Bannock County to work on template to regulate building of AI centers; local cities, other counties may use it too
Published at | Updated at
POCATELLO – A southeastern Idaho county is setting out to establish rules that could be imposed on AI data center projects in the area.
Bannock County has formed a work group to study AI data centers and eventually form a working template for rules and regulations that municipalities and other counties could implement if they receive a proposal. This group will first meet on Tuesday.
“(The work group will) educate the people that are going to be involved in all the aspects of data centers – the good, the bad, the ugly, everything – and our goal is to come up with some kind of a draft document that then they can take back to their individual communities,” said Jeff Hough, chairman of the Bannock County Commission.
The idea of building AI data centers is not new to the area. Pocatello denied a proposed data center after a massive public pushback in May.
Hough said the goal of the work group will be to finish a final draft of a template ordinance around December.
He first began thinking about how AI data centers could affect Bannock County — and by extension, eastern Idaho — when he attended a conference for the National Association of Counties in July. There, much of the conversation during work sessions revolved around the massive increase in data center buildout.
“After going through two or three of those sessions, I knew that we were exposed and that we needed to do something,” Hough said.
When Hough returned, the commission got to work, passing a temporary moratorium on new data center applications on July 30. This bought the county time to form the work group, and for the group to make a template ordinance before the moratorium ends next year on Jan. 26.
The Bannock County Commission has invited officials from Pocatello and Chubbuck, as well as a mayor from south Bannock County, to join the group. The county has also invited county officials from Bingham, Power, Oneida, Franklin and Caribou to participate.
The work group’s first meeting, as well as the next few after that, will revolve around education about AI data centers. The first will feature a presentation by Ali Khan, founder and CEO of MOATiT, who will also serve on the work group, and Hough said he has another presenter scheduled to talk about the “environmental impacts” of data centers.
“I would estimate that the first two, maybe three, meetings are just learning-and-listening sessions,” Hough said.
Hough stated that although these meetings won’t be open to the public, the process for determining whether the final draft document is officially adopted will be. Before the Bannock County Commission takes a vote, there will be a public hearing, as there will be for any other local government entity that considers adopting it.
“This is nothing more than helping us craft a basic document,” Hough said. “Then we can go through the whole planning process. All the public input (sessions), the public hearings, all of that stuff.”
One of the benefits of having an ordinance in place, Hough said, is that it gives counties and cities a mechanism to say no to projects that don’t meet the standards in the ordinance.
“We’re open for business, but you have to meet these requirements as you apply for your conditional-use permit. There may be additional requirements that come on during the (CUP) process, but now we have a mechanism that we can say yes or no,” Hough said.
Hough said the ordinance will have the ability to set out environmental and resource standards regulating, “power consumption, water consumption, pollution, light, noise, heat and the impacts of those environmental issues.”
Hough said whatever the work group eventually proposes only applies if a city or county officially adopts it, and that those cities and counties have the option to edit the ordinance to make it their own.
“I want to stress that whatever we do doesn’t impact the city unless they choose to do their own. But we just want to create a draft document that then people can go back and modify however they see fit for their community,” Hough said.
And these modifications can be aspects that are designed to address specific community needs. These are called community participation agreements, and Hough also wants the template to include these.
“The community participation agreement allows whatever community the project is going into to say, ‘If you want to come into our community, here’s a list of things that we need. … We’d like you to invest in our fire department. We’d like you to invest in our school district. We’d like you to invest in the infrastructure. That’s part of the process … (of) coming to our community,” Hough said.
And if a hyperscaler agreed to these conditions, but then violated them in the actual buildout, decommissioning the project is always an option.
“That’s going to have to be part of the permitting process, a decommissioning section. ‘If you’re not going to follow through, here’s the strict decommissioning (standards) that are going to be in place,’” Hough said.
Overall, Hough sees the formation of this work group as something that will allow the county, and the rest of the region, to be proactive in preparing for any potential AI data center proposals.
“As a region, if we come together and craft something that has some base elements that are consistent, then our region looks consistent, and we can kind of take care of the resources of our region,” Hough said.