Indio Planning Commission recommends ban on data centers

Indio officials are moving to permanently ban data centers from the city over concerns that the massive tech facilities would drain the desert’s limited water supply, strain the electrical grid, and worsen local air quality. The city’s Planning Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to recommend a ban on data centers, setting up a final vote by the City Council next month.

The vote follows action by the City Council on June 3, when it adopted a 45-day moratorium on the establishment, expansion, or intensification of any data center within city limits. The moratorium gave staff time to research the issue and present options to the commission before any applications could be accepted or approved under current regulations.

Community Development Director Brian Halvorson and Principal Planner Gustavo Gomez presented research on three categories of data centers: enterprise facilities serving corporations and financial institutions, multi-tenant colocation facilities, and hyperscale campuses operated by major cloud computing and artificial intelligence providers.

Hyperscale campuses, staff noted, can span 100 to 300 acres, consume between 300 million and 1.5 billion gallons of water per year — the equivalent of one to five million gallons per day — and require 500 megawatts to more than one gigawatt of electrical power.

Halvorson noted that Indio’s existing zoning code does not define or regulate data centers and that the city has received no applications or pre-applications for one.

Staff presented three policy options for the commission’s consideration: amending the General Plan, amending the Unified Development Code to define and prohibit data centers in all zones, or extending the moratorium. A proposed General Plan policy would prohibit “development proposals within workplace and employment districts that involve high land consumption, water demand, or energy use where such projects would strain local infrastructure, impact utility services, reduce land availability for employment-generating uses, or conflict with the city’s sustainability and resource conservation goals.”

“This is just a first stab at it,” Halvorson said of the proposed language. “This is a suggestion from our staff that could potentially be a new general plan policy.”

Eight residents spoke up at the meeting, all but one encouraging a permanent ban and urging Indio to set a new standard.

“Help the city of Indio take the lead and set an example for other desert cities that data centers do not belong here. They’re not welcome here in the Coachella Valley,” Allison, an Indio resident said.

“We are the city of festivals,” another Indio resident, Elizabeth Humphreys, said. “No one would want to go to a festival within a 10-mile radius of a hyperscale data center. All of this wonderful growth that the city of Indio has seen would be completely erased if one of these came to our city.”

Jonathan Becerra, an Indio resident who has been involved in regional organizing against data centers, told the commission that activists in neighboring Coachella were watching Indio closely as that city fights its own data center battle.

“I applaud the city staff and the city council for doing this preemptive moratorium,” Becerra said. “It reflects the positive view that I got when I was organizing with Coachella, how much thry talked about Indio, how much they looked up to us about how we are approaching this.”

Commissioner Michael Slater delivered a prepared statement before the vote, saying the commission’s role is to weigh long-term community benefit against long-term cost.

“My concern is the physical footprint these facilities leave behind, and whether our community is ready for what comes with them,” Slater said. “Based on what we know now, I don’t believe data center development in Indio, at any scale, is the right fit for Indio.”

He also tied the data center debate to a broader concern about large-scale industrial development across the Inland Empire and now the Coachella Valley.

“I lived in Ontario from 2009 till 2021, and so I saw firsthand how quickly those types of large-scale developments go up and what the impacts are when it comes to traffic and air quality,” Slater said. “Once I passed Calimesa, you see the significant shift in the air quality, you see the smog and pollution.”

He went on to press staff to research whether Indio should develop numerical thresholds that consider square footage and high water and energy use in development, which would include logistics warehouses. Halvorson said staff would add air quality to the proposed General Plan policy language and return with a broader presentation on those standards.

Chair Gloria Franz said that though she had reservations about any kind of ban, she still voted in favor of the recommendation.

“Honestly, the idea of banning things makes me uncomfortable,” Franz said after the vote. “But I think my biggest fear right now is we don’t have a lot of resources to begin with in our community. I do agree that right now it makes me very uncomfortable to think of how much energy we will need, how much water consumption we will need, and we don’t need anything to get any hotter than it already is.”

With the moratorium set to expire July 18, staff will take the commission’s recommendation to the City Council at its July 15 regular meeting. Halvorson said the moratorium will likely need to be extended to allow time to act on whatever direction the council provides.

“Based on the direction that we get from the council, we will get to work, and we will come back to you with the next steps,” Halvorson said.

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