Huntingburg Plan Commission recommends pause on data centers, battery storage; Council agrees

Huntingburg–The Huntingburg Plan Commission recommended that the Common Council pause data center and battery storage projects for six months while the city updates the Unified Development Ordinance.

The same recommendation asks the council to start amending the ordinance so that data centers and battery energy storage systems, or BESS, could be allowed only as special exceptions, and only in agricultural and heavy industrial zones.

At its next meeting, the Huntingburg Common Council approved drafting an ordinance based on the recommendation.

During the planning meeting held on Oct. 26, Planning Director Paul Lake said the city’s zoning code has no definition for either use. Without the pause, he said, a data center could move into an existing building and “there is nothing the city of Huntingburg could do to stop that currently, because we don’t have anything.”

He also warned against a permanent ban. Some Indiana communities have adopted permanent moratoriums, he said, but once developers run out of easier places to build, they will come back and challenge those bans. Those communities, he said, will lose in court because the bans amount to exclusionary zoning that is “arbitrary and capricious.”

Although no one spoke during the public hearing at the plan commission meeting, Lake said two residents told him in person they were glad the city plans to treat data centers and battery storage as separate uses, so that approving a data center would not automatically approve battery storage with it.

Lake told the commission that the draft standards he emailed were a starting point for discussion, not a finished document, and said they may not be ready to adopt even after the next hearing.

The draft sets a 500-foot setback from a data center building or battery unit to the nearest property line. He said he has seen setbacks as short as 400 feet, which Marion County recommended, and as long as a mile. “A mile will never float,” he said. Some northern Indiana counties use 2,500 feet.

Commission member Sandra Kay added that a 500-foot setback leaves little land available. A city map shared with members showed eligible areas shrinking quickly once the floodplain is removed, leaving mostly ground north of Sixth Street.

Lake said that the 500-foot setback is really a starting point for the discussion.

The draft also required a study of existing noise at the property line, measured at several times of day, before construction to create an ambient noise level before the installation begins operation. The finished project would have to stay at that level at its property line. If it can’t do that, it would have to move farther back. “If they can’t do that at 500 foot setbacks and have to go to 750, that’s their problem, and not the city of Huntingburg’s,” Lake said.

Mayor Neil Elkins suggested requiring studies both before and after construction. The director said a follow-up study 30 to 45 days after a facility opens could be made a condition of approval.

Enforcement is harder. The city does not own the equipment needed to measure noise, but Lake said the city could hire a firm to take readings and treat a violation as a zoning violation. “It wouldn’t be quick. It wouldn’t be easy,” he said.

The commission noted that the draft does not ask how much water and electricity a project would use, or where cooling water comes from and goes. Lake said he would add those questions.

The draft already asks whether a project needs new substations or transmission lines, what they cost and who pays. Along with these new equipment needs, the board discussed data centers’ increasing power needs. Mayor Elkins told the commission this could limit what could be proposed in Huntingburg, since they don’t have excess power to provide for a data center.

Lake pointed out that banks and hospitals have had small data centers for decades, and many businesses use battery backups. He said the city does not want rules that burden existing manufacturers. He proposed regulating only battery systems above a set size and said he would send members the physical dimensions of systems from half a megawatt to 5 megawatts.

Lake said he planned to make the changes requested by the commission before the second public hearing set to take place on Nov. 23.