San Antonio City Council on Tuesday took a pass on a proposed moratorium on data center development in favor of amending existing city zoning codes to limit the construction of the massive computing facilities.
Tuesday’s special session was called in response to a Council Consideration Request (CCR) that District 6 Councilman Ric Galvan submitted last October calling for a comprehensive review of data center growth and its potential impact on the city’s natural resources and infrastructure.
The CCR was followed by a three-signature memo filed earlier this month asking for a pause on all data center development within city limits. Galvan along with District 8’s Ivalis Meza Gonzalez and District 5’s Teri Castillo signed the document.
During Tuesday’s meeting, District 2’s Jalen McKee-Rodriguez joined Galvan, Castillo and Meza Gonzalez in expressing support for the moratorium.
Others on the dais balked for a variety of reasons. Most expressed support for city staff’s recommendation that council pursue amendments to the Universal Development Code (UDC) instead of imposing an all-out moratorium on building permits.
“I’m not ready to commit to a moratorium,” Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said. “I want to see what else we can do to help ourselves.”
Council members Mark Whyte, Phyllis Viagran and Misty Spears warned of the number of jobs that could pass the city by if data center construction is halted.
“[Data centers] are a huge piece of our workforce,” said District 9’s Spears, who maintained that one large data center can create 4,800 construction jobs. “This is the next big boom coming our way, and we can either lead in this space or we can sit on the sidelines.”
Most jobs generated by data centers are temporary construction positions. However, studies show the sites employ few long-term employees once constructed.
Indeed, one Brookings Institution analysis posits that “data centers are among the least labor-intensive structures in the economy.” According to the think tank’s review of some 1,500 data centers nationwide, the facilities typically only maintain a few dozen to — at most — a few hundred long term jobs, depending on their size and operator.
The special session, which didn’t allow for public input, ended without council reaching a decision on how to rein in the growth of data centers. Still, most on council wanted to revisit the matter again after assembling more data.
The Zoning Commission will hold its next data center-focused meeting on Sept. 15 followed by a Council vote on Oct. 15.
Jones and other council members requested information on development-code updates in other cities, such as Tucson, San Marcos and Fort Worth.
Mayor Jones also requested Development Services and the Intergovernmental Relations Committee to present more information at future meetings on potable water usage by data centers themselves in addition to their “accessories.” After the session, Galvan clarified that the city also intends to look at usage rates of the water-hungry gas-fired plants that power data centers.
During closing remarks, Jones also proposed creating noise limits for data centers of less than 50 dBA during the day and less than 45 dBA at night. She also asked if council can require that diesel backup generators be stored in an enclosed building with proper ventilation.
Further, the mayor stressed that data center developers should notify neighborhoods early in the process about the projects’ design and sound mitigation to “build that community engagement piece into the process.”
Jones, Galvan and Meza Gonzalez also expressed support for requiring data centers to come to city council to request Special Use Authorization prior to construction — meaning the city would be able to approve data centers on a case-by-case basis.
Had council adopted a moratorium on data centers, it would have lasted at least 90 days and up to a maximum of 180 days while council would continue to develop parameters around the construction of such facilities within city limits. District 4 Councilman Edward Mungia clarified on the dais that a city moratorium wouldn’t prohibit data center construction at the county level.
San Antonio currently has at least 23 data centers already operating within city limits, as well as 11 or 12 currently going through the development process, though officials were unsure of the total number of facilities in the works.
Tuesday afternoon’s special session followed a Development Services meeting the same morning to discuss amendments to UDC that would prohibit data centers from developing within 500 feet from residential use properties. The proposed zoning guard rails would only permit data center construction in industrial and commercial districts of the city and would not allow for data center construction downtown.
The proposed amendments to the UDC would also prohibit data centers from building within 500 feet of hospitals, schools, nursing homes and day care centers.
Additionally, the proposed standards would require landscape buffers to minimize noise pollution. After receiving feedback from the community at the meeting, Development Services staff said they would make further revisions to the proposed UDC amendments.
Whatever amendments are ultimately adopted to the UDC, existing data centers would be grandfathered in, according to Development Services staff. Existing data centers that don’t adhere to the new standards would be deemed “non-compliant” but allowed to continue operating.
At the zoning meeting, industry lobbyists such as William Kauffman, President at The Kaufman Group and a former Assistant City Attorney for the City of San Antonio, said that the 500-feet limit was too restrictive.
Meanwhile, activists with consumer watchdog group Public Citizen and the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance said 500 feet wasn’t enough.
The activists pointed to Tucson, Arizona, where — thanks to a near-unanimous vote on August 5 — large data centers now must be positioned at least 1,000 feet away from other commercial property and a half mile away from residential-use property.
Later in the day, activists gathered outside of the city’s Municipal Building for a rally ahead of the special session.
“There is no square centimeter of this land that deserves to be a sacrifice zone for corporate greed,” said Julián Villareal, an organizer with Climate Justice SA and Green Party candidate for Texas Senate District 26. “And there’s no region of our city or our state that deserves to be a sacrifice zone.”
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