Riley County commissioners on Monday implemented a temporary moratorium on data centers and battery energy storage systems.
A moratorium is a temporary pause on a specific activity or legal obligation — in this case, local investment in data centers — while officials study potential impacts before making a more firm policy decision.
Data centers are physical facilities housing an organization’s IT infrastructure to process large amounts of data. Opponents of data centers primarily state concerns over high electricity consumption leading to higher utility bills and potentially vast amounts of water used for cooling.
