CHESTER COUNTY, S.C. — Another South Carolina county wants to put a pause on data center development as officials discuss the benefits of having them.
Leaders in Chester County recently created a rule to keep them away from neighborhoods and to protect resources, such as water and power.
The county doesn’t have any applications for data centers yet, but officials know it won’t be long.
The county manager said he believes that eight to 10 data centers may have already made inquiries about Chester County, which is focused on educating the public and being proactive.
The county created an ordinance that dictates how data centers can operate in Chester County, said county administrator Brian Hester.
“One of the first counties in South Carolina to really put ordinances in place that regulated buffers and decibels and sound and setbacks and all of that because data centers really kind of crept up on a lot of counties in South Carolina,” Hester said.
Council is considering a six-month moratorium on data centers, giving leaders time to educate the public about them, including the benefits they could bring to Chester County.
“So, for Chester County, our budget is our annual general fund operating budget is $36 million,” Hester said. “What I would consider a medium-sized data center, which is under 100 megawatts, could realistically bring a community like Chester $30 (million) to $40 million a year. You can almost double your budget. It could be so impactful that you could reduce people’s taxes by large percentages.”
They said data centers are money makers because they pay property taxes on the land, the building, and business personal property. Equipment, such as computers and servers, could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Planning and Development Director Jeremy Ward said, “The amount of money being poured into the computer servers for these and the amount of the expense of the computer chips within the servers, which are themselves expensive, you’re talking about, in a single facility, could be worth the same amount as half of all the cars, the homes, and the factories of an entire small county.”
Leaders said the impact of a data center here could be transformational.
They will have a second and third vote on that moratorium in July.
They plan to start educational meetings with the public to hear from them and experts, starting in August.
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