Laurens County Council has adopted a 12-month delay on permitting and land-use planning consideration of Data Centers.
In a separate matter, the county also is considering restrictions on Solar Farm developments.
The Data Centers delay is to give county staff time to come up with an ordinance to outline where in the county these campuses could be located, and under what standards they are permitted.
Two people expressed concerns about Data Centers at the council’s Sept. 14 public hearing about Ordinance 1012. One of them proposed very strict standards if one of these data-collection and storage facilities were ever proposed for Laurens County.
One speaker expressed support for Data Center, saying their opposition stems from “Chinese propaganda.”
Barbara Mordue outlined what she saw as the strict standards to which Data Centers should adhere, and John Parnell (for the third time before council) asked for even greater transparency from the county, if a Data Center were ever proposed here.
The County citizens also play a role, he said. “I ask our community to keep up with what is going on. We have a responsibility,” he said.
Mordue said, in other states, large developments have state- and local-imposed standards that include building schools (large subdivisions) and buying fire trucks, with ladders that can reach the top of tall buildings. She said a Data Center developer should be required to pre-submit a decommissioning plan and a battery-storage fire suppression plan, before any permitting is granted.
But, Dr. Cecil Y. Brown said, “…because of our country’s leaders’ mindset, they encouraged our textile mills and other manufacturing businesses to move their factories to China, Mexico, and elsewhere, which destroyed so many jobs in our county, state and nation, and we are now dependent on those countries for vital products and medicines. If data centers are so harmful, why is China building so many over there and, yet, deceiving gullible Americans, through propaganda, to resist building the data centers in our country?”
After the moratorium ordinance passed, and time came for council members’ comments, outgoing Council Member Kemp Younts said, “I want to thank the council for not rushing through this (moratorium). I won’t be here when the moratorium runs out, but I would extend it. The regular people are against them (data centers), we are regular people. They (data centers) are a cancer to the environment. The only people pushing it are making money on it. People who make trillions and billions of dollars don’t do it by being straight-forward and honest. We are doing fine without them. Don’t do something that’s going to come back and bite you on the butt, and you’re not going to be able to do much about it.”
On Sept. 14, the Laurens County Council also took first reading action on what was described as the “most restrictive” Solar Farms ordinance in the state. It is a 26-page document that will require two more readings and a public hearing to go into effect.
Just like the Data Centers moratorium, the Solar Farms measure was introduced by Council Vice-chairman Matthew Brownlee. Its provisions were explained via a Power Point by County Attorney Wes Meetze.
The maximum size of a Solar Farm in Laurens County would be restricted to 400 acres. The buffering and setback requirements would not be imposed on Type 1 “solar energy conversion systems,” the ones that people have on their houses.
These requirement would kick-in, to various degrees on Type 2, 3, and 4 facilities, with Type 4 being the largest that are designed to collect and ship power to commercial electricity customers.
Laurens County Council meets the 2nd Monday of each month, 6 p.m. in the Historic Courthouse in downtown Laurens.
