DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — DeKalb County officials are holding a town hall meeting on Wednesday evening to discuss a set of proposed regulations for data center construction.
According to the provisions, the guidelines would set rules for energy efficiency, water use and cooling, access controls, environmental controls and special land use permit approvals.
The proposed guidelines up for review with the public on Wednesday are the third version of the guidelines, according to county officials.
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As referenced by DeKalb planning officials, there “has been a sharp increase in data center development” across the metro Atlanta area.
To find what officials call a balance between economic development and community welfare, county staff conducted what they describe as extensive research into data centers, as well as held discussion with community partners.
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The regulations being proposed, and up for discussion and review by the public, are intended to ensure that data center construction efforts do not negatively impact county residents.
“While data centers provide necessary infrastructure for the modern world, DeKalb County is seeking to ensure that the significant land, energy, and water consumption by these facilities does not negatively impact the community,” the county said.
The ordinance up for public discussion, if approved, would add data centers as an industrial use for permitting land applications.
The proposal sets regulations for location, design and supplemental review standards.
As defined by the DeKalb County ordinance, a data center can be classified in the following ways:
- Data Center, Minor: A physical room, building, or facility that houses infrastructure for building, running, delivering, or transmitting applications and services, or for storing and managing the data associated with those applications or services. Minor data centers shall be under 20,000 square feet and do not require a substation. A minor data center may include data centers as an accessory use if they are under 2,000 square feet.
- Data Center, Medium: A physical room, building, or facility that houses infrastructure for building, running, delivering, or transmitting applications and services, or for storing and managing the data associated with those applications or services. A medium data center shall be between 20,000 square feet and 100,000 square feet.
- Data Center, Major: A physical room, building, or facility that houses infrastructure for building, running, delivering, or transmitting applications and services, or for storing and managing the data associated with those applications or services. A major data center shall be between 100,000 square feet and 500,000 square feet.
- Data Center, Campus: A singular development that has more than one (1) data center, or a physical room, building, or facility that houses infrastructure for building, running, delivering, or transmitting applications and services, or for storing and managing the data associated with those applications or services. A data center campus shall be a minimum of 500,000 square feet.
The county also set different and distinct use standards for each class, ranging from office institutional for minor data centers that are smaller than 2,000 square feet to a heavy industrial designation for sites at least 500,000 square feet.
Additional regulations are proposed for sites that are within 500 feet of residential parcels, near or bordering interstate roadways or within a half mile of a high-capacity transit stop, such as as bus or train station, among others.
Data centers, if approved for construction, would also have to have a 10-foot wide buffer in place to separate them from non-industrial parcels, with minimum heights set as well, dependent on size.
Electrical substations and other parts of equipment and facilities would also have to be placed in specific locations at each structure in order to be approved for construction.
A full set of the proposed guidelines for discussion and potential approval can be found online here.
The DeKalb County town hall will be held at 6 p.m. You can register to attend online as a virtual meeting.
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