Act Now! Urge Elected Officials to Defend Against Mega Data Center Threat!

Stop Stalling Community Protections!

We need ordinances that balance economic growth with safeguards to protect Delaware's people from hyperscale data centers' negative impacts. We have seen the harm in other states like Virginia and Texas. The pending NCC data center substitute ordinance implements solutions other localities are adopting. The ordinance creates necessary safeguards to ensure these facilities minimize harm to the environment, local communities, and ratepayers. By passing this ordinance, we can create more jobs by ensuring developers deploy the newest solutions to common data center problems. We need regulations for large data centers, including limits on noise, especially low-frequency noise, standards for backup power, efficiency standards, and common-sense siting policies. Please listen to your constituents, who are worried about noise and other local impacts of these new large data centers. The Ordinance fills gaps in our regulations to account for the unique, significant impacts that new data centers can have. Delaware has never seen data centers at the scale currently proposed and does not have regulations that address the unique logistical, energy, and environmental concerns they present. Just one proposed data center in NCC has the same energy use, noise, and air impacts as 20% of all data centers in Loudoun County. Delaware currently has 8 data centers, all in NCC, collectively using 7.8 megawatts. That is 0.3% of the energy demand of new projects proposed so far in NCC. This guides development responsibly and pushes data centers to use the best technology, respect the environment, and avoid harm to surrounding communities. Strong regulations secure jobs and revenue AND protect communities and our energy system. Continued delay is as good as voting “no” later. While the county delays voting on Substitute 2 to Ordinance 25-101, data center developers are not delaying permit submissions. Developers are taking advantage of this delay to submit more applications each month to be “grandfathered” and exempt from the ordinance. The longer we delay, the more Delaware families are put in the crosshairs of unregulated development. Continued delay ensures fewer projects will be held to the ordinance's guardrails, hurting families today and creating an unfair environment for future projects. If delays are needed, a moratorium on new applications should protect Delaware families. We can avoid a moratorium by passing Substitute 2 to 25-101, with an effective date aligned with the ordinance's filing. However, there are now at least 6 projects demanding over 2,100 megawatts of energy and billions of gallons of water, utilizing over 1,000 generators, all attempting to develop in New Castle County. This is not about any single project. There needs to be some form of retroactivity to ensure as many of these projects as possible comply with the ordinance's protections and standards. If we don’t include any backdating in this ordinance, thousands of Delaware families, all of whom are New Castle County residents, will be left to face the consequences of unchecked development when it comes to noise and air quality issues. There are technical solutions to solve all the problems associated with data centers, but we must require them if we want to see them implemented. Ensuring state-of-the-art facilities will create even more high-paying, skilled-labor jobs and investments in workforce development. Data centers are a trillion-dollar industry, and Delaware has extremely favorable tax policies and infrastructure; we do not need to fear projects leaving if we require the best available technologies.