Cedartown Commission calling for Monday special session for Data Center Moratorium

Communities across the nation are getting requests for data center builds, and the City of Cedartown is hoping to get ahead of issues created by these facilities with a decision on whether to pause any efforts to locate one here for six months.

City Commissioners will meet at 5 p.m. on Monday, March 23 for a special called session at city hall to decide on a Data Center Moratorium, thus far the lone item on the agenda for Monday.

Per City Manager Edward Guzman, the moratorium is necessary to give the city time to study the problem and come up with a sensible set of regulations to ensure that anyone who wants to locate one in the city limits do so responsibly.

“A lot of discussions have been raised around data centers in cities like ours across the country, and we want to get ahead of any potential problems that might come up as a result of facilities like these wanting to move into the City of Cedartown,” Guzman said. “We want to look at what others are doing before we make hasty decisions on ordinances.”

If the City Commission approves the measure being proposed, a six month pause will go into effect on any proposals for data centers within the community.

The city isn’t a stranger to new tech moving into the area. Cedartown is home to a small-scale facility off Canal Street built for cryptocurrency mining. It only requires a small footprint, but facilities can range in size and complexity of their systems.

Current debates surrounding data centers are focused on those purpose-built for Artificial Intelligence models running at large scale, requiring thousands of high-cost servers that require large amounts of power and take billions of investment to construct. Water and electricity resources have been the main focus of critics, but others point to only temporary job creation for construction and only a small staff needed to run the facility after, along with noise complaints caused by data centers running the servers 24-hours a day.

Polk County’s commission passed changes to their ordinance to govern allowances and requirements for data centers to be built in the county, but also put a short pause on permitting for construction as zoning changes require public hearings and a change to the ordinance for the requirements to go into full effect.