<2> Iowa County Rolls Out Extensive Zoning Rules For Data Centers
<3> Linn County, Iowa, has adopted what may be one of the nation’s strictest local zoning ordinances for data centers, requiring detailed water studies, formal water-use agreements, 1,000-foot residential setbacks, noise and light limits, and infrastructure compensation.
<4> The county is already home to two major data center projects, operated by Google and QTS. Both are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s second-largest city, and are therefore subject to its laws. The new ordinance would apply only to unincorporated areas of the county, which make up more than two-thirds of its geographic footprint.
<5> In drafting the ordinance, Charlie Nichols, director of planning and development for Linn County, and his staff drew on the experiences of communities nationwide, meeting with local government officials in regions that have seen massive booms in data center development, including several counties in northern Virginia, the “data center capital of the world.”
<6> As data center development balloons, many communities that initially zoned the operations as warehouses or standard commercial users are abandoning that practice, Nichols noted. The extreme energy and water demands of data centers simply cannot be accounted for by existing zoning