Three bills were introduced Thursday, Dec. 18, to address what Senate Democrats called “the sweeping hyperscale data center industry” before being referred to the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Environment.
Touted for receiving bipartisan support, lawmakers said they aimed to address concerns commonly raised by Michiganders, shielding them from things like higher utility costs and protecting natural resources.
“We have seen hyperscale data center projects proposed in Saline, Battle Creek, Mason, and many other places throughout Michigan,” state Sen. Rosemary Bayer, D-West Bloomfield, said in a statement. “Residents of these communities are rightfully concerned, and by implementing additional guardrails, we can protect our constituents and our natural resources.”
Senate Bills 761, 762 and 763 each propose amending existing state statutes.
SB 761 bans those withdrawing more than an average of 2 million gallons of water a day for consumptive use ― water that evaporates or does not return to the water system ― from obtaining a permit in the state.
Meanwhile, SB 762requires the Michigan Public Service Commission to publish annual reports regarding the total energy spending and water usage of data centers, and SB 763 prohibits passing infrastructure improvement costs on to residential ratepayers.
“These bills advance our work to protect our state from problems we have seen across the country with these types of data centers, like in Arizona and New Jersey,” Bayer said. “We will continue to be proactive problem solvers to prevent utility bills from skyrocketing at a time when affordability and household incomes are already stretched thin.”
Bayer is among several sponsors for the legislation. Other Democratic sponsors include Sens. Stephanie Chang, Jeff Irwin, Erika Geiss and Sue Shink.
Also a sponsor is Republican Sen. Jon Bumstead, who couldn’t immediately be reached Thursday. A West Michigan legislator, he’s previously spoken up on the issue, including at a Northern Michigan meeting in November when he assured a crowd that data centers wouldn’t be built on state land.
Data centers are needed to power artificial intelligence operators and cloud computing. While there’s been a wave of interest in hyperscale or large-scale, warehouse-like developments, local ordinances regulating data centers typically break those rules up by size, and several communities have introduced moratoriums.
The Saline Township data center, as referenced by Bayer, is a 1.4-gigawatt project slated to put a massive server warehouse on farmland for ChatGPT creator OpenAI and cloud computing giant Oracle. It’d also be the biggest in the state.
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