Williams County rejects data center ordinance amendments request
The Williams County Commission unanimously rejected a resident’s request to amend the county’s data center ordinance. The proposed changes would have required environmental, water, noise, cultural and other studies before future data center zoning approvals, but commissioners said the existing ordinance provides sufficient flexibility to impose such conditions on individual projects.
The Williams County Commission in North Dakota unanimously rejected resident Carole Herbert’s request for broad amendments to the county’s data center ordinance. Herbert sought mandatory environmental, cultural, noise, visual, socioeconomic, water, site-plan and decommissioning studies before future data center zoning approvals, citing land preservation concerns and problems associated with the Atlas Power cryptocurrency-mining facility in Williston.
Development Services Director Kameron Hymer and commissioners said many of the requested safeguards are already included in the ordinance or can be required case by case through the conditional-use permitting process. Commissioner Steve Kemp said the county had strengthened its rules after what he described as problems involving Atlas Power, while warning that overly restrictive provisions could expose the county to liability and property-rights lawsuits. The commission rejected the blanket amendment but left open the possibility of imposing project-specific conditions on future data centers.