Plan commission takes friendly fire as it recommends action to board of commissioners
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The crowd came in hot and ready for a fight. The Howard County Plan Commission met in July to consider a moratorium on data centers, already primed to make the recommendation to the Howard County Board of Commissioners. What the planners got was a lot of angry input from residents who weren’t expecting a sympathetic ear.
The meeting, which ran nearly 2½ hours, featured plaintive outcries from more than a dozen speakers who were backed by a congregation numbering near 50. Nearly all of them were dead set against data centers, which have taken center stage in city and county government chambers across the nation this year.
Howard County Attorney Alan Wilson set the rules for the hearing, explaining the moratorium process and expressing that the plan commission can only make a recommendation to the board of the commissioners. He also noted that anything the county undertakes will not affect the City of Kokomo, which controls the industrial park created earlier this year that is rumored to be a candidate to host a data center.
With that, plan commission chairperson Cheryl Graham explained what the panel was considering.
“The question is: Should we have a moratorium which will pause all development on data centers until we find out more about how it affects people, and we can write an ordinance that meets the needs of our community?” said Graham. “That’s the goal of the moratorium is to stave off development until we know and have more information.”
What followed was a stream of frustrated citizens, many of whom disregarded the limitations of the plan commission and the scope of the hearing to grind their metaphorical axes.
One speaker, Kathy Hoover, accused the plan commission of “appeasing” the public by holding the moratorium hearing after the city annexed 700 acres for an industrial park; a location the crowd was convinced will be a data center if the city gets its way.
“I find it quite puzzling why the commission is considering this moratorium only after the annexation,” said Hoover. “This moratorium will not include that 700 acres. It’s already taken place. It’s my opinion that you knew. Everyone knew what the city was going to do.
“It seems like you intentionally waited to talk about a moratorium until after the annexation and not before, which is sad.”
Ann Ihms, a professional working in the water quality field, brought a three-dimensional display of Howard County’s soil types and aquifers, expressing concerns about the heavy water demands a data center might place on the local utility infrastructure.
“When you start drawing water, every person in this room becomes affected,” said Ihms. “The (StarPlus Energy) battery plant draws 2.7 million gallons per day, and I have been told that we’re starting the second plant. Our city uses up to 10 million gallons per day. You start adding that up, it’s a huge draw of water.”
One speaker gave testimony in favor of data centers. Quentin Gurney, a former licensed electrical engineer, detailed his experience managing a data center. He claimed the people of Howard County are being fed “misinformation” about data centers.
“I’m concerned that you are going to make decisions based on that,” said Gurney. “I have managed smaller corporate data centers myself. I have a little bit of an idea of how they work. There are some very good reasons why those smaller data centers are being consolidated into larger data centers.
“It happens to be quite efficient, and building a large data center, such as Amazon Web Services does, probably is a 10-to-one or maybe 50-to-one reduction in resources. What I’m saying is that you guys need to be very wise and discerning about what you take as fact. There is such an alarmist position going on, I just feel like you guys are in danger of getting whipsawed by inaccurate information.”
Another speaker who was not necessarily against data centers was Caleb Chance, a civil engineer. He did endorse the moratorium proposal, stating that it gives local leaders the opportunity to assess the impacts and concerns surrounding data centers.
“As someone who has worked on data center projects, I can say that a temporary pause is not a death sentence for development,” said Chance. “These projects are planned years in advance, and a moratorium simply provides communities the opportunity to make informed decisions before moving forward.”
Howard County Commissioner Jack Dodd, who sits on the planning commission, attempted to answer questions that were raised during testimony, specifically the criticism of the timing of the moratorium discussion.
“I can only speak for me as a commissioner, and the other commissioners can speak for themselves,” said Dodd. “But I did not know about this annexation until right before it happened. The mayor told me about it a month before. He said, ‘Oh, by the way, this is going to happen.’
“So, no, we didn’t have advance notice of this. No, we didn’t have any control of it. We don’t get to say, ‘Wait a minute. No, you can’t annex this area.’ It was voluntary.”
The rest of the discussion on the data center moratorium centered around the length of the ban. The commission eventually settled on two years. The final vote was 6-1 in favor of the moratorium, with plan commission member Mike Imbler casting the lone dissenting vote, who advocated for a six-month moratorium.
The matter now advances to the Howard County Board of Commissioners, which intends on taking action on the moratorium recommendation at its Aug. 17 meeting.