Vanderburgh Co. Data Center Research Committee holds first meeting

Vanderburgh Co. Data Center Research Committee holds first meeting

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) - The race is on to set the rules before developers try to move into Vanderburgh County.

The Data Center Research Committee was established back in August and met for the first time today.

Now, they have just a few months to deliver answers to county leaders.

Each of the 13 members of the newly formed committee have a specific area of expertise that they will focus on such as agriculture, environmental science, electric, and others.

They say their goal is not to decide whether or not data centers should come to Vanderburgh County, but to put up guidelines for if one does.

“We’re basically a fact finding,” says Lloyd Lamberton, chairman of the Vanderburgh County Data Center Research Committee. “We’ll provide them with information that they might use to put in ordinances to protect the public and to grow the county and grow the city of Evansville.”

Members say they hope to look over various case studies and visit data centers that are already operational.

“I think that I would like to see us expand our horizon and learn from other parts of the country even that have data centers that are already up and operating in full,” says Lauren Lynch, executive director of the Evansville Climate Collaborative. “Because just visiting some of the Indiana data centers isn’t going to do it in my book because we can’t tell the extent of the impacts that we’re going to see with noise, with energy, etc.”

One of the board members is Jason Naab, a famer who lives in Vanderburgh County, but works in Posey County.

We previously spoke to Naab back in July after a major tech company recently approached them, hoping to buy their land for a data center.

He was opposed to them taking over and since then he has done a lot of research on data centers and hopes to bring that knowledge to the committee.

“We have studied multiple counties ordinances and amendments that they’ve put in place and we have lots of documentations that I can supply water studies from hydrologists that we’ve talked to. So I have a lot of information I can bring to the table that we’ve already researched,” Naab said.

Members say their main goal is to serve the residents of Vanderburgh County.

“I think most of the committee members at this point have an open mind and they have the best interest of Vanderburgh County and the city of Evansville at heart. And I think that they want to protect the public,” Lamberton said.

The next meeting is set for September 15th.

Committee members hope to have their final recommendations submitted to the board of commissioners by December 31st.

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