(BIVN) – A Hawaiʻi County Council committee held its first public hearing on a bill concerning data centers on Hawaiʻi island.
The Council Policy Committee on Planning, Land Use, and Economic Development voted to forward Bill 170 to the Hawaiʻi County planning commissions, after hearing public testimony in opposition to any such artificial intelligence manufacturing facilities on the island.
Bill 170 aims to distinguish data processing facilities, which are permitted in industrial-commercial mixed-use zoning districts, from data centers, which are not permitted in the County pursuant to Section 25-4-4 of the Hawaiʻi County Code. The bill states that “the added definition does not encourage or allow the permitting of data centers but aims to make clear that they are not a permitted use in the County.”
Councilmember Heather Kimball, who introduced the bill, said that anything that is not listed is a permitted use in the County Code is, by default, unpermitted. “That is the standard process across the country with respect to zoning codes,” Kimball added. “That has been tested in federeal court and has been upheld.”
The bill comes at a time when communities across the United States are pushing back on data centers over their consumption of water and energy resources, and impact on the neighborhoods where they are built. Many testifiers at the committee hearing expressed strong opposition to the facilities being developed on Hawaiʻi island.
“I am not aware of any data center coming before the planning department requesting a permit,” said Hawaiʻi County Planning Director Jeff Darrow during Tuesday’s hearing.
Kimball’s bill defined the term “data center” to mean a “facility used for the industrial-scale operation of computer systems and associated equipment for the processing, computing, transmission, or dissemination of digital data, and that requires supporting infrastructure beyond that typically accessory or incidental to office, commercial, or public institutional uses.”
Kimball said the definition comes from the National Association of Counties.
“I’m certainly open to more specificity, more clarification, and I think that we let the planning commission elucidate what might be necessary in that regard,” Kimball said. “I don’t want to be so specific with it that we unintentionally fail to capture something that comes in.”
The committee will hold another hearing on the bill after the Windward and Leeward Planning Commissions discuss the matter.
