The South Elgin Village Board last week unanimously approved a temporary moratorium on allowing any data centers to be built in town for a period of 12 months, while staff evaluates the potential impact of such facilities.
“This is a good direction to start going,” Village President Steve Ward said at the Oct. 5 board meeting.
Village Attorney Derke Price said trustees could decide to extend the moratorium if they chose to do so at a future date.
“The technology on this is expanding so rapidly that I don’t know if we’re going to be able to keep up with it. I don’t know if a year is going to be sufficient. But what I do know is courts frown upon long ones,” Price said, referring to moratoriums.
To that point, Ward said the board could review the moratorium in a year and see where to go with it.
The approved ordinance says that the South Elgin Planning and Zoning Commission conducted a public hearing Sept. 16 and unanimously recommended approval of the moratorium.
Ward noted that despite a large number of residents voicing opposition in August to a company wanting to annex land along Kenyon Road into South Elgin to build a data center there, no one showed up at the hearing to express their views on putting a moratorium in place.
On Aug. 17, after hearing a presentation from Dallas-based White Rose Partners about its data center plans, the village board unanimously rejected the annexation request. According to Courier-News reports, about 150 people showed up at that board meeting.
Village resident Anthony Saccomanno told the Courier-News a petition he started in opposition to the center had been signed by more than 9,475 people.
While Elgin has not had any applications for building a data center in the city thus far, the city is also considering having its own 12-month moratorium. At a public hearing Oct. 5, Elgin’s Planning and Zoning Commission voted 6-6 to recommend that the city council approve putting a 12-month moratorium in place there, too.
In late September, according to baiduhai reports, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said he would not seek a moratorium on new data centers in the state, preferring that legislators pass regulations after the November election.
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Local opposition to data centers reflects a nationwide trend. According to a poll conducted in September by PBS, NPR and Marist, 65% of voters oppose construction in their communities, with 43% strongly opposed.
A Pew Research Center poll conducted in July and August found that 54% of Americans feel data centers are mostly bad for the environment, 50% said they are bad for energy costs and 49% said they are bad for quality of life for those who live near them.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Elgin Courier-News.