Moratorium imposed as data centers look to Kootenai County

COEUR d’ALENE — Amid concerns about the resource usage and environmental impact of data centers, Kootenai County commissioners voted unanimously this week to impose an emergency moratorium on building permit approvals for such facilities. 

The moratorium will last 182 days. Community Development Director David Callahan said this will give county staff time to assess zoning and special or conditional use processes for data centers. 

“That would give us the ability to condition these kinds of facilities to ensure that they are a proper fit for their proposed locale, but deal with major impacts, such as the aquifer protection, the enormous amounts of electricity these facilities can consume, transportation impacts, air quality impacts,” Callahan said. “They go on and on.” 

Commissioners needed to act quickly, Callahan said, because the county has already received inquiries from parties interested in building data centers. These facilities are used to house computer systems and associated equipment.

“At the moment, they are by right, meaning they can just pull a building permit and then we have to live with that,” he said. 

Apple recently announced that it plans to invest $500 billion in the United States over the next four years. Some of that money will be spent on Apple Intelligence infrastructure and expanding data center capacity in North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada. 

“If you’ll pardon the Texas parlance, that’s real money,” Callahan said. “If one company is doing that, you can imagine what the sense of urgency is around the nation for these.” 

Large amounts of water are needed to operate data centers, both for liquid cooling and to produce electricity. Callahan said data centers can draw between 500,000 and 5 million gallons of water per day. 

A 2021 study led by Landon Marston, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, found that data centers rank in the top 10 of “water-consuming industrial or commercial industries” in the U.S. 

In 2023, The Oregonian reported that Google’s water usage in The Dalles had nearly tripled in the past five years and the company’s data centers consumed more than a quarter of all the water used in the city of about 16,000 people. 

Google’s data centers in The Dalles used more than 355 million gallons of water in 2021, according to The Oregonian. 

Suzanne Scheidt, a water district representative for the Aquifer Protection District, said the group supports the county’s moratorium. 

“APD is specifically concerned about potential degradation to aquifer water quality from cooling practices associated with these data centers,” she said. 

The Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer encompasses 370 square miles, most of which lie beneath Kootenai County. It is the source of almost all drinking water for the Coeur d’Alene and Spokane regions. 

Jenny Gray, with Panhandle Health District’s aquifer protection program, said most tracts of open land in Kootenai County that could house data centers are directly over the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. 

“Without a full understanding of the types of chemicals used at these facilities, the type of wastewater generated and the type of wastewater system they’re proposing, Panhandle Health District does have concerns,” she said. 

There are “large regulatory gaps” within state rules, Gray said, making additional actions necessary. 

“Without some sort of local oversight, whether that’s an ordinance or a conditional use permit process, there would still be gaps that would not provide full protective measures to our really valuable aquifer here,” she said. 

Commissioners agreed that the moratorium should go into effect. 

“I think it’s appropriate, with the natural resources and the utilities that would be required with this type of use,” Commissioner Leslie Duncan said.