Foley Proposes Six-Month Moratorium on Data Center Applications

The city of Foley is considering a six-month moratorium on applications for data centers, cryptocurrency mining facilities, server farms, and other high-resource computing operations. Mayor Ralph Hellmich stated the city is acting proactively to ensure zoning and environmental regulations are sufficient to protect citizens from potential noise, power usage, and water consumption issues.

Although no developers have approached the city, the proposed ordinance would pause the acceptance and processing of applications while officials conduct a comprehensive review of the municipal code. The ordinance received its first reading on August 17, with a second reading scheduled for September.

Hellmich noted that the city-owned utility, Riviera, already requires data centers to provide their own power infrastructure. This policy is intended to prevent the costs of high-resource computing from being passed on to existing customers.