Bay City’s commission unanimously approved a resolution to create zoning, land use, and operational standards for data centers after strong community pushback.
Residents framed data centers as high-resource, low-job projects, citing water draw from the Saginaw Bay watershed, PFAS risk, noise, and limited economic upside versus facilities like retail.
Some locals pushed for hard caps on power and water consumption, service-area limits (Bay County only), and strict setbacks and size limits, which would severely constrain large-scale GPU or cloud builds.
Union representatives countered that modern data centers commonly use closed-loop cooling and argued Bay City lacks parcels big enough anyway, implying this is more signaling than real siting risk.
For AI infrastructure, this shows another Midwestern community moving to lock in tight environmental and electrical constraints before hyperscale GPU campuses even show interest.
Developers looking at secondary markets will need earlier community engagement, transparent water and power plans, and realistic job numbers, or they’ll face preemptive zoning barriers like this.
The article is worth a read to understand how local politics and perception are starting to shape the map of where future AI data centers can practically land.
Source: Bay City commission votes to establish data center guidelines – mlive.com
