New Orleans City Planning can't agree on data center regulations
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New Orleans' City Planning Commission couldn't agree Tuesday on a slate of new recommendations aimed at eventually regulating data centers within city limits.
Why it matters: City Council will run up against a self-imposed deadline to come up with new rules for the facilities when a moratorium on building new ones expires next year.
Catch up quick: City Council enacted the one-year ban on new data centers when plans appeared for a new computing facility in New Orleans East earlier this year.
- Since then, city planning staff have worked to develop definitions and recommendations about where data centers could be built.
- The original recommendations called for splitting data center projects into four categories, with an outright ban suggested for the largest of them and conditional uses for others.
Driving the news: Despite sparse attendance at the commission's first meeting to discuss the recommendations, follow-ups have attracted protesters who call for a slowdown on the regulatory process or an outright data center ban.
- Tuesday's meeting had more of the same, which seemed to lead commissioners to move the lines drawn between data center categories, effectively classifying more potential projects as larger scale and increasing a buffer between data centers and residential areas from 500 feet to 1,000 feet.
- Still, a split vote meant the commission failed to advance even those recommendations to City Council.
Between the lines: If planning recommendations do make it out of commission, it's still up to City Council how New Orleans would adopt them. That means a total ban is still on the table, even if City Planning doesn't suggest one.
- The one-year moratorium, for example, passed City Council with a 6-0 vote, but Council President JP Morrell has suggested that was a first step toward getting a ban.
What's next: The City Planning Commission will ask City Council for more time to develop — and agree on — its recommendations, WDSU reports.