Indio City Council Approves To Extend Data Center Moratorium Through 2027

INDIO, CA — A data center moratorium in the city of Indio was in effect Thursday and will remain in effect until at least October 2027.

The Indio City Council unanimously voted an urgency ordinance establishing a citywide moratorium on data centers and other similar high- intensity computing uses through Oct. 16, 2027 during a council meeting Wednesday night.

Subscribe

In a council meeting on June 3, council members initially approved a 45-day moratorium temporarily prohibiting data centers and developments and directed city staff to include options to extend the moratorium and review alternatives for a permanent ban for data centers.

City staff subsequently identified concerns involving data centers' water consumption, electrical demand, greenhouse gas emissions, noise and air quality.

The following month, council members extended the moratorium for an additional 90-days while staff worked on amending the city's unified development code.

"The city of Indio has a prolific number of specific plans. Specific plans are special zoning ordinances that are applicable to a part of the city and they override the general unified development code if they are inconsistent. So, staff has been going through every specific plan to make sure the data center is not a listed permitted or conditionally permitted use and there is not a similar use, which an applicant could argue authorizes that use within the specific plan," City Attorney Steven Pacifico said Wednesday.

Data centers are defined as "any facility, campus, building structure or portion thereof used primarily or substantially for the housing, operation, or support of computer servers, server racks, data storage devices, networking equipment, switching equipment or similar electronic equipment for data processing, storage, transmission, cloud-computing ... or other high- intensity computing activities," according to a staff report.

The ordinance stated exemptions applies to ordinary accessory server rooms, IT rooms and similar facilities such as public safety, emergency communications, emergency operations facilities and telecommunications carrier facilities.