Aurora is discovering something Colorado communities should probably tattoo onto the conference-room wall before the next economic-development pitch arrives: data centers are not magic internet clouds. They are enormous physical facilities that need land, power, cooling, and, depending on the technology, a whole lot of water.
Sentinel Colorado reports that Aurora lawmakers unanimously advanced two proposed regulations this week. One would prohibit water-intensive evaporative cooling systems in multifamily, industrial, and commercial buildings. The other would keep data centers out of mixed-use office-institutional zones, where residential units can be nearby. The evaporative-cooling proposal is expected to reach the City Council agenda on September 14. The zoning change still has to go through the planning and zoning commission.
That matters because Aurora already has nine established data centers and five more somewhere in the development pipeline. City officials are now wrestling with buffers, noise, zoning definitions, and water consumption while trying to decide how close these industrial-scale computer warehouses should be allowed to creep toward somebody’s backyard. In other words, the glossy brochure has met the zoning map.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Water finally made it into the conversation. Aurora is considering banning evaporative cooling, a technology the city identifies as water-intensive, with the proposal expected before council September 14. In Colorado, treating water like an unlimited promotional giveaway is roughly as sensible as opening a beachfront resort in Greeley.
- The city also wants to tighten where these facilities can go. One proposal would prohibit data centers in mixed-use office-institutional zones, which can sit near or contain residential development. Apparently giant industrial server facilities and neighborhoods might require a little more separation than “eh, looks fine on the map.”
- Buffers are where the politicians started getting itchy. Staff showed examples ranging from a quarter-mile to a mile, prompting objections from several councilmembers who thought those distances were excessive. Staff also cited other cities with setbacks ranging from 100 feet to 2,640 feet. Translation: everybody agrees there should be a line somewhere. Nobody wants to be the guy holding the ruler.
- Noise rules are still unsettled. Some councilmembers questioned whether additional noise restrictions are necessary if data centers are already kept farther from homes. Fair question. But “we already have a rule somewhere in the code book” is not the same thing as proving nearby residents will not spend every summer evening listening to an industrial hum where the crickets used to be.
- Aurora rejected a moratorium while it rewrites the rules. Council narrowly opposed an earlier proposal that would have temporarily stopped new data centers while the code was being adjusted, despite overwhelming public-comment support for the moratorium. So the city is effectively repairing the airplane while five more data centers are somewhere in the development process. Very government.
My Bottom Line
Data centers are not inherently bad. Colorado needs technology, infrastructure, investment, and jobs. But local government has exactly one chance to establish the rules before a massive industrial project is planted next to a neighborhood and everybody suddenly discovers that moving it is considerably harder than approving it.
The September 14 evaporative-cooling proposal is the first real test. Colorado is an arid state. Water is not some decorative environmental buzzword that gets sprinkled into a sustainability report between stock photos of wind turbines and smiling children. It is a finite resource that cities, farms, businesses, and families depend on. If a data center wants to operate here, asking it to use cooling technology that does not make an already scarce resource scarcer is hardly Bolshevism.
And Aurora should resist the bureaucratic instinct to substitute mushy language for actual standards. “Appropriate mitigation.” “Reasonable compatibility.” “Adequate buffering.” Government documents are filled with phrases that sound responsible right up until somebody has to enforce them. If residents deserve protection from noise, establish the measurable limit. If neighborhoods need separation, establish the setback. If certain cooling systems consume too much water, say so and regulate them accordingly. A guardrail that nobody can locate is just decoration.
Local control means local officials have to control something. Aurora now has the responsibility to decide what a fair deal looks like before more projects arrive, not after residents get the noise, taxpayers get the infrastructure pressure, and everybody is informed that the humming warehouse beside the subdivision is simply the price of “progress.” Technology may live in the cloud. Its consequences still land squarely on the ground.
Source: Sentinel Colorado
Now It's Your Turn...