Planning Board Special Meeting

Meeting recap

What happened, drawn from the records published after the meeting. Minutes

The board voted 7-2 to send two changes forward: replace the special use permit with a conditional use permit, and end the by-right allowance for data centers that connect to public water and sewer. Andrews and Cianciolo opposed. The county attorney had already told the board the first change would violate Senate Bill 382 by making existing permitted uses non-conforming, so the board sent both anyway and asked her to consult other lawyers and the School of Government.

Most of the evening went on definitions. The board renamed the central term Digital Infrastructure Facility, dropping the word critical, and defined it to cover data centers, cryptomining, blockchain validation, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, along with the generators, cooling and water storage that serve them. It struck a second definition drawn from Senate Bill 730, which members judged unlikely to become law, and put back a cryptocurrency mining definition that had been lost in editing. Hyperscale was fixed at an IT load of 100 MW or a million gallons of water a day or more. A member borrowed language from the Town of Hildebran requiring an emergency switch to disconnect a data center from the grid, and the board added it.

Noise was the unresolved question. Members asked whether a rule should apply to data centers alone or to all heavy industry, with one warning that singling out one use could be read as discriminatory and invite a challenge. The vice chair argued for keeping the county's existing noise ordinance and adding a pre-application study by an engineer plus a post-occupancy survey, with repeat surveys on complaint rather than every two years. He worked through the arithmetic against a requirement to stagger generator testing and the board struck that paragraph: roughly 200 generators in level 3 enclosures reach 93 dB at the source, 57 dB at the 200-foot property line setback and 25 dB at the 1,320-foot setback from sensitive receptors, against a county limit of 60 dB at a receiving property.

The board got as far as Section D, noise mitigation standards, and stopped. It voted 9-0 to hold two more remote meetings, one on 8 September to finish the redline and one on 15 September with the county attorney. Staff want the document with the attorney by mid to late September. The meeting adjourned at 9:32 pm.

How the votes went

Three votes, all recorded. The agenda and the July 14 minutes were approved 9-0. The motion to change the special use permit process to conditional use and to end by-right status for data centers using public water and sewer passed 7-2, Andrews and Cianciolo opposed. The motion to schedule remote meetings on 8 and 15 September passed 9-0. Nine of ten members were present; Feher was absent.

From the published minutes.