Mount Pleasant will not take applications for data centers for up to two years.
Town Council gave final approval Oct. 13 to an ordinance imposing a temporary moratorium on accepting, processing or approving applications, permits and other requests for data centers, the Moultrie News and WCSC Live 5 reported. The draft ordinance posted with the meeting agenda called for a 120-day pause. Councilmember Jake Rambo amended the motion to make it two years, and council approved it unanimously, the Moultrie News reported.
The draft ordinance defines a data center as a facility used mainly to store, manage and process digital data, including equipment that handles at least 1 megawatt of electrical power and cooling.
“That shouldn’t get in the way of local businesses that have sort of ancillary data storage and processing operations as part of them,” Councilmember Daniel Brownstein said before the vote, according to the Moultrie News.
Planning Director Michele Reed told council that no hyperscale data centers are seeking to locate in the town, the paper reported. But the town’s code allows data centers by right in light industrial, economic development and areawide business-2 zoning districts, which means one could be built without a council vote or a public hearing, The Post and Courier reported in August.
Water and power drove the debate. At an Aug. 31 committee meeting, Mount Pleasant Waterworks officials warned that large data centers could raise the utility’s costs. “We cannot make water without electricity,” said Chris Martin, who leads the utility’s operational technology department, according to The Post and Courier. General Manager Allan Clum said the utility’s yearly allotment from the Charleston Aquifer was cut in 2017 after Google began drawing from it for its Berkeley County data center, the paper reported.
During the moratorium, town staff and the Planning Commission are to study where data centers might be appropriate and recommend zoning changes, the draft ordinance says. Council can end the pause early once those rules are in place, the Moultrie News reported.
Mount Pleasant acted about a week after Colleton County agreed, in a legal settlement, to bar data centers from most of the ACE Basin within its borders.
