Coachella City Council to extends 45-day data center moratorium in preparation of permanent ban

COACHELLA, Calif. (KESQ) - The Coachella City Council voted unanimously to extend a 45-day moratorium it placed on data center developments last month, by 10 months and 15 days.

Staff says more time is needed to carve out the framework for a permanent ban, that will include changing the city's municipal code.

Mayor Frank Figueroa says a permanent ban draft will go to the city's planning commission on July 15th.

If approved, that draft will go before city council twice, on August 12th and August 26th, where it will be adopted.

Figueroa is encouraging public comment of the draft at next week's commission meeting.

"That conversation is going to start where residents can come and make sure they see the first draft of that permanent ban ordinance, to be able to have their input and make sure that what they're looking for is in that ordinance," he said.

During Wednesday's meeting, several residents raised concerns about the city dragging it's feet through the process. However, Figueroa says they aim to passed the permanent ban by the August meeting.

For residents who have fought against the project for months, they say their work isn't over yet. Many say they want the ban to be bullet proof against data center proposals and similar projects.

"We definitely want to see really strong protections, not just specific to data centers, but also any uses that are similar, as far as extreme energy use. Sometimes data centers can be packaged under different names, such as this one. It was a technology campus and under a municipal utility agreement," Stephanie Ambriz said.

Stick with News Channel 3 for continuing coverage of this story.