also talked about with the potential for them to just being an evolving technology, if there's more potential for them to build up than out, then maybe you don't want to limit the height because then you're not using as much land area. They're going more vertical.

But that kind of gets it from both sides, you know, vertical and horizontal.

Yeah, the height limitation, again, it's better to err on the conservative side, like Dave's proposed with the area. And if we want to adjust it later, we can. Yeah, like if you were lower, then the buffer might be closer.

But the higher it gets, the bigger the buffer has to be because of the angle, noise being pushed out. So... So we talked about that building downtown. Remember on the corner of 9th and Main, which kind of came up in... Or is it 8th, maybe?

Is it 8th and Main? I don't know. It's 9th and Main right here.

The large bang on the corner. Oh, 9th and Main. Okay, yeah, that one. Yeah. You know, so this allows anything to be used in that way in the way of a data center.

what's at the moment at the moment yeah as as the ordinance currently yeah is yeah in effect yes and when this passes that will never be able to be used that way um because it's no unless you know unless council were to change it or or you know if we were to put the commercial districts back in um before does not allow for that in the current draft

Yeah, I did some research on that, yeah.

One thing I appreciated was, and it sounds like maybe we're not discussing it a lot, but we spent a lot of time discussing this last time, so I think we've covered a lot of the topics. But one thing I appreciated was the addition of what they need to include as part of their CUP. I think that's a nice thing to request. I'm wondering with the first request with the sound profile, that's not providing an estimate of how loud the facility would be, right? It's just looking at the potential impact of sound on the surrounding area.

Well, I think to measure the impact, you would need to know how loud it's going to be. Okay. So yeah, there's...

So that would be included in that?

Right. And the section that does talk about sound, I can't remember if I included it on the side, but there is notwithstanding... Yeah. So all noise generated by a data center, including the generators, shall comply with the regular noise ordinance that would be in effect for... industrial districts.

So on that topic, the little information I've been able to gather, they also admit this low sound frequency, this humming. I'm not... data center guy but um but um obviously we don't want these high-pitched sounds but this low emission emitting sound is something i feel like is also would be very concerning um and i'm not sure exactly what parameters or how to measure or monitor that but to me it feels like that is also important it wouldn't it wouldn't hit the threshold of the of the sound ordinances that we have, it would be much lower.

Well, I would think that should be covered in a sound profile as well.

Okay.

And again, this is something I'm learning too, so I appreciate the question.

I think one thing to follow on, I think what Dave is saying is

What I don't see in here is any thresholds for the sound. We have height and we have area. We have numbers for that. But we don't, I mean, unless there's a code reference or something like that in the sound discussion, there's no thresholds for high frequency noise or low frequency noise or noise at a certain distance. And so if I were looking to design one of these, that would be one of the things I would look for is to see what what my requirements are.

Even to piggyback off of that, I know we're sort of ping-ponging here. I mean, do we even – this is not intended to be – how much water is too much water? How much energy is too much energy? How much wastewater is too much?

So my conversations with water resources is – my understanding is there's not like a set number. It's more about where is it and what is the capacity in that area versus just a threshold, like a no more than X. It's more about what can the system provide in that area and what can the sanitary system be you know take on in that area so that's it's more of the that's that's that's where the whole like evaluation on the case-by-case basis comes in cup and they want to they want 90 of the capacity in the area well that tells us that we should recommend denial you know that sort of thing so um just just real quickly again related to the the water usage um dumb guy question again but

I mean, we're currently in a drought and I don't know how these things operate in various conditions, but maybe as a part of the process, they outline what they do in extreme weather conditions, such as a drought, because if they're putting too much taxing our water resources too much during a drought when it really needs to be reallocated or allocated towards our citizens and again i don't know how this stuff works but it feels like a considering we're in a drought right now um i was curious how that would play out and again not sure what we should do about that but it does feel perfect

Yeah.

35272 29 paragraph to site assessment, evaluating the effect of proposed facility on ground and surface water resources. Agricultural resource parts, etc, etc. So that's one of the things that would have to be provided, right? They would have to guesstimate.

any other number four i mean yeah so yeah yeah water daily that's even better i mean we could there could be an added line on so there is an estimate for that what an extreme situation could look like and that'd be part of the cp evaluation yeah so you're you're talking you're talking about adding something like um

how we have it yeah so i don't know that there is a bare minimum especially depending on all the different scales and types of these things that can be that may change too right yeah

specific thresholds again the case-by-case evaluation i think we just we and the council would call in someone from uh water resources as part of the discussion just like we just like we do the traffic engineer for other proposals so we use that info as part of the eval

Right. And, you know, as part of our technical review committee, which reviews all the petitions before they come to planning commission and before planning commission sends them to council, you know, we, we rely on our subject matter experts from each department to tell us this does or doesn't work, or this needs something else in order to work or, you know, what, what, you know, what are the caveats with each proposal that comes forward? They they're, they're involved.

A lot of this would be addressed by the different companies that are applying as to know what kind of usage that you would be having on a case-by-case basis there. But you've done a lot of great work. Your team's done a lot of great work in putting these parameters together to make sure that we, as a city, meet the needs of the citizens. And I was just going to say on the height, you know, the 45 foot, you have to take into consideration there, too, both safety and fire hazard. The taller the building, the more you would have, you know, potential for possible fire there. But these things are being put up in so many different places right now.

The only other question that I had... after reviewing this was back to the noise testing. I know we have it set for, I think, annually. But I might suggest, and I'd be curious what the group thinks here, but having testing within 90 days of the establishment of the data center, but also adding some sort of caveat that if any new equipment, and I don't know how you define that, but new equipment gets put in, then there needs to be, it's almost like that resets. Because annually feels, in my opinion, it feels too long of a period of time. I think we talked about this last time we got together.

So you would say, number two there then, a noise study certifying noise levels shall be conducted within 90 days of the certificate of occupancy? Yes.

Something to that effect. I guess what I'm concerned about are our citizens not having a voice until a year later.

I think it would be difficult to say if you expand to the footprint, then yeah, you could say do it again. But adding equipment within a building that is zoning of occupancy for it would be tough to have any kind of you know, testing framework around that. It's going to catch it in another, yeah.

I guess what I'm advocating for more than anything is our citizens having a voice. If something gets installed tomorrow and then we find out 30 days later that it is like, just egregiously harmful to the community, I'd rather us have the ability to, our citizens have the ability to voice their change sooner than later, or voice their concerns sooner than later. And maybe everyone feels like that's already captured here, but I'm just- Should it be between 60 and 90 days of the CO?

So it's like if there's potentially an issue 30 days in, we can say, look, we're testing in a month once things have really gotten up and running in between that 30-day window. Or we can do it like 30 to 90 days. So there's like a time frame, like, hey, if we need to get it done, it needs to be done.

OK, so change the first highlight, a noise study certifying noise levels. shall be conducted between two and three months, basically? 60 to 90 days? I think 60 to 90 days.

I think the 90 days, just saying within 90 days of the startup of the facility. I think that would be fair, because I think if you start putting up this framework, like it could be this and it could be that.

It actually is a really narrow window in terms of construction.

Yeah, I think it's just best just to say 90 days from the date of startup.

Okay. So 90 days.

Yeah.

Well, so yeah. So once you get the certificate of occupancy is when you can officially like start operating.

So that would be a year to get up to full capacity.

Well, you have to get built.

Yeah. But 90 days after they, I mean, they're probably, I mean, if it's phased and there would be a caveat. So as long as it's unfazed, they're operating at a hundred percent in 90 days.

So to address the other comment about, you know, there's potential for new things to be added or like something changes with the facility and then it creates a big problem, you know, I'm wondering if that's something that as part of the building permit, you know, when we have building permits issued on parcels with conditional use permits, there's a flag basically that says someone needs to look at this building permit and make sure the CUP is being followed. as part of the building permit, they would have to submit the, not necessarily an updated noise study, but documentation showing that whatever they're doing has the noise mitigation in it. So like the fans or whatever, the generator, it meets the the other section, the section that's not shown here, but that talks about insulating or how you basically make a quieter facility. So I think that is possibly the way to address that. Just when the building permit comes in, make sure it's constructed in a way that follows the code. And the code does say, as it's drafted, that basically it's on them to show

that they built it to that spec so they they installed it that way you know it's it's on them um and then yeah i've right it's not just noise i mean an upgrade could mean more energy use or more water use right so any any upgrades would have to still fall within the original cup petition

And they could say if they're at 40% operation after 90 days, they can come back and say, hey, we're in full compliance with water usage, electrical usage, everything. Noise output, and then the next day, boom, launch to 100%.

nine months so this is interesting something i i saw is they have to tie their emergency power generation to the capacity of their facility and i think that's a great way to to look at and say well that would be one thing if you add if you add more power generation because the facilities can't stop so they have to actually have enough emergency power to operate the facility so if they phase and they grow they would be adding more emergency backup power I mean, I think it's up to them to really kind of tell the story about what they're doing.

That's a good point, because that would reveal what they're putting in.

Yeah. There's been some organizations that have started finding out more about these just through looking at emissions reports on generators.

So it seems like we're kind of merging design and construction with operations. i guess dave was kind of discussing a second ago uh and i just want to make sure that i'm clear like what what is um what is controlling what levers does the city have to control the operations or like modifications to the facility um you know like let me like chuck was saying we could have a you know, they could sub a generator that's twice the power and that there's the same footprint somehow. I don't know how they would do that, but let's just pretend. But is there something in the city code right now for any facility that requires modifications to the facility to be brought back to city council or zoning commission, or I mean, planning commission for zoning review or something?

so it depends on what conditions you set as part of your conditional use permit if it is you know a certain power usage water usage footprint um number or you know capacity of the generators um if it if they want to expand beyond what the conditions say then yeah that has to come back through the same process to say okay we've we've done what we said we do the noise is good the water is good we want to do a little more um that would that would require you know further council approval we say that in the in somewhere in the city code that says that they're required to do that well i mean i guess not explicitly in the code but by well not in this code but when you set conditions you're essentially making the rules. Okay. So, yes.

I think if we, I mean, I feel like we've gone far enough in the way of looking at these facilities. It's that next step that then we'll have to look at. I mean, let's say, for example, someone builds an apartment complex and they said, we have 10 apartments and each apartment has eight bathrooms. Then it's the planning staff, community development has to say, what's going on? Why are there eight bathrooms? That's not something that we, I think, determine. We determine that they can use this for apartments, but I think it's in that planning process. They're going to have to look and say, this is why we're doing this. This is why we're doing that. And then state their argument as to what they're doing.

You got to find out what goes where, I guess, what you're saying. I mean, you want to assume that everybody's going to be a good actor when they come in. and build these things. But unfortunately, the reality is we have to prepare nitpicky things because sad part is this is real life and somebody wants to build one and they want to do some monkey business. They're going to do it if there's a loophole.

I think one of the worst things that we've seen, we've seen this multiple times is where people come in and they speculate on land thinking they can then in turn sell it to somebody who will do that. And then it locks up land. And this is something that protects us from that. Like, maybe this will help us get better actors rather than speculators.

So are we changing this to 90 days sound? I think that's what I heard, yeah. Within 90 days?

Yeah, within.

At full capacity, at assumed or planned full capacity.

Well, I think I think it's what the term you use, Rachel, when they get the certificate of occupancy.

Yeah, that's when you can press go on. You know, the building inspector comes out and says, I mean, there's always there's always so much we can do.

Our job is not to police these things. We're just putting we're putting these in place.

And I mean, with the 12 months, I mean, that's a huge risk. that an organization would run to exceed that sound and then lose their CEO in 12 months. So I think that has enough teeth to let them know we're serious about it.

you got, let's just say it was January 1st and you've got 90 days and then you have a turnaround of another, what, nine months and you have to get another inspection. So you're, you're really, you have to meet those requirements for the CEO and you have to meet it again in the minimum of 90 days or less and then nine months later. So you really have three times that you have to meet that within the first year. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's for me, that's great. So I would say conducted within 90 days after the issuance of the first CO and every 12 months thereafter.

Okay. We'll note that. I can't really edit the slides with that computer, but we'll change that first highlight to say 90 days, within 90 days. Was there, hold on. I think that was the other thing. It sounded like you wanted to go with the bigger buffer

I like the value.

I think those are the only two questions, was the buffer and the height. And I'm fine with 1,045 feet, which is what you have suggested for both.

And that is something that's usual and customary at other places as well, the 1,000 foot buffer. Have you seen other places?

Yeah, it really ranged. But from what I've read, these facilities next to residential are very problematic. you know, 250 or 500, it's really not a lot once you get on the ground. But, you know, if the commission wants to change it or council wants to change it, it's, they can still do so or, you know, not have a buffer at all, but just trying to protect the residents nearby.

Talk to other locations to address to see if they are having problems that you know of with these data centers within Virginia that are not addressed right here.

Read a lot of best practices. And I mean, you know, some ordinances are very complex and some are a little more simple. We kind of try to strike a balance between something that is workable and still and still um protects you know the surrounding land uses um so i i feel like that's kind of what we've accomplished here um appreciate the commission's input especially at the work session that was helpful to kind of get us going in the right direction But yeah, people are doing it all different ways.

Yeah. What's the deal on the tax base? I know that Louise Lucas has a different thing with these taxes on data centers. The exemption has been in how many years has it been that they don't pay taxes now through the state of Virginia? 39. She wants to wash that out and start taxing all of these. She'd like to start taxing all of these data centers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool tax. The personal property tax. I think that's what communities like these for is they're paying tax revenue on their facility.

Yeah. Really tried to focus more of just a land use compatibility lens for the purposes of the zoning ordinance update. You know, whatever the state does, the state does. But, yeah. Yeah.

It's probably about 60 feet.

A thousand feet sounds like a lot. Really around Liberty and around the Montview industrial sites there, really you're surrounded by the expressway and that little cut through for Candler's Mountain, and then you've got 460. There's not a lot of residential there anyway, which is really where this thousand foot reduces that area to, other than the couple little spots in the industrial park in the corner there. So, I mean, I personally think that area would be fine. I mean, there's already industrial there. I mean, they're producing stuff. They're manufacturing goods, whatever it is. They're making noise. And I don't know of any complaints from that part of town. I mean, residential is pretty far away from those parts of town right now as it is.

Rich, I have a question about on Liberty's property going along the city limits, the That would be the eastern city limits there in the bypass. Is that conservation land? Is that R1?

Yeah, I think the steep slopes there are... Well, so yeah, there's some residential and some resource conservation. Let me... I don't know if you'll really be able to see it, but I do have the regular zoning map. Here's just all of the zoning. So that yellow strip there is... Is the residential that is precluding some of that area with the buffer? Excuse me.

No, Liberty could come in and say they want to change all that residential along the city limits to institutional. And then that would open up more land if they wanted.

It could, yeah.

yeah so the little yellow piece there um where they have all those faculty houses no i'm talking about this this is further um heading east further east it's near where they're building a new fire station um the intersection of odd fellows road that area there yeah rachel can ask a question since nobody here between uh

us, us and the chickens, is who all had a hand in putting this together? There's a lot of detail in there.

So like I said, I did use Frederick County as sort of a baseline, especially for all that noise mitigation. They had a lot of detail. And recognizing that if we just say we want to regulate noise, but we don't articulate how we're going to measure it and kind of the specifics, you know it seems like a lot but you know better to and it and it puts it all on them right so they need to provide the report that shows us all those things um so a lot of that specific noise stuff uh did come from from their locality um sorry their their zoning ordinance um hold on sorry i'm back in our work session slides now And then just in thinking of, you know, what we need to know as part of the CUP, that was, you know, kind of reading from best practices from other localities, what you need to understand up front, talking with water resources about, you know, what the important parts are with the cooling facility, whether it's potable or reclaimed.

So you did the bulk of this, basically, research and plugged it in there, basically.

I mean, yeah. You did a good job.

I'm looking at it.

Thank you.

Just out of curiosity, did any AI come into play since we're regulating as AI? AI is actually putting itself under.

Absolutely not. I'm sure it would tell us that everything is fine and we don't need to regulate anything.

Yeah, it's good.

Yeah, I like it's consistent with some of the other things we've done, some of the other regulations, being able to go back and follow some of the same standards we do when we're looking at other CUPs. Appreciate it.

Okay, well, we'll change that 90 days. Point well taken on the drought. I don't know if there's like a proper wording or... Something we can work in. I can chat with the city attorney about it just to see if that maybe would be a recommendation.

Articulate peak usage, but. But yeah, during a drought, especially when we're- Right. And how do we define that?

Do we need to say a drought as defined by the National Weather Service or what's the threshold there? I'm not sure exactly.

Yeah. And we're also very different than some places. They were just in the work session last night, water resource pointed out that they really can't sell enough water. There's not enough usage, and that's driving rates. So we have a river. And that's, I think, one of the things that Lynchburg has always used to try to get business, whether it's food production or whatever. But do we go ahead and do a motion? Is that how we do that, to pass this on?

I just have one more thing, Rachel. so in section b there's a statement there uh b three one all generators shall be enclosed with a manufacturer approved enclosure i mean i would suggest uh deleting manufacturer just because the manufacturer would probably say oh we'll just stick a i-beam and just one one i-beam or something in front of the a generator and that's not really going to do anything and it and it would be manufacturer approved and maybe not not what we would want it was your comment to do it just um just remove the word manufacturer instead of manufacturer approved just remove i suggest removing manufacturer there because that gives them wondering if that was based on um i think that part came from frederick county and i'm wondering if that's just because it might be a fire hazard or something if you didn't use a manufacturer improve approved yeah um yeah i would i would just argue though that um if they want to put whatever the piece of equipment is the the um data center developer will have to be doing manufacturer approved stuff um in a lot of different things yeah um but that but taking that out gives gives us still the power to or city council or whoever the somebody in the city the power to um to kind of control what goes, or gives them some control.

Okay.

So, but yeah, I just want to add, you know, this is a nice set of regulations, and I think it's about the right amount for what we're looking for, what I would have expected, and a nice presentation today, and I think we had a nice discussion, had um you know good uh a good uh good result and good um a good path forward for for as i can see now in my opinion okay so i'll make a motion to approve with the just tweaks as discussed second all right any other comments before we vote

all right we can be voting on approval of passing this on to city council so all in favor say aye aye all opposed great unanimous thank you rachel yeah i look forward to seeing you present this at council you don't watch those do you actually i'm gonna watch any anything else that we need to do we have a meeting in two weeks

It's your vacation, man.

Yeah.

Yes, and it is someone's vacation. Thank you, guys.

Yeah, we do have a meeting.

It was your email, Tom.

It was my email, wasn't it? It was your email, yeah. I did it after I said mine. Just be honest. I'm just being honest.

Yes, you will have a meeting in two weeks. Great. We'll see you back. What's that, eight weeks?

Yeah. And you're not sure what it is right now?

Not off the top of my head.

Something I've seen. We'll make sure it doesn't go too late. Yeah, we'll make sure it won't go until like 1 in the morning. Tuesday. All right. Well, we can sit here and talk about what the meeting will be, or we can have a motion to go.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye. See you all later.