Homewood mayor pushing for data center moratorium
Homewood Mayor Jennifer Andress is pushing for a data center moratorium to get ahead of potential development and establish regulations. The city council plans to consider the moratorium at its next meeting. The mayor wants to ensure the city is protected from issues like noise, utility consumption, water usage, and chemical impacts.
Homewood Mayor Jennifer Andress is advocating for a moratorium on data center development in the city, even though no developers have yet approached Homewood. The mayor emphasized the need for proactive measures to protect the city, citing the rapid growth of the data center industry.
Mayor Andress highlighted various concerns including noise regulations, utility consumption, cooling aspects, chemical use in water, and the impact of data centers being close to residential areas. Given Homewood's compact size of eight square miles, she noted that any development would affect nearly all residents.
The Homewood City Council first discussed potential data center regulations on Monday and is expected to consider the moratorium option at its upcoming meeting. A moratorium would temporarily halt new data center permits while the city studies and establishes comprehensive regulations to address these potential impacts.