Fayette residents seek more stringent data center ordinance standards
Noise levels, setback restrictions among concerns
Several concerned Fayette County residents asked the county board of commissioners about planning commission recommendations they feared would weaken a proposed data center ordinance during Thursday’s regular monthly meeting.
The ordinance would place restrictions on potential data center projects, including height and setback restrictions.
Shelley Meyers of Dunbar Township said she was alarmed by changes in the most recent draft, which included higher decibel levels and reduced setback levels.
“Would you want a data center in your backyard? We really need to be looking closely at this and protect our residents of Fayette County,” she said.
Nate Ricketts, an organizer with the Mountain Watershed Association, relayed preliminary results from the association’s survey of area residents. So far, 80% of respondents have said there was “no comfortable distance” they could live from a data center.
Setbacks from residential properties, previously at 1,000 feet, had been reduced to 600, Ricketts said. Setbacks from occupied residences had dropped as low as 500 feet.
“We and many people in Fayette County thought that early drafts weren’t protective enough, but from a political perspective, to slash setbacks even more is a recipe for public scrutiny,” he said.
Ohiopyle resident Annelise Carleton-Hug also backed the restoration of the 1,000-foot setback, which had been recommended as a best practice by a county commissioner from Virginia at a previous data center town hall.
She would also like to see language added that would create more sustainable forms of energy generation, such as solar.
“I realize we’re sitting on the shale here, but we could get more solar power to power these,” she said. “That would have less impact to future climate change and how that would further impact our community.”
In response to public speakers, commissioners said they were not bound by what the planning commission had recommended.
“We certainly want their input in it, but ultimately, it’s going to come down to what the commissioners decide,” Commissioner Harry “Dutch” Kaufman said after the meeting. “We’re going to review that … once that’s done, we will have a finished product that we can bring to a public meeting.”
Commissioner Vince Vicites said he was “pushing very hard for stringent setbacks.”
“Those aren’t etched in stone at this point,” he said.
Chairman Scott Dunn agreed with the other commissioners, but said limits that were too strict could lead it to being deemed exclusionary zoning.
“If our data center zoning is so much different than other industrial zoning, the data center can sue us in court,” he said.
The first vote on the commissioner level would be to schedule a public hearing on the ordinance, a draft of which would be published before the hearing. Kaufman said they were planning to hold the scheduling vote in November. The actual public hearing would have to be at least 30 days later.