San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmembers Pamela Campos, David Cohen, Peter Ortiz and Domingo Candelas proposed Thursday that the city pause approvals of data centers until new development standards and community-benefit requirements are in place, KQED reported.
The joint memo will go to the full City Council on Tuesday and, if approved, would amount to a pledge that no such projects will be considered until the standards are adopted, the station said. Those standards — which Mahan called “some of the strictest in the nation” and which would include requirements such as carbon-neutral electricity, sewer monitoring and regular water and power usage reports — go to the Planning Commission on Nov. 18 and are scheduled for a council vote on Dec. 8. The mayor and councilmembers also called for an “urgency ordinance” so the standards would take effect immediately after approval, rather than after a typical 30- or 60-day wait.
“We want to make sure everyone is held to the same high standards,” Mahan told KQED. “It’s really important that we make clear to the community that we won’t let someone rush forward a project to avoid those standards.” He added, “We’ve done a tremendous amount of work, and I think it would be a betrayal of public trust to allow a project to try to sneak through at this stage.” City officials told KQED that Google’s planned research-and-development facility in Alviso, which would draw 250 megawatts — more than all of Marin County’s power use in 2024, they said — is one of two projects that could have been on track for approval before the standards take effect, and that several large energy-use projects planned in the northern part of the city could together use more than 800 megawatts.
Alice Kaufman, policy and advocacy director at Green Foothills, said a pause would be “a positive step,” while also saying the proposed standards fall short, especially around air and noise pollution from backup generators and cooling equipment. The item had not been voted on in KQED’s report.