<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1ggrYj_1FIsUOuN00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1ggrYj_1FIsUOuN00" width="1261" height="832" ><figcaption>Eureka’s City Hall server room, which supports city IT systems</figcaption></figure>Eureka has begun movement toward regulating data centers with the City Council open to allowing smaller ones. The city is in the midst of a 45-day moratorium on data center applications and it will soon be extended as staff works on rules allowing smaller data centers in industrially-zoned areas.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=4ctJKw_1FIsUOuN00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4ctJKw_1FIsUOuN00" width="1206" height="808" ><figcaption>Eureka Development Services Director Cristin Kenyon</figcaption></figure>At the Sept. 15 council meeting, City Development Services Director Cristin Kenyon said data center technology “isn’t particularly exotic,” noting that the city has a server room at city hall.The city’s in-house data center “houses servers and the supporting electrical, cooling, networking, and backup systems needed to keep them operating,” she continued, adding that its power consumption amounts to $50 a day.Data centers are increasingly unpopular yet they serve increasing demands.“Data centers can support everything from basic data storage and cloud services to streaming, financial transactions, and increasingly, AI,” Kenyon said. But data centers differ from other land uses. “Their primary activity is computing,” said Kenyon. “Another reason we should regulate them separately is because their impacts can be unusual, especially as they become larger in scale.” Describing data center impacts, Kenyon said they “demand large continuous electrical loads and potentially large amounts of water for cooling.”There are public safety concerns around “the concentration of electrical equipment, batteries, and backup power.”Use of generators cause emissions, she continued, and the centers are boxy and don’t generate many jobs.She added that “with giant big box buildings and the speculative nature of current data center development, there are “long-term questions about decommissioning and adaptive reuse of these buildings.”There’s also a “bigger existential threat of AI that we’re hearing a lot about in the news that’s kind of like another layer on top of all of this.” During a lightly-attended public comment period, Jen Kalt of Humboldt Waterkeeper brought up an additional concern — data center wastewater discharge.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0aDYpW_1FIsUOuN00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0aDYpW_1FIsUOuN00" width="1197" height="833" ><figcaption>Eureka City Councilmember Scott Bauer</figcaption></figure>An option allowing smaller data centers got council support, with Councilmember Scott Bauer acknowledging that “there are needs for computing power” but “I don’t see the need for a large data center, especially given our constraints with power — that’s a big one.”Councilmembers are also concerned about fire hazards and the size and design of data center buildings. They supported the option that would allow smaller centers in industrial areas. Many of the city’s industrially-zoned properties are in the coastal zone so its Local Coastal Plan (LCP) will have to be amended. The city’s next steps toward data center regulation were described in this exchange between Kenyon and City Manager Miles Slattery.The city will have to extend the moratorium, allowing staff to develop policies for “smaller data centers in industrial zoning districts for council to weigh in on more and then eventually vote on,” said Kenyon. City Manager Miles Slattery said the moratorium extension will be up for approval in two weeks but “it’ll take a while for Director Kenyon to get the inland code updated and even longer for the LCP.” During the discussion, Slattery was asked about a recent inquiry by a data center developer. He said the inquiry process didn’t go very far and “they were just kicking the tires.” </div></body>

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Eureka has begun movement toward regulating data centers with the City Council open to allowing smaller ones. The city is in the midst of a 45-day moratorium on data center applications and it will soon be extended as staff works on rules allowing smaller data centers in industrially-zoned areas. At...

Eureka Open to Allowing Smaller Data Centers

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Eureka has begun movement toward regulating data centers with the City Council open to allowing smaller ones. The city is in the midst of a 45-day moratori

Eureka Open to Allowing Smaller Data Centers

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