Mesa now has regulations in place for data centers that address where they can locate, their design and their impact in terms of issues like noise.
Council unanimously approved the amendments last week with Council members Alicia Goforth and Francisco Heredia absent. In the past six years, 15 data centers have been built, approved or proposed in southeast Mesa.
“We’re not restricting the industry,” City Manager Scott Butler said July 8. “There are areas of Mesa that are more compatible now for this use while we can reserve our high industrial areas for those job-creation companies that we are actively recruiting and actively working to bring those high-wage, high-quality jobs to Mesa.”
He said that Mesa has 25% of the data centers for the entire state with still more under development, which will be grandfathered in under this.
Butler also said that it was disappointing that after having worked so closely with the industry for so long on the proposal, the measure was characterized as anti-data center.
“That’s just simply not the case,” Butler said. “I have three kids. I don’t want a fourth. That doesn’t mean I hate kids. And so this is exactly what we’re saying. We respect and appreciate those data centers and some are very good community partners.
“But it’s time to share the wealth with some of our other neighboring communities.”
Mesa’s vote follows on the heels of Phoenix City Council’s July 2 action that added for the first time zoning and design regulations for data centers, acknowledging firefighters’ concerns about their dangers and numerous residents’ concerns about their adverse impact on neighborhoods.
The city’s controls on one of the fastest segments of industrial development in the Valley were hailed by Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, other council members and city planning staff.
They noted how the emergence of artificial intelligence has sparked the development of increasingly large data centers that consume massive amounts of land, water and electricity – but produce relatively few jobs compared to other types of industrial uses.
“These impacts are significant, and include the stability of the electrical grid and the significant demand data centers have for electrical power, fire safety, even the size and complexity of these facilities,” said Phoenix Planning and Development Director Josh Bednarik.
He cited “challenges with fire resource capacity in some parts of the city and the potential for hazardous materials on site, utilization of on-site power from diesel to nuclear, along with battery storage, the water demand that could be needed at the providers to supply electricity to power dry cooling systems.”
He noted large data centers consume between 100,000 and 1 million gallons of water a day – or the equivalent of 8,000 homes’ use in a year.
Their size costs land that could be used “for services such as healthcare and access to healthy food” and generate noise pollution from the servers, cooling systems and generators, he added.
“Many of the health and safety impacts are driven by a dramatic change in …the intensity of data centers in the last 15 years,” Bednarik said.
As an example, Bednarik compared a data center built in 2010 that used only 6.9 acres to one built in 2023 on 40th Street near the Red Mountain Loop 202 Freeway that consumed 80 acres and was so large it needed its own electrical substation.
“This is a clear contrast with the traditional office use, and requires a different level of development review to protect public health and safety,” Bednarik said.
“This lack of any sort of policy or regulatory framework, coupled with a tremendous demand for electricity from the data center industry highlights the urgency needed for a framework to be in place.”
During lengthy public comment before Phoenix City Council, numerous speakers condemned data centers’ impact on neighborhoods, availability of land for affordable housing and potential health and safety hazards.
Those hazards were underscored by three firefighters who gave impassioned speeches on behalf of the new controls on data centers’ design and growth.
Speaking on behalf of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Chris Greene, said, “For the fire response and the emergency responders that come to these facilities, what they’re going to find is a maze.”
Greene said first responders’ access to the centers in an emergency often is hindered by data-related security systems in the centers, contending, “The chemicals that will burn off in a fire in a data center are absolutely severe – some of the worst you’ll ever see.”
“Fire departments across the country are really ill-prepared to deal with these facilities,” Greene said.
Greene said the centers usually house lithium ion batteries and “when those things have problems, those fires are extremely difficult to suppress.”
Moreover, he said it is difficult to shut down power to a data center in the event of a fire even though that often is necessary to protect firefighters and increase their ability to eradicate a blaze.
“When a fire gets outside of the box of a data center, you’ve got real problems with the kind of chemicals or dioxins that will pour on the community around you,” he said, calling the new regulations “your opportunity to get up some guardrails on where these boxes go.”
Greene also warned that in other parts of the country, data center developers are considering the addition of small nuclear reactors on site because electric utilities can’t meet their demand.
Chris Murphy recalled how, as a young firefighter, he was dispatched with his company to fight a blaze at a relatively smaller data center.
“It was full of smoke, pitch black, and the sprinklers inside were going off,” Murphy recalled, noting the “unfamiliar layout, miles of cables and rows of equipment as well as toxic smoke from the uncontrolled fire were extremely, extremely challenging, and it was deemed a hazardous materials call, which we were all exposed to.”
Another firefighter, Capt. Michael Duffy, representing Local 493 of United Phoenix Firefighters, said some of the chemicals emitted by data center fires are “things that you just can’t wash off with a shower.
“They’re in the dirt,” he said. “They stay there. These facilities have already hurt firefighters in the City of Peoria.”
“When you think about where these go, understand that with the smoke being the hot zone, anything downwind of this thing, when it’s on fire, those people are being exposed along with your firefighters,” Duffy said.
Besides the dangers posed by data centers, other speakers addressed their impact on neighborhoods.
Ginger Sykes Torres, vice president of Local First Arizona, the largest business coalition in the United States, said the newly adopted regulations “will enable the city to make informed decisions that affect the health and safety of our communities, creating a pathway for thoughtful and sustainable growth and development.”
“We are facing an affordability crisis, and we’re in a perfect storm of national and local issues impacting our state’s resiliency,” Sykes Torres said.
“Federal incentives for clean energy are being eliminated in Washington, while electricity demand in Arizona is surging and power companies are struggling to keep up. Data centers use a jaw-dropping amount of energy, which is expected to grow.”