The Apex Town Council took a first step last night at imposing a temporary moratorium on data centers, less than a week after a developer pulled an unpopular plan for a massive facility near the town.
State law requires the council to give notice it is considering such a moratorium before acting on it; at its meeting Tuesday night, the council voted unanimously to direct staff to prepare that notice and begin the process of initiating a one-year moratorium, drawing applause from residents in attendance.
The moratorium would allow town staff time to develop regulations for data centers “in the abstract without having to consider a specific scenario,” said council member Terry Mahaffey.
Mahaffey proposed the moratorium immediately after Natelli Investments announced Thursday that it was withdrawing its applications for rezoning approval and annexation in order to build a 300-megawatt facility in New Hill. Mahaffey said at the meeting he didn’t think it was appropriate for the council to consider a ban with an active application before it.
“One thing that was very clear going through this process with the application is that our [Unified Development Ordinance] does not account for a type of use like this,” council member Arno Zegerman said. “So, we asked staff to do a lot of research. They presented their research to us but we need some time to encode that into formal UDO rules so that not every request becomes basically a one-off consideration.”
During the moratorium, staff would consult experts and work to codify regulations for data centers and related uses. Officials in Chatham County, just across the border from the proposed New Hill Digital Campus, recently approved their own one-year moratorium.
Council member Sue Mu noted the lack of regulations for large data centers, like the New Hill proposal, in particular. The facility would have been one of the largest of its kind in the state, the INDY previously reported.
“We need better regulations to protect our residents,” Mu said.
The council demurred on a proposal from Mayor Jacques K. Gilbert to create a new committee including community members to study the impacts of data centers and make policy recommendations. The council voted to refer the idea to the town’s Environmental Affairs Board.
The moratorium is expected to come before the council for consideration again in April.
