BROKEN ARROW, Okla. — During its June 15 meeting, the Broken Arrow City Council approved a six-month moratorium.
“I don’t know enough about it to be able to say what a good one would look like, and what a bad one would look like,” city manager Michael Spurgeon said of potential data centers.
WATCH: MORATORIUM: BA council approves data center moratorium
That’s why, Monday night, Broken Arrow city councilors approved a six-month moratorium on data center consideration.
One developer was in the very early stages of bringing a data center to Broken Arrow, but the effort fizzled out.
In city manager, Michael Spurgeon’s eyes, that opened a door.
“I felt like, since they backed out of it, that this is a great time. There is no application before the city’s community development for actually going through the approval process or pre-develeopment,” Spurgeon said, “We could actually slow down this process, and just go through a methodical process in trying to make sure we do our due diligence.”
Currently, none of Broken Arrow’s zoning and code regulations implicate data centers. The moratorium gives leadership the chance to, make clear, what can and can’t happen with potential data centers.
The pause is welcome for Lee Jackson.
“They don’t need people! They run off of … what I’ve read … about five people can run the thing cuz they’re mostly maintaining the servers,” Jackson said.
Another neighbor, claiming to be an engineer, addressed the council.
“The smaller ones take power off the grid. That is what, in my humble opinion, I would advise you take an extra measure of care at looking at. But the big ones, no they’re not a big deal at all,” the engineer said.
The moratorium is set to expire Dec. 31, but the council has the chance to extend it.
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