San Jose Drafts Some of the Nation's Strictest Data Center Rules: 100% Clean Power, Water Limits; Council Vote in December
San Jose is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The City of San Jose is drafting what are described as some of the strictest data center standards in the United States. Under the draft, large data centers would be required to run on 100 percent clean power, restrict the use of drinking water for cooling, and address neighborhood impacts such as noise and sewer capacity. The City Council is expected to take a final vote in December.
City officials say the rules were tightened after extensive public outreach: generator limits and environmental monitoring requirements raised by residents were written into the draft. Deputy City Manager Manuel Pineda said some community concerns had not been on the city's radar, and that robust monitoring programs are being set up. Mayor Matt Mahan stressed that the process is not finished, with at least three large public meetings scheduled over the next two months, and urged residents to keep weighing in.
Eleven data center applications are currently under review in the city. Mahan framed the approach as a "middle path" — neither defaulting to unfettered capitalism nor burying the city's head in the sand and banning change. Budget math is part of the picture: San Jose projects multimillion-dollar deficits over the next two years after closing a roughly $50 million shortfall this year, while each data center is projected to generate between $3 million and $7 million a year for the city. Two fees under study include a commercial linkage fee of $4 to $5 per square foot for affordable housing and an "Energy Reliability Fee" of about $50,000 per megawatt to support distributed energy resources.
Opposition is strongest in Alviso, in northern San Jose, where a Microsoft data center is under construction about a mile from the home of Marcos Espinoza, president of Alviso in Action. He points to the site's proximity to Coyote Creek, which flooded Alviso in 1983, and worries about noise and air pollution. The council held a community meeting on the proposed rules on the evening of October 15.
San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city and California's third-largest, home to a large Chinese community. The power, water and neighborhood impacts of large tech facilities are everyday issues for local Chinese families in housing, work and daily life. (GSM, based on Government Technology and CBS News reporting)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 数据中心机房（资料图）。Photo by SimonWaldherr, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
