Above, Posey County Area Plan Commission President Joe Marvel discusses how ordinances are made, July 28.
In late July, a special meeting packed Hovey House in downtown Mt Vernon — and left dozens of frustrated attendees outside. Most are wearing red shirts to protest data centers.
The Posey County Area Plan Commission held this meeting to publicly study the first draft of a new data center ordinance and make some tweaks to the language.
This is in response to a flood of comments from the previous County Commission meeting. Many had concerns. Attending was Shannon Straw of St. Phillips.
“I've done deep dives and researched a lot of articles on this from geoscientists, hydrologists,” Straw said. “I've written three papers at school for this, and it is not a good thing. The environmental impacts outweigh the economic impacts.”
In Posey, Warrick and Vanderburgh, county commissions have been pursuing ordinances, and holding meetings with generally large turnouts. So far none have passed an ordinance to actually govern the projects.
The Warrick County Commission was first to pass an ordinance on Aug. 11. Instead of directly regulating a data center, it pauses the permitting of these projects and forms a study group to explore the issue further.
Attending the meeting was Ryan Stratman of the consumer watchdog group Citizens Action Coalition.
“I will say with data centers, there's a lot to digest, and I think that a six month moratorium, 180 day moratorium that they did was very prudent, and it meets kind of what the needs of the community are.”
Warrick County was planning on modifying an existing solar and wind farm ordinance but in July, the Area Plan Commission was compelled by public comments to pivot and make more time for studying data centers.
Whatever the county, these meetings bring a lot of public comments. Those in favor of data centers argue that these projects create jobs.
John Bates of the local plumbers and steam fitters union, usually speaks at these meetings about how skilled trades benefit from Data Centers.
“It's a lot of construction workers to build these, and then maintenance jobs afterwards. There's one that just got done in Fort Wayne, where we have 20 UA pipe fitters that are in the facility all the time.”
He acknowledges the importance of addressing environmental, and utility rates concerns.
“These data centers when they come in, they need to pay for the amount of electricity that they're going to need, and not pass that on to the people of whatever county they come to.”
Tech industry employee Joseph Gollner attended the Warrick County Commission meeting in August. He cautioned against assuming data centers create high-tech permanent jobs on site.
“More high-level engineering work or things like cloud computing and things like that, are typically done remotely.”
Former president of the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership (EREP) Greg Wathen said it’s not just about economic development — it’s also about security.
“It's an issue of survival. Data sovereignty is national sovereignty. Every piece of critical information, from our power grids and financial markets to military logistics and advanced AI algorithms, lives in a data center. If we do not build this infrastructure here at home under U.S. laws and protected by U.S. cybersecurity protocols, our adversaries will fill the vacuum.”
He spoke at the July 13 Warrick County Area Plan Commission meeting.
Recently, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun spoke in favor of data centers inside the state, suggesting it’s better they’re built here than in China.
“We've only got about a six-month lead on them, and if we don't harness it for good, I'm afraid others will harness it for not good, and it remains to be seen how transformational it is.”
He said there are Indiana communities committing to such projects. But racing against China aside, Vanderburgh County finally approved their ordinance at a meeting August 25th and appointed their 13 member research committee.
The members have varied backgrounds and expertise — such as Evansville Climate Collaborative Director Lauren Lynch.
She wants to look into communities with new data center projects — in the works or completed.
“Talk with them about successes and failures, what they put into their ordinances and what they wish they would have put into their ordinances. So yeah, I think that we need to study as a community, not only just locally but regionally and across the Midwest, to see what everyone's doing, so that we can compare notes and learn from each other.”
Another member is Bates, business manager of a local trades union.
There’s already public concern over possible conflicts of interest with some members of the study group, so more stories will follow.
Posey County does not have a date set for their commission vote, but they’re holding another public work session on their ordinance late September.
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