Winchester pauses data centers amid zoning concerns

The Winchester Board of Commissioners has tem­porar­i­ly banned data cen­ters with­in the city limits. 

The one-year mora­to­ri­um was enact­ed at the request of Planning and Zoning Director Rob Jeffries and City Manager Mike Flynn after the Planning Commission’s attor­ney, Robert L. Gullette Jr., raised legal ques­tions about the lack of zon­ing for data centers. 

“We want to make sure that if any­one were to call our office and pur­sue the appli­ca­tion for a data cen­ter that we would know what to do and what to say,” Jeffries told the com­mis­sion at the meet­ing Sept. 1. 

“Unfortunately, we’re not ready . . . for any­thing like that,” he said. 

The motion by Mayor JoEllen Reed was unan­i­mous­ly approved by the com­mis­sion­ers present. Commissioner Shannon Cox was absent. The vote was tak­en before the com­mis­sion­ers had heard from those in the audi­ence, but they were allowed to speak afterward. 

One res­i­dent, Misty Gay, thanked the com­mis­sion for their deci­sion but asked that the board con­sid­er extend­ing the mora­to­ri­um to two years. 

“This isn’t about being against arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence or eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, it’s about some­thing much more basic: Can we sup­port it?” Gay said. 

She men­tioned that the com­mu­ni­ty has con­cerns about hav­ing an ade­quate water sup­ply for the growth that is occur­ring already, and data cen­ters use mas­sive amounts of water to cool their giant computers. 

“Our water sup­ply is not lim­it­less,” she said. 

Douglas Hancock said he was against hav­ing data cen­ters at all. 

“I don’t see any way that it would ben­e­fit us,” he said. 

Hancock said cit­i­zens should be allowed to vote on whether or not to have data cen­ters, not the “five peo­ple” on the board. He said he has heard of oth­er offi­cials mak­ing secret deals to approve data centers. 

Reed said the city will not make any deci­sion with­out first hav­ing pub­lic forums on the issue, but the city board does not have the author­i­ty to have a bal­lot ref­er­en­dum on the issue. 

Pete Lynch, the Kentucky Party can­di­date for the con­gres­sion­al 6^th District, said both Ralph Alvarado, the Republican nom­i­nee, and Zach Dembo, the Democratic nom­i­nee, sup­port data cen­ters, but he is for a nation­al moratorium. 

He sug­gest­ed sev­er­al pro­posed reg­u­la­tions that would effec­tive­ly ban data cen­ters, includ­ing not allow­ing them to use water for cool­ing. Lynch asked for a show of hands of those who were against hav­ing data cen­ters, and almost every­one in the room raised their hands. 

Jesse Wilmoth said he was of the “minor­i­ty opin­ion” and that he builds data centers. 

He said a data cen­ter would be no dif­fer­ent than the build­ing at Winchester Industrial Park where Amazon had oper­at­ed, and they would have a “closed loop” air con­di­tion­ing system. 

Wilmoth admit­ted that data cen­ters would not have a great deal of truck traf­fic because so few peo­ple would work there. 

“It’s noth­ing more than a big box” filled with com­put­ers, he said. 

Wilmoth was not in favor of the delay­ing action approved by the city board. 

“When you say, ‘Let’s put a mora­to­ri­um on some­thing’, you are not doing [any­thing] but kick­ing the can,” he said. 

Robin Kunkel, who was a city com­mis­sion can­di­date in the pri­ma­ry, said the Clark County Fiscal Court also needs to impose a mora­to­ri­um because data cen­ters could be locat­ed out­side the city in the unin­cor­po­rat­ed part of the county. 

That morn­ing, Jeffries had talked with WinCity Voices about why he and Flynn felt there should be a tem­po­rary pause. 

“We both felt like a one-year mora­to­ri­um would be a good move for the city so we could take time to eval­u­ate it, see what oth­er com­mu­ni­ties have done . . . and also it would be a good time for our com­mu­ni­ty to voice their con­cerns, voice their opin­ions, and have a year to eval­u­ate all of that mate­r­i­al and see what hap­pens in oth­er near­by com­mu­ni­ties and through­out the United States,” he said. 

The state already has small data cen­ters for online ser­vices such as dig­i­tal cloud stor­age, but there are increas­ing­ly pro­pos­als for hyper­scale cen­ters for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Those facil­i­ties can be gigan­tic, and they use large amounts of elec­tric­i­ty and water, some­thing that con­cerns util­i­ty ratepayers. 

It is also an envi­ron­men­tal concern. 

Jeffries point­ed out that if Winchester doesn’t pause data cen­ters, it could be a prime tar­get for developers. 

“Surrounding com­mu­ni­ties have all done mora­to­ri­ums, rang­ing from six months to one year to two years,” Jeffries said Tuesday. “And if we don’t have one in place, Winchester is going to look like a great place” to site them, he explained. 

Gullette raised legal con­cerns in a let­ter to Mayor JoEllen Reed on Aug. 16 after Jeffries had warned plan­ning com­mis­sion­ers last month that there is no zone des­ig­nat­ed for data cen­ters in Winchester. 

“The plan­ning com­mis­sion shares Rob’s con­cern that the lack of any zone for these facil­i­ties . . . places any future appli­ca­tions in trou­bling legal waters,” he said. 

Jeffries not­ed in a let­ter Aug. 27 to the may­or and city com­mis­sion­ers that there also are no exist­ing plan­ning and zon­ing reg­u­la­tions per­tain­ing to the facilities. 

Neighboring juris­dic­tions that have enact­ed mora­to­ri­ums include Lexington and Fayette County, Nicholasville and Jessamine County, Madison County, Versailles, Nelson County, London, and Louisville and Jefferson County. 

Jeffries said that at the end of the year, local gov­ern­ments could choose to extend the mora­to­ri­um or move in anoth­er direc­tion. He said he expects there to be “mul­ti­ple pub­lic hear­ings” if there are any changes to the zon­ing ordinance. 

“We want to make sure we have time devot­ed for the pub­lic and for the plan­ning com­mis­sion and for every­one involved to real­ly par­tic­i­pate in these hear­ings and help guide our com­mu­ni­ty in this new con­cept,” he said. “It’s real­ly only in the last cou­ple of years that it’s come out.” 

Speaking at a Kentucky Farm Bureau gath­er­ing in Winchester in March, state Sen. Greg Elkins, a Winchester Republican, said that “data cen­ters are com­ing whether we like it or not . . . and we’re going to have to be able to pro­duce ener­gy to keep up with them.” 

Elkins was explain­ing his sup­port for devel­op­ment of nuclear ener­gy in Kentucky. 

The state sen­a­tor com­pared the race between China and the U.S. for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to the race between Russia and the U.S. to land a man on the moon. 

“It’s going to become a nation­al defense issue,” Elkins said. “There’s going to be a lot of leg­is­la­tion over the next four or five years that deal with those data cen­ters. They’re com­ing. You can’t stop them.” 

Vaché King, the Democratic can­di­date for coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive in the Nov. 3 elec­tion, has a dif­fer­ent view. King, who works for NTT DATA, a multi­na­tion­al infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, said data cen­ters don’t gen­er­ate many jobs but use tremen­dous amounts of nat­ur­al resources, which dri­ves up costs for ratepay­ers, regard­less of local gov­ern­ments’ good inten­tions to mit­i­gate any ill effects. 

“After the hon­ey­moon peri­od, a lot of things set­tle, and that’s when you learn, it’s not worth it,” she said.