Boise, Idaho: City Council Approves Six-Month Pause on Large Data Centers

The Boise City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday night to place a six-month moratorium on large new data centers, after a public hearing at City Hall that ran about one hour. Every speaker at the hearing supported the pause or asked the council to go farther. A standing room only crowd of more than 100 people applauded after the vote.

What the pause covers

The moratorium took effect immediately. It applies to data center projects that are 100,000 square feet or larger, or that use 20 megawatts of power. While the pause is in place, Boise will not accept or process any application for a large data center that meets those marks.

Mayor Lauren McLean proposed the moratorium on Friday, before any such project had applied in the city. McLean said the measure will put the brakes on hyperscale data centers in Boise while the city works out what impact the buildings would have. The city says it has no large data center applications pending.

"I'm doing this now before we have an application so that we can be sure that we get it right," McLean said.

Six months to write the first rules

City officials plan to use the six months to review city code and policy, study the effect of large data centers on water, energy use, wastewater, noise and public safety, and gather public feedback.

Chief of Staff Hannah Brass Greer said Boise's existing code does not address data centers at all. "One of the things we would be doing is looking at our code and where it would fit and what restrictions or guidelines we want to put in place," Brass Greer said.

Speakers asked the city to go farther

No one at the hearing spoke in favor of data centers or asked the council to drop the moratorium. "Just please don't sell off our future to the highest bidder," said Sydney Hair, who told the council she worries about what artificial intelligence is taking from her generation and from the planet.

Mia Benson, a junior at Marsing High School and a fellow at the Idaho Climate Justice League, urged the council to approve the pause and then write strict permanent rules. Benson said future projects should have to cover 100 percent of their power costs, use 100 percent clean energy, pay 100 percent of their taxes and be fully transparent about anything that affects the public.

Speakers from the Golden Eagle Audubon Society, Conservation Voters for Idaho, the Idaho Conservation League, the Wilderness Society and Idaho Data Center Reform also backed the ordinance. Lisa Young, director of the Idaho Chapter of the Sierra Club, praised the mayor and the council in a written statement and said she hopes neighboring cities and Ada County follow Boise.

Idaho is deciding city by city

Data centers, and the water and power they use, have become a contested issue across Idaho. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, recently turned on a new data center south of Kuna. Conservation Voters for Idaho Executive Director Ryan McGoldrick said he is watching several proposals, including a planned 4-million-square-foot Rhea Data center south of Boise and another project outside Twin Falls.

Boise is not the first Idaho government to act. In July, the Bannock County Board of Commissioners in eastern Idaho signed a 180-day moratorium on data center permit applications so the county could study the issue and draft a full ordinance.