Acworth approves yearlong pause on data center projects

During this week’s Acworth Board of Aldermen meeting, the board approved a 12-month data center moratorium.

City Manager James Albright said staff recommended the moratorium’s approval to give the city time to review how city ordinances apply to data center facilities.

“We feel it best to evaluate our existing ordinance against best practices on these facilities as there can be impacts to public services and our power utility,” he said.

He acknowledged communities across the nation are concerned about negative local impacts surrounding data centers.

Albright also noted Cobb County previously passed a data center moratorium.

Cobb commissioners passed a six-month data center moratorium extension in August, set to expire either in February or when the county amended its ordinance surrounding data centers. The county amended its ordinance and established new regulations in October.

“Moratoriums cannot be indefinite, and over the next 12 months we will start to dive into this issue and look into it more,” Albright said.

Alderman Steve Prather said he believes a moratorium on data centers is a good move for the city.

“Acworth is not in a position, from a space perspective, to have a lot of room to have the kind of data centers, the mega centers that they’re talking about,” he said.

He said he could not think of a reason he would ever be in favor of converting storage facilities into data centers, similar to the Prime Storage Facility partial data center conversion the Marietta City Council approved in August, a concern the meeting’s single public commenter raised.

Albright noted the city already has some regulations surrounding data centers, which limits the facilities to heavy industrial zoning areas and requires a special land use permit for approval.

Additional regulations in Acworth’s code prohibit noise levels exceeding 90 decibels 25 feet from the data center containment structure, the facility must not create adverse affects to adjoining properties which would increase costs or decrease quality of life and no more than 20% of heat dissipated from data center activity can be released directly to the outside when the average daily temperature is less than 40 degrees.

Acworth is the third city in Cobb to pass a moratorium on data centers, alongside Kennesaw and Marietta.

Kennesaw passed a six-month moratorium at the beginning of October and Marietta passed a six-month moratorium in July, which expires at the end of the year.