The failure to pass a proposed state law on data centers has pushed Champaign County officials to develop their own regulations to address concerns about the centers’ water consumption, noise pollution and rising energy costs.

The Illinois POWER Act would have been one of the few state regulations on data center operations and would’ve forced data centers to pay the total cost of the energy usage, rather than letting those costs fall on households and local businesses. However, the Act failed to advance in the Illinois General Assembly on June 1. 

Emily Rodriguez, vice chair of the County Board and chair of the Data Center Activities Task Force, said the lack of state legislation means counties will have a harder time enforcing certain regulations against data centers.

“The state legislature failed to pass any sort of data center regulation … so by the state constitution, we can’t do much to protect ourselves from data centers,” Rodriguez said in an interview with CU-CitizenAccess.org. “Requiring data centers to pay for their own energy and infrastructure, requiring certain safety standards for water and water usage — these are all things that we would have a hard time enforcing, but the state absolutely can.”

The issue of data centers in the county arose earlier this year when officials said there had been an approach by developers about the possibility of a data center on a 300-acre area located in the southwest section of the City of Champaign. City and task force officials have refused to identify the developer or the location because they said they have not received an official proposal.

Large data centers are being constructed in Illinois and neighboring states like Indiana. 

Construction began this year in Lebanon, Ind. on a Meta 1,500-acre data center campus with a capacity to use 1 gigawatt of power, compared to traditional data centers that typically use up to 100 megawatts. In Yorkville, Ill., a 1,037-acre data center campus was approved by city officials, but residents filed a lawsuit to try to block the construction.

On June 22, the task force met for its fifth meeting as the eight committee members continued to draft an ordinance on data center regulations. The ordinance will dictate policies that future data centers built in Champaign County must abide by should any be approved after the 12-month moratorium ends in April 2027.

The task force primarily discussed energy regulations at the June 22 meeting because of data centers’ significant strain on the power grid and how average consumers rates tend to rise to accommodate nearby data centers. 

“I think we can get more renewable [energy sources] built out so we can ensure data centers in Champaign are doing their part,” said Andrew Rehn, task force member and director of climate policy at Prairie Rivers Network, during the meeting. “The [language] we are using in the POWER Act is ‘bring your own new clean capacity and energy,’ and that doesn’t have to be on-site.”

The task force discussed renewable energy mandates for data centers, including the benefits of renewable energy to prevent high power costs for consumers and the potential downsides, such as new solar or wind farms being built over farmland. 

“I attended a meeting at the Farm Bureau this past winter, and the view there was that ‘bring your own clean energy’ is just going to use up more of the best prime farmland for solar arrays,” County Planning and Zoning Director John Hall said during the June 22 meeting. 

The drafted ordinance additionally bans the use of nuclear power. After some discussion on whether changes should be made in the case that modular nuclear reactors advance to be an effective energy source for data centers, the task force decided to keep the ban on nuclear reactors in the draft, a provision that can be requested to be waived like all other requirements in the ordinance. 

“It’s one of the benefits of public policy,” Rodriguez said during the meeting. “It can be amended, it can be changed as time changes [and] community needs change.”

Water preservation, noise and energy costs drive local concerns

Previously, at the task force’s June 1 meeting, water use regulations was the main point of discussion. Many data centers use evaporative cooling measures, which extracts water from lakes, rivers and groundwater sources and uses the evaporation process to cool the heat generated by data centers’ extreme energy usage. 

Evaporative cooling requires continuous water extraction, thus the task force is considering enforcing systems such as closed-loop cooling, which is able to reuse the same water and therefore prevent continuous water extraction from the Mahomet Aquifer. 

“We know [the aquifer] is a finite resource, and that if we overdraw the aquifer, communities that are dependent on it will suffer,” Rehn said in an interview with CU-CitizenAccess. “We’re at the top of a watershed, so we’re deeply dependent on the resource, and so we just need to be thoughtful about when a large water user, like a data center, shows up, and what sort of restrictions we want to put in place.”

The task force plans to tackle in future meetings issues of noise and vibration caused by large data centers. The humming of cooling systems, generators and fans can be heard up to a mile away, and the extremely low frequencies can be felt similarly to the vibration of bass-heavy music at a concert. 

As the task force continues drafting regulation for data centers, members have been using the Aurora, Ill. ordinance as a guideline. Aurora passed strict data center regulations in March after a 180-day long moratorium, similar to Champaign’s current 12-month moratorium on data centers, with strict policies on noise, water consumption and energy usage. 

At the task force’s May 4 meeting, members were joined via video call by City of Aurora Mayor John Laesch and Director of Sustainability Alison Lindburg to discuss Aurora’s regulations and the city’s decision-making process. 

Although the task force has been considering Aurora’s regulations as a blueprint, a major difference between Aurora and Champaign is that Aurora is a home rule municipality, meaning it has the power to self-govern and pass its own local laws unless specifically prohibited by the state. Champaign is a non-home rule municipality, meaning it may only exercise powers expressly granted by state law.

“A lot of the Aurora [ordinance] we cannot do. We can definitely use it as a framework, but there are going to be large chunks where the answer is just ‘no, we can’t require that. We have no authority,’” said Champaign County Executive Michelle Jett during the May 4 meeting. 

Aurora’s ordinance includes the provision to fine data centers $1,000 to 5,000 a day per violation, an authority it has as a home-rule municipality. The state limits Champaign to fines of up to $500 which must be imposed by a court — a price that data centers may potentially disregard as the cost of doing business.

“We are capped by the state on what we can do and, frankly, there are dollar amounts that these large data centers would laugh at,” Jett said during the June 22 meeting

Task force consulting with attorney on county’s authority

Task Force chair Rodriguez said during the June 22 meeting that the task force will be meeting with an attorney to ask questions regarding Champaign’s authority as a non-home rule county. 

“We’re waiting for something in writing from the State’s Attorney’s Office,” Rodriguez said in an interview with CU-CitizenAccess. “It would have been inappropriate to guess [the county’s enforcement ability] … so we’re going to have to delay any serious consideration until we hear something from the State’s Attorney’s Office, and I think they’re rounding that corner soon.”

A Champaign County Board Meeting on April 23 to discuss the length of the moratorium had a large public turnout with several citizens speaking over the span of the two-hour meeting and a majority of speakers expressing their desire to keep data centers out of Champaign. 

However, as emphasized by Jett in the public task force meetings, and by Rodriguez in an interview, the county does not have the authority to outright ban data centers. State statutes do not explicitly authorize non-home rule counties to prohibit legitimate, permitted business operations.

“Legally, we could be sued if we take a stance that is full, no data centers,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a power thing that data centers have. We have to pass something that’s reasonable, that stands for our community, but it’s not a yes or no question, and it never will be.”

Rodriguez said no data center company propositioned Champaign for a potential data center location, but a construction company responsible for building data centers scouted locations in the county. No official proposals have been made. 

“We’re seeing [data centers] in other counties, and [have been] dissatisfied with the process by which we’re seeing these ordinances passed and projects approved,” Rodriguez said. “So [we’re] being proactive, we don’t have any serious proposals, though. And I want to be really clear about that. We met with a data center builder who just kind of wanted to get a sense of Champaign County, but there were no proposals on where and how.”