The Palm Springs City Council last week voted unanimously to extend its urgency moratorium on data centers by 22 months and 15 days, for a total of two years, so staff can work through issues specific to the land use as part of its zoning code update.
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“The intention is that this would be rescinded at the time that the new zoning code is passed,” Chris Hadwin, the city’s planning director said at the September 30 meeting. “We will, through those conversations, come up with regulations where or how or if data centers are permitted in our city, and council would ultimately be the ones to set that policy through the zoning code update.”
Hadwin said the city city staff initially proposed the moratorium back in August due to concerns about environmental impacts, resource demands, employment and community benefits.
The moratorium prohibits the city from accepting, processing or approving any applications or permits related to data centers, which are defined as structures or sites used primarily for the “storage, management, processing, and transmission of digital data and that houses computer or network equipment, systems, servers, appliances, and other associated components related to digital data storage, processing, and related operations.”
Omitted from the ordinance are computer, server or telecommunications equipment that is secondary and incidental to the principal permitted use of a building, such as servers or IT equipment found at hospitals, offices, hotels or other businesses.
Hadwin said he did not expect data center discussions to delay the zoning code update process, since staff had already been discussing the land use prior to it coming before the council.
“This was kind of happening elsewhere in the country,” he said. “It hadn’t gotten to us yet, but we were aware of this trend, and so we had actually established a definition as well as added the use to our use table in terms of defining which zones it might be permitted in.”
Hadwin said there was still “a lot of public conversation,” on a range of issues that needed to happen before the zoning code update could be brought back before the council, including possibly some targeted outreach to specific stakeholders like environmental groups and tech sector professionals.
Councilmember Grace Garner, noting a lack of public comment on the moratorium renewal, said it was her hope that those who spoke at August’s meeting would get more involved with the zoning code update process, which will determine how land in the city can be used going forward.
“I really encourage folks who are interested in this to be interested in it, on every single aspect of it, because this is really vital, especially living in a desert,” she said. “We have a lot of opportunity here, as we’re talking about this stuff, to think about it thoughtfully, to make sure that we’re doing the best we can to protect our city and future generations and to make sure that this region continues to be the beauty that it is today.”
Palm Springs is just one of a handful of cities in Riverside County that have taken action on data centers. In August, the Coachella City Council voted unanimously to permanently ban data centers in the city.
Both Indio and Perris city councils have taken steps toward a full ban, while the Desert Hot Springs City Council has directed staff to study the potential impact of potential data center projects in the city, and a Riverside committee has recommended a temporary pause for the city.
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