As of Tuesday, there were 912 verified signatures at change.org to “prevent the construction of a data center on farm land in Leesburg.”
The petition, according to the site, says, in part, “Our beautiful neighborhood of Leesburg/Clunette, steeped in fabled tradition and generations-long farming lifestyle, faces a grave threat. Our lives, as we know them, are in danger of being irrevocably altered by the proposed construction of a data center on our fertile farmlands. These lands are not mere real estate. They are our lifelines - a gift from God, entrusted to us as sound stewards. Our local farming communities depend on these lands for livelihood, and most importantly, these lands feed the world.”
The petition not only encourages people to contact Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, Sen. Ryan Mishler and state Rep. Craig Snow to speak against the proposal, but the petition also encourages people to attend the Kosciusko County Area Plan Commission meeting at 1 p.m. April 2 in the old courtroom of the county courthouse in Warsaw.
In an interview Tuesday, Area Plan Director Matt Sandy said, “Right now, there is technically no petition for a data center at this point. What we’ve got before us is a petition to rezone 554 acres from Ag to Industrial-3. That being said, there is a pretty good idea that that acreage is intended for a data center.”
The acreage is surrounded by CR 700N to the south, CRs 400W and 425W to the west, CR 900N to the north and CR 300W to the east. The owners of the property are Tim Polk, Polk Family Farms and Murphy Place LLC.
In February, the Area Plan Commission approved adding data centers to the zoning ordinance, which the county commissioners later approved at their meeting. The zoning ordinance amendment categorizes data centers as an exceptional use in heavy industrial, or I-3, districts.
“It wasn’t necessarily in reaction to this (petition). It was in reaction to other things going on around us,” Sandy said, pointing to a small data center in Pierceton, as well as data centers in Elkhart and St. Joe counties and Fort Wayne, and a moratorium on them in Marshall County. “It’s like every new use that we have - we didn’t know what to expect, and through discussions we felt we knew a little bit about them that we don’t know what we don’t know.”
It was decided to put data centers in I-3 districts as exceptions.
Sandy explained that a data center is a mass warehouse of computers that run 24/7. Companies like Amazon and Google have their own dedicated data centers, while other data centers rent out space. With many computers running all at once continuously, a lot of heat is generated.
There are different methods to cool the data centers.
“One is a closed loop system, which I would equate to a geo-system. They have open systems, where they basically just draw the water out, pump it out, dump. They have electric systems where there’s no water necessarily involved, they’re just pumping electric to generate the fans,” Sandy said.
A hyperscale data center, which are large facilities designed for cloud service providers and major internet companies, can use as much as 550,000 gallons of water per day, according to dgtlinfra.com. Smaller facilities - ranging from 100,000 to 250,000 square feet - recorded an average daily water usage of about 18,000 gallons.
The location near Leesburg and Clunette has no municipal water, Sandy pointed out, so they’d be looking at wells.
“The other issue with data centers is that they generate and they need a lot of power,” he said. In the area of the proposed site is a NIPSCO substation.
Procedurally, Sandy said the rezoning hearing before the Area Plan Commission is April 2. The plan commission will make a recommendation to the county commissioners, who will take final action on it tentatively at their April 22 meeting.
The plan commission could make a recommendation to rezone the property, not to rezone it or send it on to the commissioners with no recommendation, though that third option is rare. They also could table the petition for further study.
“We have no doubt that there’s going to be a lot of folks that want to speak about it,” Sandy said.
Because of a state law that takes effect July 1 that requires all public meetings to be livestreamed, Sandy said they plan to livestream the April 2 meeting on the county’s YouTube channel, which can be found under Kosciusko County Government at @kosciuskocountygovernment4816.
“That way if folks want to see what’s happening but don’t want to be at the meeting - we know it’s going to be a crowd, there’s a seating capacity in the courtroom that we have to abide by - we want to give folks an opportunity to see. It’s not going to be interactive, just like the commissioners’ isn’t, it’s just going to be streaming,” Sandy said.
If people attend the meeting to speak, he said they will be allowed to do so, as always.
“Ours are public hearings. We are going to take public input,” Sandy said.
Anyone who wants to speak will be asked to sign in for record-keeping purposes. The plan commission chairman may also hold each speaker to a time limit to allow every person who wants to speak an opportunity to do so.
“The petitioner will be given a chance. Anybody who wants to speak for or against it will be given a chance. And then the (petitioner) gets the final rebuttal,” Sandy explained. “Our chairman is really good at keeping it civil. It’s a public meeting, and everybody has a right to put their input in, but we’ve got to keep it civil, too.”
When the plan commission looks at a rezoning, Sandy said they’re considering a number of factors: highest and best use of the property, how it fits into the county’s comprehensive plan and any other reasons they may have for or against the petition.
As of Tuesday, Sandy said he’s received a number of calls about the rezoning petition. Most of the callers have wanted to know the facts of the case.
“We haven’t even seen the detailed plans, if there are any at this point because, through the steps, they’re going to have to meet certain criteria,” he said. “If it’s rezoned, then we will really get into the meat of it. I don’t know what the petitioners will present at the hearing. We have nothing except for the legal description.”
He estimated his office has been taking one to two calls a day on the matter. Sandy had heard about the change.org petition, but hadn’t seen anything as of Tuesday. To his knowledge, they hadn’t received anything in opposition for the case file either.
The petitioners officially hadn’t filed anything until about the end of February, but “talk has been out there for months on this. We’ve been hearing questions on it,” Sandy said.