Skagit County adopts temporary ban on data centers

The Skagit County Board of Commissioners approved Monday a temporary moratorium on data centers.

The moratorium pauses for six months the acceptance of new permit applications for data centers in unincorporated Skagit County.

It does not apply to cities or towns in the county.

Commissioner Ron Wesen said that to his knowledge the county has not received any permit applications for data centers.

The moratorium defines data centers as facilities that house computing and networking equipment, and that are bigger than 2,000 square feet or plan to have a electrical load of more than two megawatts - a fairly low threshold.

In Snohomish County, anything larger than 2.5 megawatts is considered a large load, according to the Everett Herald.

On April 30, Seattle City Council members introduced language for a moratorium on new or expanded data centers larger than 20 megawatts.

Data centers require large amounts of land and water, Skagit County Senior Civil Prosecuting Attorney Will Honea said Monday.

Skagit County's low power rates and cheap agricultural land - which it has fought to protect - may make it an attractive target for data centers, said Honea.

The county's moratorium is designed to allow county Planning and Development Services staff time to draft regulations for data centers in a public process.

Skagit County code does not specifically regulate or define data centers.

"The regulations currently in effect do not adequately ensure the protection of Skagit County, its lands, natural resources, natural environment and human community," reads the resolution approving the moratorium.

"That means that when we receive a permit application for (a data center), if and when we do, we're very likely to find ourselves in a big argument about how data centers are appropriately dealt with under our code," said Honea.

"We're just hitting the pause button, so we can get appropriate code in place."

Commissioner Joe Burns gave the moratorium his support.

"I believe that this is reasonable for us to do, especially seeing some of the energy cost increases that have happened in other places," he said.

Representatives of the Western Washington Agricultural Association and Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland gave public comment Monday in favor of the moratorium.

The county is set to hold a hearing on the moratorium at 10:30 a.m. July 14.

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