The agency that provides Modesto residents their energy waded into the citywide data center discussion during a special board meeting Tuesday that drew no audience speakers, unlike last week’s four-hour city council meeting.
Modesto Irrigation District officials must protect customers above all else if approached by potential data center builders, most board members said in an Aug. 18 open forum.
Board Director Janice Keating said MID should charge three times the going rate for data centers, which would require a policy change. No one voiced agreement, although Board President Robert Frobose and Board Director John Boer repeated MID messaging favoring existing customers.
“We’ve got to put a safeguard in place,” Boer said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re covered. And I don’t agree with them coming in either.”
Board directors Chris Ott and Larry Byrd remained silent.
So did the audience.
No one emerged to address the board on the agendized item for a lightly publicized public meeting, in contrast with the heavily publicized Aug. 11 Modesto City Council meeting that drew an audience of 200.
The city’s agenda last week did not include data centers, although 54 audience members gave the council more than three hours of often-passionate opinions. All but two speakers asked for a moratorium or outright ban on data centers because they consume immense amounts of power and water, produce noise and could affect quality of life.
Data center developer eyes Modesto’s former FMC plant site
A powerful Kansas City-based data center developer, NorthPoint, has quietly begun the land entitlement process for a data center in an industrial area of Modesto. The company asked to lobby Modesto City Council members for a data center at 1200 Graphics Drive where the FMC barium plant operated about four decades until 1984, just north of Kansas Avenue along Highway 99.
City officials say the Modesto Municipal Code would have to be changed to allow data centers, and no plans have been submitted.
MID’s industrial users pay lower rates than residential and small-business customers, and the utility could play an important role in a data center’s plan to locate in Modesto or elsewhere in its service territory. MID also provides City Hall with about half of Modesto’s water, the rest coming from pumped groundwater.
“Let’s create an ordinance,” Keating said, “because at the end of the day, our ratepayers are going to suffer.”
When Keating said MID has no “safeguards” against data centers coming in, some officials took exception. MID General Manager Jimi Netniss said the district frequently receives inquiries from prospective large-load users like data centers, and requires up-front payment to cover studies predicting impact on district operations.
Keating also suggested that the district adopt a policy prohibiting signing a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA. They are sometimes requested by a developer as a means of keeping plans under wraps.
Keating previously served two terms on the Modesto City Council, from 2002 to 2009.
“If anybody out here wants to trust the City Council to do the right thing, just talk to Wood Colony and see how they feel,” she said, alluding to city visions of annexing the neighborhood west of Modesto.
A current move to update Modesto’s General Plan, or growth blueprint, would encroach upon part of Wood Colony, whose proximity to Highway 99 is enticing to commercial and industrial developers.
Five City Council members – Chris Ricci, Eric Alvarez, Rosa Escutia-Braaton, Nick Bavaro and Jeremiah Williams – last week said they would favor a moratorium or pause on considering data centers. And the first three said they would entertain an outright ban.
Patterson leaders are poised tonight to consider extending that city’s data center moratorium another 10 months and 15 days, “to alleviate the threat to the public health, safety, or welfare,” City Manager Fernando Ulloa wrote in a staff report. If approved by four of the five Patterson City Council members, the urgency ordinance would give staff more time to study potential impacts of a data center on the west edge of Stanislaus County.
Keating said she is wary of a mandate that utilities must provide power if certain conditions are met.
Some utilities prize large-load users that bring consistent revenue.
Netniss said his staff is preparing a workshop to brief the board on data centers, a hot-button topic throughout the United States with most people opposed to having them nearby. No date was given for the workshop.
Will data centers become an election issue in Modesto?
Three of the five board members are running for reelection on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Keating faces challengers Mike Moradian and John Van Oostende in a district that includes most of Modesto. Northeast Modesto and west Riverbank voters will choose between Frobose and challenger Dominic Giorgi, and voters west of Modesto and in northwest Modesto and Salida will decide between Boer and challenger Brad Johnson.
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact him at garth@themodestofocus.org.