• 'Owner' and 'operator' defined to reach parent companies and successors, so obligations survive LLC transfers and ownership changes.

21. Construction Plan

• Construction labor should be locally sourced and paid union wages.
• Plans for water runoff, noise, erosion control, staging areas, interference with farm-to-market road access, dust, hours of operation, lighting, and traffic must all be in place prior to any rezoning approval.
• A detailed description of the construction timeline.
• Restrictions on blasting hours, with prior notification to neighboring residents.

22. Economic Development Agreement

• No tax breaks or government subsidies.
• Specific contributions, amounts, and recipients must be stated.
• Job-creation assurances must be put in writing and made enforceable.

23. Required Studies and Descriptive Language

• Any required studies must be performed by an independent third party at the applicant's expense, prior to rezoning approval.
• Monitoring standards, penalties, and site plan requirements must all be thoroughly described in the ordinance.

Each of these concerns — and the ones discovered during the ordinance drafting process — must be translated into concrete ordinance language: definitions, siting criteria, performance standards, study requirements, financial assurances, and enforcement provisions. We respectfully ask the Zoning Commission to treat this list as a checklist — an ordinance that leaves any of these areas unaddressed leaves the county and its residents exposed.

Finally, this list — and any ordinance built from it — should be understood as a living document. Data center technology, scale, cooling methods, and power demands are changing rapidly, and new impacts continue to surface in communities across the country. The ordinance should include a mandatory review and update cycle (for example, annually or biennially, and after any completed project) so that its standards keep pace with the industry rather than being written once and left behind.