St. Bernard is temporarily pausing new data center developments, but a proposal for Procter & Gamble's old Ivorydale facility will remain under consideration.
St. Bernard Village Council voted unanimously Thursday to approve a 12-month moratorium on data centers. The village says the pause will allow officials to examine how the facilities impact infrastructure, utility capacity and zoning laws, as well as consider possible regulations.
The decision comes after the owner of the vacant St. Bernard Soap Company property proposed housing a data center there. A handful of residents spoke out against the project, like Danielle Mitsch, who says she's worried about impacts on her electric bill, the environment, and about noise.
“This is about our community's health,” she says. “It's not just about St. Bernard. It is about the communities around us, and we need to do what is best for the people and our human rights, not companies' rights.”
Mitsch urged council to pass a permanent ban on data centers.
CAI Investments LLC submitted an application to the village’s Board of Zoning Appeals for conditional use approval, since St. Bernard’s zoning code does not include data centers currently.
Director of Public Safety and Service Mark Wendling says the project will still get a hearing with the Board of Zoning Appeals, since it applied before the moratorium passed. The village will not process any new applications for projects.
The proposed data center would be 150,000 square feet with 24-megawatt capacity. Tom Breidenstein is an attorney for CAI Investments.
“This is not a hyperscale campus of large tilt-up buildings for data center use – those are the ones that you see all the news reports on, primarily being developed in the rural sections of our communities,” Breidenstein says. “This is, as you know, an existing building currently unused and falling into disrepair.”
He added, the moratorium was a “targeted effort” directly in response to his client’s proposal. Breidenstein previously said the data center tenant would walk from the property if council approved the moratorium, but he did not mention that again at Thursday’s council meeting.
The moratorium goes into effect immediately. A handful of other Tri-State communities have implemented similar pauses, including Cincinnati, Butler County, and Mt. Orab.
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