The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council will consider extending an existing, but temporary ban on data center development in Fayette County.
Tuesday at a special meeting in council chambers, members unanimously voted to place an ordinance for the extension on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting, where it will get a first reading.
The moratorium is currently in place through the end of the month. If it passes on second reading, it would remain in place through October 2027.
“What we see with the early information kind of coming out about data centers is there's extreme environmental hazard, there's a noise hazard, and there's just a lot of negative implications for that,” Russell Allen, who organized with grassroots group No AI in KY, told WEKU. “And we don't want Black and brown neighborhoods to be a test subject for these corporations and these billionaires to see how it works out.”
Allen was one of roughly 50 individuals who spoke before the council at the special public hearing Tuesday. Many of those speakers urged the council to push back against developers eyeing Fayette County.
Data centers have been the topic of intense public backlash across the U.S. in recent months as critics point to extreme water and power usage, along with other environmental concerns. In Lexington, city officials have seen widespread backlash to a proposal to expand a data center space in North Lexington, at the former Lexmark site.
“It's a very rare thing when you can get everybody from the Bluegrass Realtors to the Democratic Socialists of America on the same page about an issue, and all of them wanted the data center moratorium extended,” remarked District 5 council member Emma Curtis, who has spoken publicly against data centers and made the motion Tuesday to extend the moratorium.
Council member Tyler Morton also introduced separate motions that, if passed, would require city planners to go back to the drawing board and create stringent zoning language for minor data centers. Under the proposal, all such development would have its own zoning. Hyperscale data centers, those that exceed 50,000 square feet, would be banned throughout Fayette County, but smaller facilities could operate in some areas.
The debate on how to regulate smaller-scale data centers comes amid concerns a blanket ban would harm businesses that use on-site data storage systems.
“All existing current data centers won't be harmed,” Morton said, “but the caveat of that, the other side of it is, we have a moratorium in place where no new data centers will be allowed until the regulation is set.”
Morton's proposals will also be on the council’s Thursday agenda. If they pass, it will reset the process to dictate where and how data centers can operate in Fayette County, with more opportunities for public comment.
All Tuesday’s motions will be up for a first reading this week, with final passage tentatively scheduled for Oct. 22.
However, the council could suspend the rules and pass ordinances on second reading immediately, much like what happened when Fayette County’s initial data center moratorium was passed earlier this year.
If the council does so, there would be no time limit on when city planners bring back their updated proposal back to council.
