Orange City, Iowa (KTIV-TV) — Developers who are looking to build a data center about two miles southwest of Hull told the Sioux County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that an end user had been secured before the county’s moratorium on new data centers took effect last week.
The Sioux County Board of Supervisors approved a one-year moratorium on new data centers and battery energy storage systems in the county’s unincorporated areas earlier this month. County leaders say the pause would give them time to study the potential impact of the growing industry and consider possible regulations.
Representatives from PathOne Data Centers and Sunstone Investments appeared before the board Tuesday to advocate for a proposed facility on the old Bison Plant property — a never-finished biogas plant that went bankrupt in 2018. The property is southwest of Hull, just west of Highway 75 on 330th Street. The developers say they are looking at a 30,000 to 50,000 square foot center.
Jesse Rognes of Sunstone Investments confirmed the project had an end user lined up when the moratorium was passed. “We had an end user ready to go, so we were in the process of reaching out,” Rognes said. “The moratorium being put in place when it did, obviously it’s not ideal for our project.”
Sioux County Supervisor Craig Hoftyzer says the timeline came as a surprise. “As far as them having an end user or anything like that, was new information to us,” Hoftyzer said.
The proposal drew both support and opposition from community members in attendance. One supporter says the project would keep economic benefits local. “I’m here to speak in support of this project. It needs to happen. There’s no use in us sending our data to Texas or California and letting those people get the benefit,” the community member said.
Others pushed back on a lack of specifics. “You make a lot of promises, but you don’t give any specifics,” one opponent said.
Rognes says specific details regarding water usage, light pollution, and energy have not yet been determined. “We’re not that far down the process,” he said.
Rognes says the facility would generate tax revenue for the area. Hoftyzer described Tuesday’s meeting as a starting point. “It was very general, very broad. So, it’s not that you could go home with a lot of stuff, but it was a starting point for the conversation,” he said.
The moratorium currently in place is up to one year and can be retracted at any time.
To read more on the group PathOne Data Centers, you can visit their website here.
