The Blaine City Council unanimously approved a one-year moratorium on data centers and battery energy storage systems at its Oct. 26 meeting. The temporary pause prevents the city from accepting applications from developers looking to build these facilities.
The moratorium will allow the city to develop regulations for the facilities, as its current code is completely silent on data centers and battery energy storage facilities, the city’s Community Development Services Director Alex Wenger told the council.
Wenger said that the city will take this time to study how these facilities can be regulated to ensure that they don’t impact Blaine in a negative manner.
Though the moratorium grouped data centers and battery energy storage systems together, they will be regulated separately, Wenger said, which was a concern shared by councilmembers and some people who made public comments.
Prior to council approving the moratorium, a public hearing was held in which three people spoke.
Two of the people who spoke during the hearing said they were opposed to data centers. They listed concerns about the environment, power consumption and the mercurial state of the artificial intelligence industry as reasons for why they opposed data centers.
The third person who spoke said they have worked as an engineer for 40 years, and have constructed data centers in California. They said a data center could be beneficial for Blaine, if done correctly.
Blaine City Manager Mike Harmon said it’s too soon to tell whether data centers or battery energy storage systems are in Blaine’s future, but it’s likely.
“Given Blaine’s advantageous power rates, I think it’s probable that we’ll see interest in our community, in terms of either a battery energy storage system or a data center at some scale,” he said.
Prior to the moratorium’s approval, one developer had shown interest in siting a battery energy storage system in Blaine, Harmon said.
During the one-year moratorium, the city will study the facilities’ potential impact on utilities such as electric, water and sewer rates, as well as their impacts on the environment and Blaine residents’ general wellbeing, Harmon said.
In the research he’s done, Harmon said that many of the typical concerns associated with data centers can be mitigated.
He said that the noise that data centers make is a common complaint, as well as increases to utility rates for residents in the area — but solutions have been found for both.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day what I’m seeing is that a lot of the angst regarding data centers is not necessarily tied to their impacts. It, however, is tied to the unknown about AI,” he said.
Harmon acknowledged that there is resistance to these facilities, especially data centers, but he said that the facilities can have positive financial positives on communities.
When asked whether the city would be concerned about the AI bubble bursting and the industry fizzling out, Harmon said he doesn’t fear it. If the city were to embrace these facilities, it would be another step in Blaine’s evolution.
“I certainly don’t fear it because there’s a lot of bubbles that burst,” Harmon said. “The milk, egg and cheese bubble that was in Blaine, right? The adult entertainment business that was in Blaine. All of these things where communities have to evolve.
“And if today it’s AI, but tomorrow it’s something different that we don’t know, we will evolve with that,” he continued. “We will figure out a way to change with the times.”
