Cle Elum Puts A Six-month Freeze On New Data Centers

In a classic example of “Not in my backyard, you don’t”. The Cle Elum City Council passed what they call an emergency six-month moratorium on all new data center facilities.  This happened about three days after developer (Blue Fern Development) announced plans to create a 20-megawatt data center. 

According to seattletimes.com,
‘Blue Fern Development plans to build a 100,000-square-foot data center within a large residential and commercial development under construction near Interstate 90. The company presented the proposal July 28 as a relatively small “research sized data center,” rather than the massive campuses proposed elsewhere.’ 

By comparison, Microsoft is in the process of building data centers in Chelan County that would be 10 times larger than the proposed facility in Cle Elum. 

The project might still Go on. 

Puget Sound Energy (PSE), who provides electricity for Cle Elum, said that they supported the construction of the facility and noted the power requirements for the 20 MW facility would not add any difficulties to supplying Cle Elum residents with their energy needs. They went on to note that the owners of the facility would cover the costs of all infrastructure improvements necessary. 

The council members said that they were concerned with water use, mechanical noise, excess heat, power demand, and emergency generators and wanted to do their own study to determine the facts. 

Since the project proposed by Blue Fern Development is covered by a pre-existing development agreement, a review of the agreement could be done under old rules that were in effect at the time, which would mean the city might have no recourse but to let the development continue. 

The city will still need to determine if the data center qualifies as already permitted for industrial or commercial use. 

A public hearing is scheduled for September 8th.