A nine-month moratorium on data center applications in Tazewell County is one step away from reaching the county board.
The board's land use committee will meet Tuesday. The committee is expected to send the moratorium to the board for discussion and a vote at its Oct. 28 meeting and recommend approval.
The county's Zoning Board of Appeals [ZBA], with no discussion, voted last week to approve the moratorium and return it to the committee.
While the moratorium is in place, county officials plan to continue their work on a data center ordinance.
So far, the only regulation in a draft of the ordinance is a requirement for a data center to be built only in an area zoned industrial.
"There's no set date on when the ordinance will be done," said Jaclynn Workman, the county's community development administrator.
"Hopefully, it will be ready for a vote by the county board by the end of the moratorium [July 27, 2027]."
County board and land use committee member Eric Stahl, a vocal proponent of the moratorium, said he'd like to see the county's data center ordinance go to the committee in January and the board in February.
"Let's get this done," he said. "We don't want the state to think we're dragging our feet."
An original idea to impose a six-month moratorium in the county was expended to nine months by the land use committee because the county board will experience a major turnover following the Nov. 3 election.
New board members will be seated in December.
Land use committee chairman Russ Crawford told the ZBA he knows what he'd like to see from the county's data center ordinance.
"An ordinance that every county wants to model," he said.
A state law regarding data centers under consideration by the legislature could impact the timeline and contents of the Tazewell County ordinance.
The POWER Act bill, which addresses environmental, water and energy concerns with data centers, could come up for a vote at the veto session later this year.
