Following the public comments during the August 4 board of aldermen meeting regarding the ordinance on data center regulations, the City of Perryville government released a list of questions with answers written by city administrator Brent Buerck.
The statement clarified several things that were frequently brought up during the meeting.
The statement says that there are no “done deals” at this time with any data center companies, but that city staff have visited with interested parties. It said that while one company has inquired, no proposal has been submitted, approved or committed. According to the statement, any formal data center proposal will require newspaper publication, city posting, and direct notice to property owners within 500 feet of the proposed development site.
The statement answered questions about noise pollution and regulation, and water usage. The ordinance uses both DBA (A-weighted decibels) and DBC (decibel C-weighting) standards to regulate high-frequency and low-frequency noise.
According to the statement, the city generally produces 1 to 1.3 million gallons of water each day and has the design capacity at the water plant to produce an estimated 1 million more gallons of water each day. The ordinance requires that any potential data centers use a “closed-loop cooling system” capped at 50,000 gallons per day. Any request for additional water requires the company to fund infrastructure expansion to the City’s system. Private groundwater wells within the City limits for data centers are expressly prohibited by the City’s ordinance. The data center would be required to pay for the infrastructure improvements needed to offset their water use if it exceeds 50,000 gallons per day. Wastewater generated during the flushing cycle may be hauled off-site for treatment. If it is discharged to the City for treatment, it must meet all existing industrial pretreatment requirements prior to entering the city’s system, consistent with the standards applied to any industrial user.
Another consistent point of contention throughout the meeting was the potential financial impacts. Citizens at the meeting cited other cities that saw significant increases in electricity costs after data centers have been constructed. According to the statement, It is expected that Data centers in Missouri will pay their own electric costs and upgrades, under senate bill 4. The bill mandates that the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) establish specific tariffs for large-load consumers, legally preventing investor-owned utilities (IOUs) from passing on “unjust or unreasonable costs” of large-scale infrastructure expansion to standard residential and commercial customers. The City’s statement goes on to say that while not expressly covered by the legislation, Citizens Electric has suggested this approach closely aligns with their own policy and customer protections.
The statement clarifies that a potential data center in the city might not necessarily be one of the large ones associated with generative artificial intelligence, which have created a lot of controversy in small towns in recent years, the statement reads “Not all data centers are used for generative AI purposes; many support traditional data storage, cloud services, enterprise applications, and other non-AI workloads.” Additionally, the ordinance only allows potential data centers to be built in the city’s industrial park, with structures having to match the style of the surrounding infrastructure and landscape.
The statement addresses one of the main environmental concerns, the potential use of local aquifers, the ordinance prohibits the City from allowing a data center to access the aquifer for cooling or operations, and future versions of the ordinance will include environmental assessments and lighting restrictions.
One public comment during the meeting alleged that the board was only focusing on the potential positives of data centers and were not doing enough research on the negatives. The statement addresses this claim, stating that staff have attended conferences, visited with concerned parties and reviewed 3 to 4 articles per month since early 2026, some of which focused heavily on negative impacts. The ordinance as proposed goes through great lengths to avoid mistakes made in other communities and to mitigate potential negative impacts.
The ordinance requires any potential data center company to release a community benefit analysis. The city’s statement explains what a community benefit analysis is. It is a required report outlining negotiated community enhancements and benefits resulting from the data center and its local investments. In other places this has included things such as park amenities, road improvements, and public safety buildings. It would need to be completed and considered as part of the licensing process and meant to document pledges and benefits.
According to the statement, so far only one company has made any serious inquiries with the city about constructing a data center. The statement says that the company presented them with a small-scale data center that would start at 30 megawatts (MW) with the potential to grow to 75 MW. As a comparison, the Google data center in Montgomery County is estimated at 1,500 MW (1.5 gigawatt) and the Amazon data center is estimated at 1,200 MW (1.2 gigawatt). The statement goes on to say that given the limited land availability, the city government feels it is unlikely that a bigger center would approach the City.
