One of the biggest and hottest land use issues impacting Iowa and the entire country is data centers. Though data centers themselves have been around for a number of years as a way to store all of our online data in the “cloud”, it’s only recently that they have become a very big problem.
About Data Centers
Cloud storage first started to become widely accessible 20 years ago with Amazon’s web services. Over the next six to 10 years, other companies started to offer cloud storage as well, including google. Though “data centers” have been around longer, cloud storage initially started to drive the need for data centers. Most of these facilities were small, relatively speaking.
However, in the last decade with the expansion of Cyber Physical Systems (also known as Artificial Intelligenceor AI) and Crypto Currency and Crypto-mining, the size and number of data centers has increased dramatically. The expansion of massive data centers has also had a huge impact on our communities, resources, and farmland. According to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a mid-sized data center can use as much water as a small town and the large data centers can use as much as a town of 50,000 people.
Data centers can also consume as much electricity as 10,000-25,000 households! They use a number of tactics to be able to build without residents knowing anything about the impact on resources because they use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that elected officials from disclosing any information to the community.
Communities across the country are fighting back. Moratoriums and bans on new data centers and crypto mining facilities are being adopted in multiple communities in states across the nation. City council and county supervisor hearings are packed wall to wall to constituents who oppose them. Iowa is no different.
1000 Friends of Iowa has been involved in efforts to stop or slow the spread of massive data centers in Iowa. Here are three areas that we know of that are currently fighting data centers and areas in Iowa that have taken steps to regulate or ban data centers:
Active Data Center Fights in Iowa:
- Norwalk, IA (Warren County)
- Palo, IA (Linn County)
- Waterloo, IA (Blackhawk County)
Data Center Bans/Regulations in Iowa
- Madison County – 1 year ban
- Iowa Couty – 1 year ban
- Dubuque County – 1 year ban
- Ceder Falls, IA – passed zoning ordinance to prevent data centers in certain parts of the city near the municipal utility.
- Cedar Rapids – Adopted regulations that require data centers to have full disclosure of resources used, such as water and electric
What you can do
Help push a ban on data centers until the cumulative impacts can be researched and real regulations can be created. Alos, help push for a ban on the use of NDAs and require transparency and stop using incentives and tax money to attract these to our communities. Reach out to us for organizing help and sample language. Stay tuned, we are working to pull together an event about organizing against data centers