By James Brown
Glasgow News 1
The “expert” on data centers, solar farms and alternative energy reported to the Joint City-County Planning Commission on Monday night.
R.M. True with Kentucky Steward LLC was hired last month by the planning commission to assist with the process of drafting any regulations regarding data centers and solar farms that may seek to locate in Barren County in the future.
During a July 24 Barren County Fiscal Court meeting, planning director Kevin Myatt told the court that True drafted House Bill 937, which did not advance out of the Natural Resources and Energy Committee in March.
The legislation, if passed, would have set minimum statewide requirements for the siting and approval of high-intensity technological infrastructure projects while also preserving the ability for local governments to impose additional restrictions. It also would have established standards for public involvement, project review, and public notices, allowing jurisdictions without zoning to have more local control over such projects.
“[The bill] primarily dealt with uses concerning data centers, solar farms, and alternative energy,” Myatt said at the time. “The planning commission felt having an expert in that particular field would be a tremendous help for the [regulations] and rules that may be presented to this body.”
Now that four town halls hosted by the county government have concluded, the planning commission and fiscal court are incorporating feedback from the public into a draft plan for countywide zoning. The draft will be reviewed by the fiscal court’s Land Use Planning Committee that meets Thursday at 6 p.m.
On Monday, Myatt and True teamed to present a draft ordinance for countywide zoning in the unincorporated areas of Barren County. Myatt addressed the portions of the ordinance that would pertain to agricultural properties and rural residential properties.
True covered the 16 pages of the proposed ordinance that would address high-intensity technological infrastructure. True referred to those types of property developments as HITI.
During the meeting, True told commission members that if an ordinance targets data centers and says they can’t locate in the community then “… that raises potential legal vulnerabilities. That discriminates against certain business practices.”
He said he knew that some county residents wanted to pass an ordinance that only banned industry such as hyper-scale data centers, but that in his experience, banning one type of industry would not survive a court challenge.
True worked through the different points of the draft ordinance that pertains to HITI, and said the key is to have an ordinance that makes those types of industries disclose all things publicly before they are considered for approval.
“They have to disclose at the beginning how this will benefit the community,” True said. They must also disclose impacts on public utilities, environmental impacts, and any other issue that affects the public good.
The whole draft ordinance will be presented to the Barren County Land Use Committee, which has its first meeting on Thursday, Aug. 20 at 6 p.m. in the Glasgow City Council chambers in Luska J. Twyman Municipal Building.
When the full draft ordinance is available online, it will be linked with this story.
The concluding statement to the Barren County draft zoning ordinance is projected onto the wall during the Joint City-County Planning Commission meeting on Monday, Aug. 17. James Brown/Glasgow News 1
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