Tulare County hits pause on AI data centers 

Concerns over how much groundwater artificial intelligence data centers could extract prompted the Tulare County Board of Supervisors to adopt an ordinance Tuesday that bans consideration of any new data center development for 45 days. 

The ban could be extended up to a year.

“We all sit on (groundwater sustainability agency) boards, and we know the issues going on and the impact they have on our farming,” Supervisor Larry Micari said. 

He referred to pumping restrictions in place throughout Tulare County, required under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. 

The ban gives county planners time to alter zoning regulations, which are ill-prepared to consider the water, energy and infrastructure demands of AI data centers that come in a variety of configurations. 

The ordinance states that approval of additional data centers under existing zoning would be a threat to public health, safety and welfare. 

The Visalia City Council agreed to consider a moratorium on data center development at its Aug. 17 meeting and will place the item on a future agenda. 

The City of Hanford issued a statement Aug. 15 opposing all data centers in its jurisdiction. 

Tulare Supervisors also approved sending an automatic letter of opposition to any other governmental entity within the county considering approval of an AI data center.

“If there’s a big data center that uses a million gallons of water a day, we should be able to close it,” Micari said. 

Supervisor Dennis Townsend was the only “no” vote on the opposition letter measure.

That measure was prompted by a memorandum of understanding between the Tulare County Fairgrounds and GlobalStack USA, a data center developer seeking to build shipping container-sized “edge node” computing units at fairgrounds across the state, including in Tulare and Kings counties. Fairgrounds are on state property and governed separately from the county. 

The fairgrounds proposals ignited a vocal backlash from residents. 

The debate over data centers has spread nationwide as the thirst for artificial intelligence computing grows. 

Resources Management Agency Associate Director Michael Washam noted that Tulare County has had inquiries from developers seeking sites suitable for large-scale data center development but has not received any proposals so far. 

He said many zoning ordinances, including Tulare County’s, were developed before data centers became commonplace, and do not address data centers’ unique operational characteristics.

In addition to high water and power use, data centers operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are known to generate significant amounts of noise. 

“Without updating regulations, applications could be processed using standards that were never intended for this type of development,” Washam said. “Adopting the interim ordinance would allow the county to carefully evaluate these issues before irreversible land use decisions are made.”

Supervisor Eddie Valero said understanding how a data center could impact communities was paramount. His district includes the disadvantaged community of East Orosi, which has battled contaminated drinking water and inadequate infrastructure for decades. 

“We have unincorporated communities that have historically struggled with infrastructure capacity. We live within an air basin that already faces significant air quality challenges, and we experience periods of extreme heat when both water and electricity become even more critical resources,” he said. “I’m just concerned about introducing an extraordinarily resource-intensive land use into the existing environment without first understanding the cumulative consequences.”  

Statistics on water consumption from data centers are hard to come by as research and regulatory approaches needed to understand and manage water-related impacts of rapid data center expansion are just beginning to emerge, according to a UC Berkeley report cited by county planners during its ordinance presentation. 

A data center’s on-site water use depends on its location, the cooling technologies it

employs, its efficiency, and more, according to the report.  Researchers at UC Riverside estimate that statewide on-site data center water consumption in California will balloon from 351 million gallons in 2019 to between 1.12 and 1.75 billion gallons by 2028.

A bill to require disclosure of exact water usage by AI data centers was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year. 

Two new bills, AB 2469 and AB 2619, are, again, aiming for water use disclosure.