In August, several San Antonio councilmembers, including District 6’s Ric Galvan, proposed a possible moratorium on the city accepting applications for new data centers.
“My council colleagues do not fully support that,” Galvan said. “We had a couple of folks who did, and it was four or five of us that supported it fully, but not enough to move forward.”
He said 19 of the city’s 28 data centers are in his district alone and more applications to build new ones have been filed.
Galvan said the district’s appeal, combined with an outdated city land use code, allows data centers to be built near housing developments and hospitals.
“As the energy [production infrastructures] are built, the fiber optic cables are built, as well as the land is available, right, it’s been easy for a lot of data centers to come in and say, well, we’ll set up here,” Galvan said. “The other piece [is] our land use code, which has had data centers listed as kind of the same old switchboards that used to be there back in the day with AT&T. Those aren’t quite the same thing as data centers. Nowadays, they’ve been able to develop by right, without any kind of city council approval for the most part, [or without making] any kind [of] community meetings being necessary, because they’re classified in this old kind of way.”
Among the proposed regulation items is updating the land use code, restricting new data centers to areas already zoned for industrial or heavy commercial use and requiring city council approval before a data center can be built.
Galvan laid out, “We’re asking for specific use authorization. A very technical term, but just means that any kind of development in this category needs a specific form of authorization from the City Council. We do this for bars. We do for amusement parks. We do it for carnivals. We do all kinds of different developments in our city every two weeks of city council.”
The councilman said this type of authorization is something the city can utilize when it comes to developments including data centers.
He said the push for regulations on new data centers is out of concern of possible oversaturation of data centers in certain areas of the city, not just in the district he represents.
“We are going to see them as they’ve been applied to, or been applying for, placed in District 7, 8, 4, 3, 2, and even District 1.”
Tuesday, the city’s Zoning Commission will convene to discuss the same proposed regulations pertaining to zoning issues that were presented to the city council on October 15.
During the commission’s meeting, the board will hear public comment on the proposed regulations, and Galvan is encouraging San Antonians to speak up.
“It’s really critical that our residents are able to always give thought to development without the consideration on any kind of policy development we have here, particularly on data centers,” he said. “My focus here is now to make sure that our residents have a voice in this and not only mine but every single community in our city has the opportunity to have their voices heard when it comes to data in their neighborhoods.
Galvan said the public comment portion of the meeting is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. at the Cliff Morton Development and Business Services Center (One Stop) located at 1901 S. Alamo Street.
Residents can go in person and give public comment at1:00 p.m.
The City Council’s official vote on the proposed regulations is set for next Thursday, October 29.
