Land Use and Sustainability Committee - Special Meeting 5/11/2026

Okay.

Good afternoon, everyone.

It's May 11th, 2026 Special Land Use and Sustainability Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 2.03 PM.

I'm Eddie Lin, Chair of the Land Use Sustainability Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Strauss.

Council Member Foster.

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Chair Lenton?

Present.

Chair, there are four members present.

Thank you, Clerk.

And we also have colleague Kettle here as well.

And I'm not sure, I think that's, we might have others joining us as well.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda's adopted.

Again, good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for joining us.

And as always, thank you to our state clerks, council central staff, and others for helping us prepare for this meeting.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda or items within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

We have two remote speakers signed up.

Wonderful.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll start with remote speakers.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they're registered.

In-person speakers will be called first, after which we'll move to remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within allotted time to allow us to call in the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open, and we'll begin with our first speaker on the list.

That will be Peter Nitze.

Peter?

Could you speak up a little bit more loudly?

Peter, please press star six.

There you go.

Hello?

Hi.

We can hear you.

Okay.

Am I up for my comments?

You're up.

Okay.

Well, good afternoon.

My name is Peter Nitze and I work for Nitze Stegen & Co., which is a local real estate firm.

With respect to a potential moratorium on AI centers, I guess my first comment is that this sector represents one of the few bright spots in the Puget Sound, in particular in Seattle, from a standpoint of economic development.

We, I believe, are the second largest concentration of AI talent in the country after the Bay Area.

And the concern it strikes me, which I share, is for very large sort of Eastern Washington-style data centers, massive centers that consume a good deal of energy, potentially create water consumption issues, in which case I would say there's an opportunity to set some limits on the amount of power consumption, say a megawatt limit in the moratorium if one is to be instituted so that co-located data centers supporting jobs can continue to be built in the city of Seattle.

Third comment is that the scope for SEL or its service area is larger than just Seattle's.

So to the degree that Seattle bans data centers outright but there is demand given the talent concentration, then the data centers could just locate just outside of the city and still burden SEL while losing the opportunity to create jobs or benefits for the city.

So I would say that finally that we are very, the city has a real interest in filling its commercial buildings, vacancy rates remaining at a historically high levels, and I think it would make more sense to have a few floors of data center co-located with additional floors that would house tech and AI jobs and to continue to have empty buildings.

So those are my comments with respect to a potential moratorium.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Next up, we have Dan DiOrio.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is David Brio.

I'm Vice President of State Policy for the Data Center Coalition.

PCC is the National Membership Association for the Data Center Industry, representing leading data center owners and operators, as well as companies that lead large amounts of data center capacity.

Data centers are everything that we do every day.

It's how we work, it's how we learn, it's how we communicate.

It's every telehealth appointment, every electronic healthcare record, every online classroom, every banking and financial transaction, online purchase, 911 geolocation service, state and local governments, you name it.

Digital infrastructure is the backbone of the 21st century economy.

Washington has a long history of fostering data center development in the state, being host to several homegrown companies.

Washington is amongst the leaders in the country, and what we see is significant economic benefits brought to the state and the region.

In particular, 47,960 in a total employment contribution from the industry to 2023, $3.64 billion in total contribution to labor income in 2023, $82 billion to state GDP, and $1.8 billion in state and local tax revenues.

As the City considers a proposed moratorium, it's important to remember the role that data centers play in our everyday lives and especially the role that data centers are playing in fostering economic development.

These are jobs for the skilled trades, for electricians and plumbers and HVAC technicians, carpenters, operating engineers.

Data centers create significant construction jobs but they depend on the skilled trades.

to help maintain and operate these facilities.

As the gentleman mentioned, the Greater Seattle area has significant amounts of technology jobs, and the technology industry is heavily dependent on access to timely digital infrastructure.

So happy to be a resource to the committee as they consider this, but would respectfully urge against the moratorium for the strong economic role it plays in the city.

Thank you.

Chair, that concludes our speakers.

Thank you.

As there are no additional registered speakers, we'll now proceed to our items of business.

I would also like to note for the record that Council President Hollingsworth and Council Member Juarez have both joined us.

We will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one?

Agenda item one, data center overview and discussion.

And thank you.

We have our representatives from Central Staff.

Once ready, can you please introduce yourselves?

Hi there, H.B.

Harper, Council Central Staff.

Hello, good afternoon.

I'm Eric McConaughey on the Council Central Staff.

Thank you so much and I think we have a presentation.

I'm just gonna give some preliminary introductory remarks.

Thank you colleagues for joining at this last minute meeting and we don't have legislation yet but we have been working on legislation and so that will be coming but we thought it would be good to have this initial briefing just to get the dialogue started and we had Some good, in my opinion, public comment there.

In my opinion, a moratorium is really meant to allow us to create rules and regulations.

We have lots of existing data centers, including co-location of data centers.

And at least, in my opinion, I don't see us having a permanent ban on all data centers.

But I do think we need to have appropriate rules and regulations.

And with that, I'd love to get started on the presentation.

And then I think we could have a more sort of interactive dialogue here.

So if there's questions or comments as we go, I welcome them.

Thank you.

Hi there.

Okay, I'll get us started and my colleague here will jump in.

This afternoon we want to discuss what data centers are, what we do and don't know about them, and two potential ways that the Council may wish to legislate on data centers at this time.

and we'll also discuss a high level idea of a work plan for what we believe the city may wanna consider moving forward as we ponder how to regulate this new use.

So as I just implied, there is currently no definition of data centers that is a working definition for the city.

so whether in the land use code or in other sections of code related to electricity rates, we do not currently have data centers defined.

So if you're wondering how it's possible that we have data centers in existence and how they got permitted, if a use is not listed specifically, on the land use side at least, in land use code, the director may determine a proposed use is substantially similar to other uses that are permitted or prohibited, whichever it may be, And so related use categories that may have been used for data centers that exist in Seattle today are business support services, office or accessory to office, or utility service use, which was a former use that was listed in code previously.

And for electricity rates, there's a category of customer classification called high demand service.

And so you may see some of the data centers that exist today coming in under those definitions.

But fundamentally, there is a lack of specificity regarding data centers, and in particular, the fact that there are a range of facility types that may be called data centers.

I think we've all probably read in the news regarding very large-scale data centers that are primarily located in rural areas.

However, that is not the only form that this land use takes.

It can be stacked, it can be sprawling, it can be large, it can be small.

And so the equipment within can also vary significantly based on whether sort of cloud computing and AI sort of actions are taking place.

I say actions, but basically whether there's ongoing sort of computing activity versus pure data storage.

So that can really have an effect on what kinds of equipment and therefore what kinds of spatial needs and infrastructure are required to support the equipment.

So we hear about impacts, so whether they're likely, possible, probable or improbable, certainly electrical capacity, water use and utility rates are all factors that need to be considered.

Additionally, land use and job density and then how this use could contribute or not to the urban environment are all areas that are probably worthy of consideration as we move forward.

Thanks, so that's a great setup to talk a little bit about the resolution.

Council Member Juarez is the sponsor of this resolution, so I don't want to step on your toes, Council Member, so at any point, give me the signal and you, yeah, great.

So the resolution is drafted, will come to you all in the coming days.

It does address these impacts, as HB talked about, for electricity, water, jobs, pollution.

The pollution could encompass things like in addition to heating water, noise pollution, things that have to do with greenhouse gases.

There's a variety of impacts that have been identified and studied nationwide that can come from data centers, so the resolution sort of specifies those as drafted now as potential impacts.

The idea is to have this resolution be concurrent, that the mayor would concur with it, and that it would establish the basis for Council to go forward sort of with a policy statement that these things matter to be studied and to develop policy guidelines that would to guide the city's decisions about budget and legislation into the future.

As drafted, it also does point to an expectation for rates for data centers in City Lights legislation coming forward later on this summer, and it does also point to this moratorium, this ordinance that is the subject of today's conversation.

Those are the basic pieces of the resolution.

So I think folks are probably all familiar with the process of a land use moratorium, but just as a reminder, moratorium can be six months or one year, and it can be extended.

So the moratorium that Council Member Lynn is sponsoring is drafted to last for one year, which requires a work plan be attached.

And it does require public hearing, but that can occur after action.

and it's important to understand that no new land use permits would be accepted while the moratorium is in effect and it is, you know, something that goes into effect immediately.

However, that doesn't mean that if an application comes in before that time that it would not continue to be reviewed.

So it doesn't halt the review of ongoing projects, it only prevents new land use applications from being accepted.

and so a really important part of this work I think for the council and to some extent the executive department as well is to lay out a work plan for how the city wants to move forward with data centers in the land use code specifically and how we wanna regulate those.

We have come up with a definition that you'll see when the legislation goes live, which will be in the coming days.

However, more research is needed into the different possible definitions of data centers, including differentiating by size because they can be significantly different across a different range of sizes.

There are state laws that exist today.

There were also state laws that were attempted in this last legislative session that did not end up passing.

In terms of alignment with existing state law, there's nothing land use specific, but data centers do occur in state law in other places, and so aligning our definition with anything the state has done or does in this next upcoming session.

would be important.

And then as you can imagine, best practices for monitoring of electricity and water usage.

And then of course, the sort of key piece to a moratorium is zoning and development standards.

So that when the moratorium is lifted, we have regulations in place that help us feel confident that we're regulating this land use appropriately.

Something to explore as part of the work plan is the idea of community benefits.

So what can the city actually receive as a benefit if a large-scale data center is slated to develop within the city limits?

And so you see some ideas on here.

There are more ideas in the work plan, and those are things that can be considered in terms of how to work with the private side on getting these to really work for community.

and the mayor did have a press release and in there she indicated an interest in an economic impact analysis as well as some other pieces of the puzzle and so just trying to make sure we're coordinating and understanding some of the public comments spoke to some of the benefits of data centers and how they affect our economy and so keeping in mind those things and aligning our regulations with those.

So with that, I think that's all that we have for you today.

We're happy to answer questions or support the discussion however you all see fit.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions?

Yes, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you know, we've been working on this for a while, and so, Eric, we've been working closely on this, and we've been giving you some additional information that we've discovered and conferences we've attended and webinars, but more recently, I gave you the copy of the law that was passed in New York regarding data centers.

So I'm really glad what you said HB because when we look at the law that was passed in December 2025 AI safety bill, the RAISE Act, which stands for Responsible AI Safety Education Act.

One of the things, there's eight points to it, and everyone can get online and look at it, but one of the things that you brought up, HB, which is important, is besides going through all the issues of protecting kids, taking back control of data, stopping deepfakes, the ones where I really zeroed in on was making data center investments work for people, and you talked about this in these five or six points that come on later.

We'll get to the protecting and support workers, but how would it look, because one of the things they talk about is make data center investments work for people.

We can talk about investments in brick and mortar and labor, but the community benefits agreement, would that be like akin to or aligned like what we do with parks or when we have these, when we do contracts with public-private contracts and what is the public benefit, what does the public get out of it?

Is that how you would foresee what a community benefit agreement or contract would look like?

Well, I think it's worthy of more exploration.

So I don't have a pat answer for you right now, but I can say that there are some things that would be appropriate from a land use and zoning perspective to say, to even be here at all, these are requirements that simply must be in place.

And then there's probably a different avenue, which could be a community benefit agreement or something similar, which would be more for voluntary measures, right?

And so I think depending on which kind of power the city wants to use, there would be different routes to potentially getting different benefits.

So if there are standards that the city is interested in enforcing as an across-the-board standardized approach, those would probably be more appropriate for regulation.

Community benefits might be more of a voluntary approach.

Okay.

Mr. Chair, can I follow up with a question?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

So just without going into all eight points of what we know, what New York has already passed, which is pretty amazing and really drills down on some of the issues that we're still getting caught up.

And then we were tracking those bills in Olympia, and I think there were like 12 of them, and I think only like two passed.

So just so I can put into context, mainly for myself and some people who are also paying attention to this, that Amazon is now, as they said, quote unquote, is betting $200 billion on AI.

And Microsoft is going to spend $190 billion on AI.

And as we all know, it's not a secret, they're here.

So on their cloud revenue alone for Amazon and Microsoft, Amazon has made $37 billion, 28% increase, and Microsoft, $34 billion, a 30% increase.

And I'm not saying that to sound like the smartest person in the room, but my point is there's a lot of money here and there's no regulation.

There's no national standard.

There's no state standard.

We don't even have a definition for data center.

So I want to commend the chair for putting forward this moratorium and I'm guessing that the chair will be using this as a work group to kind of drill down on some of these more important issues or all of these issues and not just the environmental ones.

I'm really concerned about, I'm sure everyone else is here as well, is supporting and protecting the workers.

whether we do, what type of retraining we do, and also looking at still keeping Seattle competitive in the tech industry without displacing some of our largest economic engines in employers, and building the capacity, and where would we build that at?

Would we build the capacity to address AI within Seattle City Light and SPU, or how would that look if it were to land in a particular a city department, or is it a foregone conclusion it would just land in Seattle City Light?

In my opinion, it would be an interdepartmental effort that would be required to really address the range of potential impacts, benefits, and considerations for the city to really figure out how to embrace and move forward with this novel use.

That's just my personal opinion, but I believe an interdepartmental effort would be warranted.

Well, I'm going to say something.

Maybe it's a bit...

I don't think it's novel.

I think this is the shape of things to come.

I think it's going to change everything from my understanding.

I could be completely wrong.

And I'm glad that the chair has seized that and we're trying to to kind of stop it with a moratorium and a resolution to what we're committed to in principles and make it part of the city family department somewhere where people are paying attention and we actually have people who understand technology to explain to us policymakers how we can make it work for our city and protect the environment, protect workers.

And I'm not just talking about the brick and mortar of a data center per se.

I'm more concerned about the water usage.

My understanding is hopefully, obviously these costs will not be passed on to rate payers and all these other issues.

So I look forward to seeing, Chair, how you handle this and hopefully I'll be around for six more months to help out.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for letting me join Land Use Committee.

I am not on the committee like Council Member Juarez, but I think it's important the fact that- I'm a guest, too.

That's what I said, yes.

Oh, you did?

Oh, okay.

Yes.

But importantly, but importantly, Council Member Juarez is Chair Juarez, and I'm Vice Chair of the Parks and Seattle City Light Committee.

Vice Chair.

And that is super important for the Land Use Committee and the Seattle City Light Committee to be working together and to be working through these things.

So I second my committee chair, my other committee chair's remarks about the due diligence piece to this.

We need to walk through this.

We cannot be doing any knee-jerk reactions.

The stakes are too big.

And it's really big and important, too, for our current data centers.

I don't think people realize that we have them in Seattle already.

In fact, I'm going to be visiting it soon.

And here's the thing.

It's really important for a number of different reasons.

One, it's important for the businesses here.

It's important also for the need to show stability.

A challenge that we're creating for our local business community because of what's happening in Olympia or the county or even with us is the instability related to, you know, tax policy, budget questions and the like.

and we do not need to be adding any more instability to the business climate environment and we need to be smart about this so the stability of this piece is really important regarding the current data centers that we have and by the way it's also important for the environment I don't think most people realize but the heat from that data, the one I'm thinking about right now, you know, heat's basically like a half dozen buildings.

And people don't realize the benefits that you get from some of these things.

So we definitely have to walk through all these different pieces and be sure that we're, you know, not cutting our nose to spite our face or whatever kind of phrase you want to use.

You know, as I like to say, you know, we don't need to be stepping on a rake We need to be doing the due diligence, walking it both from a land use perspective, but also from the City Light perspective, because this is the demand signal and an already growing demand for our City Light is important.

And with that point, Chair, I also wanted to note that we need leadership at this critical time of this period of incredible challenge.

You know, we talk about agreements in terms of power generation.

Well, District 7 is hurting terribly right now in terms of what's happening with the buried cable system.

The infrastructure that we have right now is hurting.

So for the people in District 7, particularly Queen Anne, particularly the South Slope, constantly having power outages, constantly having power outages.

And it's impacting across the board.

It's impacting the residents, impacting businesses, and it needs to be dealt with.

And so on that front and on that point, I have to say, this is the time that we need Dawn Lindell, head of Seattle City Light.

It shows that we need leadership now.

And we had a varsity, national-level top person in charge of Seattle City Light, but then she was let go.

Those kind of decisions have impacts on our city, particularly in this challenge of needs, whether it's the data centers or it's failing buried cable in our neighborhoods, labor agreements, building new generation, contracting for greater capacity.

It's incredible.

We should have top-notch leadership.

We had top-notch leadership for Seattle City Light, and this is a failure of our city right now.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your team, for your work on this, and Councilmember Juarez for your resolution on this as well.

I do want to say, because I think there's confusion out there, people do know that there are data centers that are in Seattle and that they're that are operating.

Some people didn't know, so thank you, Councilmember Kettle, for that.

But I think that's why I was supportive talking to Councilmember Lynn and understanding some of the, I don't want to talk about constraints, but some of the pieces of the moratorium, which understanding that, and correct me if I'm wrong, there are data centers operating in Seattle.

Some of them, I don't know the LARP, I've talked to some folks, 25 megawatts, there are some data centers that are there, those are like smaller, 25 megawatts are less, are considered small scale, 50 is mid, and then there are some that go over 100 megawatts.

And from my perspective, this isn't council versus AI or Joy hates AI.

There's none of that.

This was particularly for me, was the resources that could be generally consumed by larger data centers, whether it's electricity and the infrastructure that we currently have in Seattle, the outages that are becoming more frequent that I've seen in District 3 in different neighborhoods that are not even more frequent, yes, but also longer to get back online from residents, which is key.

Like, okay, the frequency goes out, one or two hours happens, but people are talking about two and three days without power and the infrastructure and how that correlates with the use and wear and tear the infrastructure that we've seen in our city.

So that's where I know that talking to the chair, I'm not trying to talk for Councilmember Lynn, but just the conversations we had coming from that perspective of and the infrastructure piece, and then had a great conversation with the SPU to understand about the water usage potentially and the expense of the different types of way of cooling it down, whether it's just submerging or the heat's being transferred somewhere, whatever, what have you, but just understanding about the water piece as well.

And then I do understand, and people have talked about, I think public comment talked about the jobs and economy, totally get.

And so I think that's why the council, this is not a knee-jerk reaction.

People have been talking about this for months now.

Ever since last year, since I have seen the impacts of mega data centers in rural cities across the country, one outside of Memphis that has caused the whole town to have cancer.

It's a small black town.

and because those data centers are ran on generators, so they don't have enough power.

That's what people are seeing, and so just being very intentional.

I know that's not what we have here in Seattle.

It's very different, but...

You know, we actually, understanding that this is temporary, so that's why I'm supportive of this and being intentional behind some of the pieces.

I just wanted to say that because I know that there have been people who have talked about understanding, like, we don't want to cap the current businesses that are here.

I get it.

But we are talking about large mega data centers that have a different impact.

So thank you, Chair, for that.

I don't actually have any questions.

I'll be working with central staff, you know, asking more questions as well, and then your office.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair, and I will chime in as well to voice my appreciation to you for bringing this forward as well as my appreciation to Council Member Juarez and our City Light Chair of Council Member Juarez for your leadership in this space trying to tackle these issues.

this is the hot topic right now and this work is moving quickly.

It feels like all of a sudden we saw all the headlines popping up across the country as communities are grappling with data centers coming to their communities and I wanna voice my appreciation as well Council President Hollingsworth for really naming clearly the environmental justice considerations to this and the impacts that this is having disproportionately on communities of color.

And so that is why this is tremendously important that this is coming before us and that we move with urgency.

And since it was mentioned a couple of times, I just want to be clear, it was mentioned that there are data centers within City of Seattle.

And apologies if I missed this detail, but how many data centers do we know of that are currently in the City of Seattle?

I've heard a few different numbers, so I can't verify one in particular.

At least a half dozen, probably more.

Okay.

That's helpful to understand.

I would love to know how we get clarity on exactly how many we currently have, just because this is certainly of interest for the public.

And as well, I mean, as these requests are coming in, and I know I imagine that we are not the only jurisdiction in King County that is grappling with this.

So what do we understand at this point about the requests and some of the movement on data centers happening within King County and how other jurisdictions are responding?

My best answer to that is that that's just a research topic that you all need to know more about.

And as a way to pivot, it's really well suited to the time that is earned by something like a moratorium to be able to understand those things.

I mean, I think it's on theme with the idea of a moratorium in land use, which is to provide for time to research things, understand the dimensions, the defined terms.

So central staff, we can look into how many data centers are in town, and then also to explain how they were permitted.

HB talked about the uses that they would have been permitted under, and so there could be a range there in that answer.

So that's why we're hesitant to pin it down now, because we're kind of in, for some of these things, the research of this.

Yeah.

Appreciate that, and Chair, if I may, I just have a couple of other questions.

Thank you.

I'm curious as well, since we've heard from a number of proponents of this about the economic benefit of AI expansion, and I'd reflect back to just maybe a month ago in our council briefing, you know, we received a presentation from Challenge Seattle CEO Gregoire talking about the economic benefits of Washington becoming an AI leader.

And as you can imagine, it was a robust discussion.

I know Councilmember Lin, who also sits on the PSRC Executive Board, participated in that discussion and raised the issues about environmental justice, who benefits, and I raised my concerns about energy demand related to this.

But I'm curious, do we know at this time if the city is providing any economic incentives for development of data centers or anything, a part of the city's AI work that is perhaps incentivizing this?

Not that I've heard.

Thank you.

Thank you again, Chair, for bringing this forward to us.

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I really appreciate that.

I want to turn to some questions that were brought up earlier today.

I know as we're exploring a moratorium and several other options, there's been discussion today in committee around the impacts that data centers have.

for whether it's water usage or large load capacity for City Light.

So when we look at our land use authority under the moratorium, does that land use authority provide us the ability to pass a temporary moratorium just within the geographic limits of the city, or do we have the opportunity to look at our service areas?

That's a great question.

I believe it only can apply to our geographic limits, but I've never asked that specifically, so we can follow up and find out if there's any way to regulate areas outside of city limits that are within our utility areas.

I would just add that the utility rates apply to the service area for city light, which does extend past the city limits, but I'll circle back around to HB's response.

Thank you.

I look forward to getting more information there.

I know we're thinking about the various impacts when it comes to data centers and certainly the electrical grid and the system is one of them, as we've heard other council members speak to.

So I look forward to ensuring we have the full knowledge of what we have the ability to do with the tool that we are considering.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

I have a few questions or comments.

Just going to slide two, just going back to no definition currently in the land use code.

So to me, that just signals that there's a pretty big gap in our land use code if we're not defining a pretty important and Council Member Rink to your question about how many data centers, if we don't have a definition, it's pretty hard to come up with how many there are.

You know, are we talking about some sort of like little data closet to serve, you know, or are we talking about something much bigger?

and I find it interesting in the related uses in the land use code.

I think typically oftentimes what we have seen is maybe an accessory use or like a, you know, in many ways maybe more like a co-location that we're hearing about versus some of these mega data centers really are not an accessory use or at least not sort of the primary business services type of things.

We're really talking about something new and in many ways driven by the AI demand.

So, and then one other thing I just wanna comment on is, you know, this question about our territory, you know, and I look forward to that answer in terms of our land use moratorium, you know, then thank you to Council Member Juarez for your leadership on looking into this for many months, including especially on the electric rates, utility rates and connection charges and how that'll be handled.

But I do just want to point out that because our electric grid is integrated, it's regional, and because our City Light has to buy electricity on the open market, if we have mega data centers in Bellevue driving up demand, even if it's outside of our service territory, that could still affect our rates.

And so to the point of one of the comments, I don't think it's gonna be a success, if we end up regulating data centers in a way that they just all go to Bellevue.

Maybe we don't have some of the impacts like noise impacts or something like that, but the electric impacts could still be there.

Our climate change goals could still be impacted depending upon and how this electricity is generated.

And so I'm super concerned about making sure that we are working with our regional partners.

In my opinion, it certainly would be better to be regulated at the statewide level or at the regional or national level.

I think you did a little bit of research on what was proposed this last legislative session.

Could you talk any bit more about any efforts you might've seen at the statewide level

Sure, so there are several tax preferences at the state level and one of those, I believe, was repealed as part of the state budget.

So that's sort of one of, I believe, three or four tax preferences that was sort of accomplished however there was a bill that did not succeed at moving through the process that was related I believe primarily to monitoring and specifically monitoring electricity usage but also sort of jobs and the effects in terms of the number of jobs within data centers and sort of over time how that and it may have introduced a floor.

It's been a few months since I looked at it.

So that was what the legislature was considering and I think I would anticipate that there'll be more attention paid to this this coming session again.

I think that is all the questions and comments I have.

Obviously, this is a burgeoning sort of industry.

On the one hand, data centers have existed for a long time and we have them, but at the same time, there are some pretty rapid changes in the industry that we're seeing.

And again, we can talk about this more once we have an actual proposal for everybody to dig into.

But oftentimes the idea of a land use moratorium, at least, is to give us that time to develop thoughtful policy, to develop regulations and definitions where we have none, especially when there are new uses, things that we just don't have good guardrails in place for.

And so I look forward to furthering this thoughtful dialogue.

I appreciate the conversation today.

And if there's no further questions or comments, just looking.

I have one question.

Please, Council Member Horace.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't want to take up too much more time, but I know I've gotten calls and emails from constituents and businesses and how this is an emerging economy.

There's two things I want to say, and I think I spoke to your office about it as well, Mr. Chair.

Looking at the case out of Tucson, the Project Blue case that Amazon was working on, and even though it was more of a land use issue on the Open Meetings Act and some violations, the filings and the arguments presented about the impacts to a community beyond just the environmental and workforce and all the other issues.

I don't want anyone leaving.

I would not want anyone, and I'm sure the Chair feels the same way.

I'm not trying to speak for you, Mr. Chair, but I'm guessing that this City Council wouldn't want business to think that we are not interested in AI and that we would not want to have some type of leadership in this technology and innovation, that our main concern is that there has to be some guardrails and some safeguards, and we have to know what the priorities are to protect not just the community, but the businesses and our water resources.

So you'll see these issues will probably land.

Excuse me.

I have a cold here.

will probably land in between Seattle Public Utilities, which is Council President Hollingsworth's committee, Council Member Lynn's committee in land use, and then our committee, me and Council Member Kettle, in Seattle City Light, where you say it's going to be interdisciplinary.

So I'm hoping we can still work towards that, and I'm guessing at some point at central staff, I know a couple of your staffers came to that, that seminar that we went to, that you're going to have a team on central staff on this floor that will be monitoring and advising us.

Are you getting sick of me sending you stuff, Eric?

Because I'm sending you stuff all the time.

I think you're looking at the core team right here.

We work well as a team.

We're working as a team on this now, and I think that would continue.

I think that's fair to say.

So on the definition of data center, I think is really crucial.

That is the main question I'm getting from business.

The existing ones we know we have, that we have data centers that exist.

Councilor President, you talked about how many megawatts was that, 25?

Yes, between 20 and 25.

and so we're going to be looking at thresholds obviously through the Chair, through Chair Lynn as well.

So I'm guessing that I just don't want people to walk away or people who are paying attention to like all of a sudden Seattle City Council is just saying stop, we're not into innovation, we're not into being leaders.

What we are saying is let's take a beat, make sure we understand this and the impacts, things that we know now and things that are going to come and looking at other states and other cities and what they're doing.

And that's why I pointed out the New York law, which I think is really, really good.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Flowers.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Just want to share my appreciation for you bringing this forward and having a briefing today on a Monday out of the cycle of our typical committee meetings to show that we are moving quickly and thoughtfully really I don't need to repeat what council member Juarez has said or yourself about the need to get this right we're not saying no we're saying how because if we don't do this correctly a data centers could be really bad for our city and our region when we do it right, and that's the importance of having in a moratorium now so we can figure out the regulations correctly because if we don't regulate this correctly, it could be really dangerous and really don't want to get into that space of having knee-jerk reactions while we are protecting our everyday Seattleites.

And a lot of that comes into, as you mentioned, chair, the rate paths and the electricity consumption occurs anywhere in the in the grid.

And so whether that's happening at BPA or happening here in the city of Seattle, we're going to be impacted by it.

And we know that we have had a sweetheart deal being able to purchase a chunk of electricity from BPA at a wholesale rate and that we are our consumption level are being put in the city of Seattle boundaries where we need to be very careful about all of our resource allocations or if those data centers are being put in Eastern Washington, we are still having to protect ourselves against those rate increases and ultimately that comes down to us figuring out more generation capacity.

Those are two separate conversations.

I just appreciate you moving quickly here in the Land Use Committee on this moratorium.

Thank you.

Thank you Vice Chair Strauss and just real quick to respond Council Member Juarez, I do think it's really important that we get this definition right.

I also think the definition we come up with in the moratorium might not be the permanent definition or we might have multiple definitions depending upon what we come up with the work plan.

So I just wanna, as people look at what we come up with, I just wanna make it clear that that doesn't necessarily signal that's gonna be the end all be all definition.

That's sort of what we might come up with to get this conversation started.

But thank you all for this continued dialogue, obviously much more to come.

And with that, I'm gonna, Adjourn the committee at 2.49.

Thank you so much.