‘Is it safe?’ Residents continue to push against data centers at town hall
Sedgwick County residents continued to express concerns about potential data center sites at a county town hall Tuesday night.
The county hosted an information town hall focused on zoning codes and other regulations it could introduce if the county were to allow the centers.
“Let’s not be the next experiential zone,” resident Amy Seery said. “Let’s be the place where we took the time to pause, let the data continue to be collected, let the science pan out. Is it safe for these to be around our communities before we jump into this next big tech boom?”
Sedgwick County is in the middle of a data center moratorium that’s set to expire June 11.
The planning department appears to still be in the early stages of making recommendations to the county on whether the centers should be allowed and how they should be regulated.
The county’s Metropolitan Area Advanced Plans Committee will have a meeting April 9 to draft recommendations on the potential centers.
Those will then be moved along to the full Metropolitan Area Planning Commission board, other citizen boards, and then on to the county commission and Wichita City Council.
“Really what we’re trying to do at the end of the day is answer the big question about again, is a data center a good fit for Wichita and Sedgwick County,” Planning Department Director Scott Wadle said. “If yes, then how?”
While the town hall had a 15-minute presentation from the planning department on zoning issues with the centers, it also had “information stations,” with much of the information pulled from a recently released document with research and considerations for the boards and elected officials.
Residents were also able to leave comments at the stations, with many of them suggesting to heavily regulate the centers or to not allow them in the county.
Some comments also suggested to the zoning board that the centers should not be allowed on agricultural land and instead on land already zoned industrial or brownfields.