County halts any new data center plans for one year

BURLINGTON HILL PROJECT

And I’m not at liberty to say, but it will be north of $100 million that will be invested on the top of that hill. So that’s tax revenue for this county.”

Dustin Wolgemuth, property owner

LEE COUNTY – Lee County Supervisors froze any future work on data centers in Lee County for a period of one year starting Tuesday.
The board, after several discussions on the matter and a failed vote to table the moratorium, voted 5-0 to approve a resolution that prohibits any data center developments within the county.
However, any projects currently underway will not be impacted.
The board wants to consider language that would consider the impact of these facilities on county resources including water for cooling and electricity for water, as well as local concerns regarding noise levels and intrusion to non-participating neighbors of the projects.
Also at the meeting was Fort Madison resident Dustin Wolgemuth, whose Octopus Investments, LLC out of Florida, owns the property on Burlington Hill that is currently being developed for a potential bitcoin mining center. That property is outside of Fort Madison city limits except for one small parcel, so jurisdiction lies with the county. However, with no zoning or permitting required for the work Wolgemuth is doing, he can develop the property as he sees fit.
Pen City Current had reached out multiple times to Wolgemuth to discuss what was going on with the property, but Wolgemuth declined to talk about the project.
On Tuesday, he told supervisors that he’s working on joining with another capital investor and the development on the hill could exceed $100 million.
Wolgemuth said he has been working on a similar project in Florida for the past four years that includes solar powered bitcoin mining.
“What southeast Iowa is lacking is natural gas. If I wanted to put a housing subdivision up there, I cannot because there’s no natural gas,” he said.
“With that being said what is there left for a developer to do? There are oil cooled operations. There are closed loop systems. Ten years ago, these things were obnoxious.”
He said there are megawatts of power at the old prison, across the highway from his development, that aren’t being used.
“They’re just sitting there. That’s actually worse. If those were used it would force Alliant and ITC to start producing more electricity which would actually bring the cost down believe it or not,” he said.
“We’re not using anything that’s not already there.”
He said he has a home in Fort Madison and he’s not coming into the town to steal resources, take a check, and leave. His said his mother will live in his home when he leaves.
“We’re not bringing in a Google. If this was 100 acres there might be a concession to have some real concern. We’re on 17 acres. You guys aren’t going to have a big data center here because there’s no power.
“And I’m not at liberty to say, but it will be north of $100 million that will be invested on the top of that hill. So that’s tax revenue for this county.”
Supervisor Garry Seyb initially moved to table the resolution until better definitions were included around “large and small” centers, and high-density operations.
However, he got push back from Denise Fraise, Tim Wondra and Chuck Holmes who said the language in the resolution was specific to data centers and the large and small encompassed it all. Those three voted against tabling the motion.
Lee County Attorney Ross Braden weighed in and said he was comfortable with the language in the resolution after reviewing Seyb’s concerns. Holmes then motioned to approve the resolution as written and it passed 5-0.
Seyb said he wasn’t against the county building guardrails for developers to follow, he just wanted a clarified resolution before moving forward.
The county will now look to Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission to possibly amend the recently approved wind, solar, and batter storage center ordinance, with language outlining county parameters for any future data centers in the county. Seyb also asked SEIRPC Assistant Director Zach James, who attended the meeting on a different agenda, to also be prepared to discuss small nuclear power generators as a part of new county language.
In a related issue, the county also extended their administrative contract with SEIRPC for solar, wind, and battery storage zoning according to the new ordinance.