JANESVILLE If some residents and Rock County supervisors seek to implement a countywide moratorium on data centers, their goal might not be a quick or easy one to reach.
In a long and meandering discussion that rolled out through a two-hour Rock County Board meeting this week, Rock County Planning Director Andrew Baker and others explained the county's somewhat unique position: It lacks overarching zoning authority on land use.
This is the short answer to a push by county board members including Supervisor Philip Gorman, a town of Beloit resident, to enact an 18-month county moratorium on data centers, alongside other measures that would slow development conversations on the mega projects.
Baker said the county, unlike some others statewide that are enacting moratoriums on data center developments to carve out time to learn more about the prospects, Rock County's has limited powers in zoning review of land use.
Rather, it's the towns that have zoning authority. That's been the case since 1977, when the county wrote up a guideline ordinance on zoning that the towns opted to adopt giving the towns local control on land-use decisions.
Over the past 50 years, Baker told the board this week, the towns have individually augmented their own rules on zoning. What has not changed in that time, he said, is overarching authority.
Baker said that's why if the county board did enact a moratorium to bridle data center development, it would effectively be advisory and not enforceable if a data center developer came to a town with a project plan.
"We don't look into specific permitted uses. Depending on the town, they might have an industrial land use, light industrial special purpose permits. Each one might have a land use allowing a data center," Baker said.
His explantation came on a night in which county Supervisor Mike Schwarz introduced a resolution seeking a new panel that would examine data centers through a lens of county planning, natural resource use, and the draw such megaprojects would have on the watershed, electric consumption and stormwater and wastewater utilities, as well as fire and public safety resources.
Baker boiled down the county's overall zoning authority as it pertains to data centers or any other large-scale development prospects through the lens of the county's current major task: A new, 15-year farmland conservation plan.
He spoke on the plan and its ties to zoning and emerging types of land use after a few public comments by residents who addressed the county board Thursday night.
One woman who spoke is Linda Wallace, a local grassroots organizer of the anti-data-center nonprofit Rock County Neighbors for Responsible Development.
Wallace told the board she recommends what some supervisors seek a countywide 18-month data center moratorium like the kind Dane and Dodge Counties are putting in place.
She said the Janesville City Council's decision to let a letter of intent lapse for Viridian Partners' proposal for a data center at the former General Motors site "halted" what she called "a headlong process."
"Yay," Wallace said. "Now, let's take care of the rest of the county with an 18-month moratorium to slow down the process and learn more. We need protections in place before proposals."
Baker told the board that any new, countywide zoning ordinances the county wanted to put in place that would temper or change land-use rules for development would likely not be enforceable through the county's own enactment of the rules.
He suggested the county might write new zoning rules that the towns could look to as a guide, but it would be up to individual towns in Rock County whether they'd construct any corresponding land-use rules of their own.
As for a moratorium, one county supervisor, Willow Wallis of Beloit, said it still might be worth the county putting one in place if for no other reason than to provide the towns with guidance.
"I think we still have influence and I think we still have a responsibility due to our positions and what we all agreed to do as elected officials," Wallis said, explaining her view of the responsibility to watch out for all county residents' interests. "I don't want to lose sight of that."