New tool kit helps MN cities prepare for data centers

Big tech’s giant data center proposals have touched raw nerves in several Minnesota towns, sparking firestorms of criticism aimed at local government leaders, some of whom signed non-disclosure agreements to keep project details secret until after elected officials approved the plans.

Seeing how data centers have churned up local politics and spurred newcomers to run for office, some city administrators came together to seek help. The end result is a new toolkit developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota to help local government officials better understand and weigh the pros and cons of having Google, Meta or some other big tech company build a massive data center in their community.

“The way we’ve been framing it is how do you proactively address a data center?” said Elise Harrington, a University of Minnesota public affairs professor who is the tool kit project lead. “How do you think about it before you have one?”

It’s the culmination of a year of research by the University of Minnesota and the Freshwater Society, a water conservation nonprofit. It was developed to help city leaders separate facts from fiction and to guide what city codes they can enact to mitigate environmental impacts if big tech pitches in their city next.

Arming local leaders with facts

Harrington and her group of researchers released the tool kit last Friday afternoon in Rochester, where dozens of city planners, administrators and elected officials from cities and towns across southeast Minnesota gathered for a workshop to learn about the tool kit and try it out.

Al Roder, city administrator for the nearby town of Byron, is part of the reason this tool kit exists in the first place.

He and some of his peers in other southeast Minnesota cities had been talking a couple of years ago about how they could prepare for the seemingly inevitable arrival of data center proposals.

“We just started having a conversation about data centers and how do we answer all these questions with facts instead of emotions?” Roder said. “Because so much of what I hear is emotional arguments for or against. Where are the facts?”

He had observed how these emotions had created deep rifts in cities like Pine Island, about 20 minutes away, after Google proposed its Project Skyway data center there, dividing residents into heated factions of those who support the data center and those who vehemently oppose it.

Roder and his counterparts in nearby Stewartville and Lewiston wanted to get ahead of such controversies. If Google or some other big tech company came to Byron, Roder wanted to be armed with facts and have city rules preemptively laid out for prospective data centers.

“These are rules that we decided before we were in the heat of battle,” Roder told MPR News. “These are the conditions that we would find acceptable for our community. It’s easier to do that before somebody’s knocking on the door.”

So they reached out to the community development folks at the University of Minnesota Extension for help gathering facts they could use to guide these discussions.

What does the tool kit include?

The guide, which will be made available to the public Wednesday, includes sections on how data centers can impact energy and water usage, and how these impacts can be regulated at the local level to manage environmental impacts. It also includes guiding questions for city leaders to ask if they get an inquiry from big tech about a data center proposal as well as examples of how to address data centers in local code.

That’s why Greg Krushke attended the workshop. He’s the community development manager for the city of Owatonna, and he’s in the midst of modernizing the city’s zoning and subdivision code that was developed back in the 1980s. He hopes the tool kit will help inform how they write the code and what is included in it.

He said it’s especially helpful to come together with peers at a workshop like this one to talk with one another and share experiences.

“What are they learning from others, and how can we be able to apply some of this and be able to use it to help ourselves and our neighbors?” Krushke said.

A regional approach

Andi Sutton, executive director of the Southeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnership with University of Minnesota Extension, said she was thrilled that so many local government decision makers showed up for Friday’s workshop in Rochester.

Local data center decisions are not made in a vacuum, and she hopes the workshop, which has convened leaders from across the region, will spark these conversations early since the environmental impacts of data centers don’t stop at city borders.

That’s especially true in southeast Minnesota, which has a unique geologic landscape. It’s made of karst, a type of rock that’s very porous.

“It means that the way that water moves through our region is different from other parts of Minnesota,” Sutton explained. “We have sensitive aquifers. We have water that’s in use for agricultural purposes, for ecosystem purposes. So what one community does with the water that they have will very quickly and inevitably have an effect on another community.”

Sutton hopes this workshop jump starts these conversations and leads local planners to ask their neighbors questions as they weigh the pros and cons of data center proposals; questions like, “Who is my neighbor in terms of energy, water, infrastructure or roads?”

“All of these questions get pushed to their limits by data centers as a development opportunity,” Sutton said. “We’re so grateful that we’re able to help supply information as answers to some of those questions or even recommendations. These are important questions to ask very early and often of your peers, of your neighbors, of your citizens, so that you have all the information you need to move forward with a decision that suits your community as well as the region.”