MISSOULA — Missoula County officials have been hard at work over the past several months conducting a study on the impacts of data centers.
This task was sent to them after the Missoula County Commissioners passed a zoning moratorium prohibiting the construction of new data centers within the county - although that moratorium only lasts for a year.
And, on Tuesday night, Missoula County officials presented an informational presentation about their recently completed data center impact study. Key takeaways were that data centers do have real impacts on communities and that zoning regulations may be one way to manage them.
WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW:
“I understand the county is limited in what those teeth are, but we really think creatively because the people that are building these data centers are certainly thinking creatively,” said a Missoula resident who said they have experience building data centers.
Missoula County officials presented an abbreviated version of what their study found.
Some of those findings revolved around the environmental impacts of data centers - mainly that they can increase local temperatures, strain water usage and use as much power as medium-sized cities.
With those findings, officials pointed to updating certain zoning codes to regulate the adverse impacts of data centers.
But they pointed out that many of those regulations are up in the air until this next legislative session is completed.
And with that knowledge, both residents, like Lea Bossler, and officials, like Missoula County Commissioner Josh Slotnick, agree that working on state regulation during this next session is the way forward.
“The thing that I appreciate even more than that is the acknowledgement of the timing and that we don't know what's going to happen in the legislative session. So we will actually need the moratorium to continue so that we can see what happens in the session and then the local government can do their own adjusting based on that and then determine what we need to do,” said Bossler.
“I think this issue can reach a red-blue vibe, reach a purple world vibe. And we're really excited for us to begin to come together and take off our brightly colored hats and actually start thinking about what's the best thing for our communities,” said Slotnick.
There will be additional public hearings on November 4th and 12th going over what regulations may look like.
