MIAMI VALLEY — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost certified a proposal that would set specific size and energy limits on new data center construction across the state.
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The measure, titled “Prohibition of Construction of a Data Center,” is now cleared for the signature-gathering phase required to reach the November ballot.
Under the proposed rules, construction would be prohibited for any new data center unless its peak energy load is 25 megawatts or smaller.
The proposal further requires that such facilities occupy buildings under 5,000 square feet, a size the measure classifies as a small-scale operation.
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The Ohio Coalition for Responsible Development is leading the campaign for the statewide measure.
Organizers said there are currently about 200 data centers operating in Ohio, which they believe is sufficient for the state’s needs.
Barry Blankenship, a member of the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Development, said the push for a ballot initiative began after local officials failed to address resident concerns.
“Shouldn’t have had to come to a situation like this,” Blankenship said. “Our city governments should have trusted the citizens of their cities and listened to us to begin with.”
Blankenship also defended the specific 25-megawatt limit included in the proposal.
“That’s a good threshold, because if you’re really saying we need a data center to use our cell phones or our laptops or get on Facebook, that’s the only size data center we really need,” Blankenship said.
The certification of this proposal follows several local disputes regarding data center expansions in the Miami Valley.
In Clinton County, a court issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the city of Wilmington from moving forward with the approval process for a proposed Amazon data center.
Additionally, Amazon has announced plans for another data center facility located in Shelby County.
The organization must collect 780,000 signatures from voters across the state by the end of August to qualify for the November ballot.
If the signatures are verified, the proposal will appear on the November ballot for a statewide vote.
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