New Castle County Council members will consider an ordinance at a special council meeting Aug. 5 that could place strict regulations on data centers.
Starwood Digital Ventures sent the county’s Department of Land Use an application last month for a 6 million square-foot data center near Delaware City.
Data centers house computer systems and infrastructure that power digital systems and data. Artificial intelligence systems are one type of application driving the need for more data centers, according to Goldman Sachs.
The campus could house 11 or more two-story buildings and would need 1.2 gigawatts of electric power - enough to power between 90 thousand to 876 thousand homes for a year, with estimates varying from source to source.
The proposal prompted County Council member David Carter to introduce an ordinance that would regulate data centers.
Carter said data centers at this scale bring quality of life and environmental concerns with them.
“These data centers, looking at this one, will have several hundred backup generators, typically diesel generators, which affect local ozone and those types of issues,” Carter said. “These are massive structures, so they do have stormwater runoff impacts and other environmental impacts.”
If approved, data centers would have to be at least 1 thousand feet from residential zones and be held to noise and light limits.
Council member Kevin Caneco said he has similar concerns and wants to make sure data centers built in Delaware from here on out don’t negatively impact residents’ lives.
“We're trying to ensure that the quality of life for people living around data centers – if they were to be built, and that's a big if – is much better, more regulated, more controlled,” Caneco said.
The proposed regulation also includes a 55-decibal noise limit and requires developers to work with utilities to ensure they don’t exceed the grid’s capacity.
Carter said the county’s lack of specific codes for data centers could have adverse effects on nearby communities if left unaddressed.
“You could have lighting impacts that affect them,” Carter said. “And of course, in this case, we could have major impacts to our grid infrastructure for electricity. And all of those need to be carefully considered because we need to responsibly develop if we're going to develop.”
The ordinance would make it so data centers are only allowed in Heavy Industry and Industrial zoning districts through special use processes. Currently, companies can build data centers using by-right approval, meaning they do not need to be reviewed or approved as long as the land is already zoned appropriately.
The new ordinance would make it so developers have to go through a series of steps to gain approval from county officials to build.
Carter said he wants the Public Service Commission to look over this project and see what the impacts could be on the grid and its residents.
“Will we have rolling blackouts if we can't meet the energy?” Carter asked. “Will it affect the cost of it? And all of that needs to be coordinated.”
If approved, the ordinance would also ban open-loop cooling systems unless they use reclaimed water, or water converted from municipal or industrial wastewater and sewage.
Large data centers like the one proposed near Delaware City can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day. That’s as much as a town of 10 to 50 thousand people consume in a day.
Data centers in Northern Virginia consumed almost 2 billion gallons of water in 2023, and the area saw a 63 percent increase from 2019, according to the Financial Times.
The World Economic Forum finds using reclaimed water could reduce freshwater use by 50 to 70 percent.
Carter will introduce the ordinance at the Aug. 5 special council meeting and hear other officials’ opinions and suggestions for revisions. From there, Council members will vote on the ordinance at a future meeting.
