Now county looking at data mining regs

LEE COUNTY – Lee County took up the idea of zoning again, this time around data mining facilities in Lee County.
The county just passed an ordinance regulating wind, solar, and battery storage facilities earlier this year, and now are starting to hear quietly from companies looking at building data mining energy centers in the county.
Data mining is the key concept behind the bitcoin resurgence in the country and has a large demand on energy, as well as environmental concerns from opponents of facility construction.
Seyb said the issue came up during the Iowa State Association of Counties' annual meetings in August.
“There was one supervisor there that was very passionate about the data mining and something is there. These are things that are coming to Lee County, potentially. I believe they will,” he said.
“Are we going to keep “ordinancing” things as they pop up? I’ve felt this frustration over the past five years. What we’re talking about obviously is zoning.”
He said the county needs to start thinking about how they want to tackle the issues. He said the solar and wind ordinance took six months and a lot of public input. He said a zoning issue would be massive and have to be collaborative.
Ginger Knisley said there isn’t much of an appetite in the county for zoning. County Engineer Ben Hull agreed.
“They don’t want to be zoned, but they have a lot of feelings about it,” Hull said.
He said he’s spoken with officials at Southeast Iowa Regional Planning about zoning regarding these types of projects and said that group would urge caution about defacto zoning.

“You should be leery of legal issues that arise from basically trying to work around zoning by passing a bunch of piecemeal ordinances to have piecemeal zoning,” Hull said.
He said he spoke with a landowner near where one of the projects is being suggested and asked if anyone would want to live next door to that.
“These are tough decisions, but there is a visceral reaction to the Z word,” he said.
Seyb said the county did the three big ones because those were in front of the county and said people wanted the county do something as a board.
“Now we’ve got another technology or another “thing” coming and now all of a sudden, do we look at doing another ordinance and regulating it, or just saying ‘Nope, it can go wherever they want’,” he said.
“It won’t be long before we see small nuclear. I can see it coming, right?”
He said there’s nothing that says people can’t go before a zoning board for a change. Seyb also said that would be an expense to the county because a zoning administrator would need to be hired.
Seyb asked if the board doesn’t need SEIRPC come down and hold a discussion on the impacts of these types of facilities and requests of the county.
Supervisor Chuck Holmes asked if the county was going to just allow a free-for-all with energy producers without setting up some type of zoning, that could be challenged.
Seyb said a master zoning plan for the county may be in order, but that would take years to work through.