MARSHALL – One week after the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners extended by a year its moratorium on cryptocurrency/data processing operations on May 7, the Madison County commissioners chose a different option, electing instead to approve Land Use Ordinance changes to include language regulating such facilities.
Madison County instated a one-year moratorium on June 13, 2023 to allow time to include language in the county Land Use Ordinance, which made no mention of such facilities at the time.
With its moratorium set to expire next month, the county unanimously approved a resolution written by Development Services Director Brad Guth to include language amendments to the Land Use Ordinances reflecting the data processing facilities.
On March 19, the county Planning Board met to shore up its draft language in its Land Use Ordinance relating to such facilities, and approved the recommended changes it issued to the commissioners.
The Madison County Board of Commissioners in its May 14 meeting unanimously approved the Planning Board’s recommendations.
“Data processing facilities are just kind of a group of uses that a lot of folks think of as cryptomining, but any type of industrial computer servers or uses would fall under the data processing facility land use,” Guth said.
According to Guth, as with the county’s biomass facility definition, the Planning Board’s recommended regulation of data processing facilities was based on a number of criteria, including size.
A small data processing facility would constitute anything under 10,000 square feet of server space.
Small data processing facilities would be permitted in the Commercial districts, and large facilities would be permitted in the Industrial districts.
The Planning Board’s draft language listed a number of requirements related to height, use separation, submittal requirements, access, security fencing, screening, utility notification, signage and noise.
The Planning Board’s recommended Land Use Ordinance changes included a minimum of 8 feet in height. The structures themselves should not exceed 35 feet. All electric wiring is required to be located underground.
Additionally, the entire perimeter of the facility shall be screened from adjoining properties by a buffer strip.
The facilities will be subject to the Madison County noise ordinance and should not disrupt the activities of the adjacent land uses.
The resolution approved by the commissioners reads, in part, that “the development and regulation of data processing facilities are essential for supporting Madison County’s economic development and technological advancement.”
Board feedback
Board member Jeremy Hensley asked Guth whether a prospective applicant had reached out to the county about potentially bringing a data processing facility in Madison, to which Guth said no.
Guth said the county’s intentions to include language regulating data processing facilities was also spurred by Western North Carolina residents’ response to Cherokee, the state’s farthest western county with hundreds of thousands of acres of unsettled forest and few land regulations where residents were outraged in 2019 after cryptocurrency mines started setting up shop and filled the day and night with the buzzing and whirring of industrial fans.
Other problems have included the local landfill struggling with large amounts of electronic and Styrofoam packing material waste.
In the Madison County Planning Board’s March meeting, MountainTrue’s Healthy Communities Director Chris Joyell, who has worked with Cherokee County and its three existing facilities, said both electronic waste and Styrofoam waste have been the two most serious issues in Cherokee County’s facilities.
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Vice Chair Michael Garrison applauded Guth for his work on the regulation.
“Having the use of separation, and the perimeters draws a pretty definitive line that if you’re going to have one of these, you’re not going to have it in somebody’s backyard,” Garrison said.
But board member Bill Briggs said he felt the 10,000-square-foot figure was too high a number for capping a small facility’s size.
“Ten thousand square feet, that’s not a little place,” Briggs said. “And that’s supposed to be a small facility.”
Guth drew a distinction between a small data processing facility, and a residential home.
“It’s not small, necessarily, in terms of compared to your house,” Guth said.
Briggs wondered whether the county could prohibit all applicants from establishing data processing facilities within Madison’s county limits, but Guth said that would not be possible.
“We can’t zone anything out,” Guth said. “It has to have some place in our ordinance that would permit them to locate. Now, you could change the zones that you have it in, in the ordinance now, and only allow them in your Industrial zone, if that’s something that would be more restrictive.
“But the Planning Board and the work groups that worked on this felt like they could have enough of a buffer and enough control over it to not have it negatively affect other businesses in the commercial areas that we have — which are also very limited — so it’s not like these are going to necessarily going to go up next to somebody’s house.”
Johnny Casey has covered Madison County for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel for three years. He earned a first-place award in beat news reporting in the 2023 North Carolina Press Association awards. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.
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