Cuyahoga Falls City Council has adopted strict new regulations for any future data center projects in the city, capping the size, power draw and noise of the facilities and reserving the final say over water use to the city’s own utility departments, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
Council approved the regulations at its Nov. 9 meeting, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. The rules arrive as communities across Summit and Portage counties — and across Ohio — race to decide how much room, if any, to make for an industry that has grown to nearly 250 data centers spread through 66 of the state’s 88 counties, according to Data Center Map figures cited by the Akron Beacon Journal.
Under the new rules, data centers will be permitted only in the city’s employment and manufacturing districts, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. No single data center building may exceed 5,000 square feet, and no more than one data center will be allowed on a single property — limits that effectively rule out the sprawling, warehouse-scale campuses that have drawn opposition in other Ohio communities.
The regulations also cap a facility’s maximum electrical demand at 5 megawatts at any time. The city said, according to the Akron Beacon Journal, that the cap does not exceed the electrical demand of the city’s current customer base. Because Cuyahoga Falls owns its own electric and water infrastructure, the newspaper reported, the rules stand to protect residents from the community impacts many fear from data center operations.
Water use gets its own layer of control. A facility’s water consumption is subject to approval by the city’s electric and water departments, along with other requirements those departments set, and a data center that wants to expand or increase its electric or water consumption must win additional approval before it does so.
Noise at a data center’s property line is capped at 70 decibels. Air pollution from a facility must be controlled under applicable Ohio EPA air pollution standards, and discharges into bodies of water, streams or onto the ground must comply with Ohio EPA water pollution control standards and discharge permit requirements. Releasing materials that threaten the public or the environment is banned outright.
Hazardous or regulated materials get special handling under the rules: storing or using them must be reported to the Cuyahoga Falls Fire Department with the appropriate material safety data sheet, and storage, use and disposal must comply with Ohio EPA standards, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
Council President Russ Balthis said the regulations strike a balance between addressing constituents’ concerns about data centers and keeping the area attractive to certain businesses. “We recognize that local manufacturers and industrial businesses need access to technology and supporting infrastructure, but we also need to ensure that development is appropriately scaled and does not place unnecessary demands on our community,” Balthis said in a Nov. 10 prepared statement quoted by the Akron Beacon Journal.
Mayor Don Walters struck the same note. “These regulations allow us to be thoughtful about future development while ensuring our resources remain available to serve our residents and current businesses,” Walters said in a prepared statement quoted by the Akron Beacon Journal.
Cuyahoga Falls is the latest Northeast Ohio community to act. Akron City Council unanimously approved a zoning change in July, crafted by Mayor Shammas Malik’s administration, governing how and which data centers may operate there. Tallmadge passed a six-month moratorium in April and extended it in October to a full year. Norton in October rejected Quantum HPC’s proposed Project Triton data center on a 90-acre site off South Cleveland-Massillon Road, and Hudson approved a six-month stay in July that can be extended by another six months. In Portage County, Ravenna, Kent and Streetsboro each adopted 12-month moratoriums in April, and Shalersville Township trustees recently extended their moratorium — aimed at a massive Bitdeer proposal — by another six months, all according to the Akron Beacon Journal.
The local wave reflects a statewide argument. Ohio voters in 18 municipalities went to the polls Nov. 3 voting overwhelmingly to restrict or ban large data centers, the Akron Beacon Journal reported, and Democratic Governor-elect Amy Acton has publicly supported a pause on data center construction until guardrails are in place. NewsForce247 has been following the debate as it spreads, including Chillicothe asking residents to help write its own data center rules and a developer suing Trenton over its voter-approved data center ban.
What happens next in Cuyahoga Falls is application, not argument: any developer proposing a data center must now fit the project inside the 5,000-square-foot, 5-megawatt framework from the first site plan, and expansions will send them back to the city’s utility departments for a second round of approvals. No specific project was before council when the rules were adopted — the regulations govern proposals that have not yet arrived.
Photo: David Wilson, CC BY