The first meeting of the Data Center Activities Task Force was to establish the purpose of the task force, background on the initiative of the task force, and desired outcomes/expectations of the group.

You can find the agenda packet with the meeting minutes here.

And also you can find the following in this link:

• Existing Data Center Ordinance from the Champaign County Zoning Ordinance

• C1 Sangamon I LLC Data Center Application to Sangamon County

• Data Center Impact Analysis (for the C1 Sangamon I LLC Data Center)

• City of Aurora, Illinois Summary of Proposed Changes for Data Centers

• Draft Proposed Amendment for Big Data Centers (from the February 5, 2026 ELUC Meeting)

In the second meeting our very own Andrew Rehn on the Data Centers Activities Task Force, presented about the Powers Act and what can be done at the state level to ensure protections for people including electricity and water protections.

In this meeting there were presentations by Alison Lindburg, Director of Sustainability and Mayor John Laesch of City of Aurora, IL and by Brad Tietz, Directory of State Policy, Data Center Coalition.

The meeting agenda minutes can be found here.

In this meeting we had presentations from the following:

• Senior Manager of Programs Johanna Smith, Alliance for Water Efficiency

• Dr. Ximing Cai and Research Assistant Hari Dave, Lincoln Institute Project, Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Illinois

• Executive Director Rick Manner, Champaign Urbana Sanitary District

You can find a copy of the memo from Champaign County Planning and Zoning Directory, John Hall, here.

And you can find the meeting minutes here.

Here we discuss the energy use impact on the electrical grid and our proposed requirements to minimize and reduce impact.

You can find the presentation on “A Quick Tour of the Energy Market in Illinois” here.

Here we discuss minimum separations for a big data center, especially because of back-upgenerator, noise, and vibration concerns that have shown up in communities with big data centers.

You can find the agenda and proposed requirements here.

This is where we start to get into the weeds of a concern that grows as research struggles to keep up: sound, noise, and vibration. With no experts we are left floundering a bit but you can tell from the proposed changes to the ordinance that this group cares about folks in the community and don’t want them leaving due to burdensome noise or unhealthy levels of vibration.

You can read more on the ordinance at this point here.

This is where we sought input from the public to help with our ordinance. In a community of environmental experts, activists, and other very smart people, we are bound to find stringent enough suggestions for the ordinance to help protect our water, our community, and our well-being.

These were the topics in the ordinance discussed by the public and the task force:

Review of draft ordinance by topic with facilitated discussion

i. Where Allowed and What Approval is Required (Section 5.2)

ii. Minimum Separations (Section 6.1.7C.)

iii. Backup Power Generators (Section 6.1.7D.(7))

iv. Screening (Section 6.1.7L)

v. Water Use and Cooling (Section 6.1.7N.)

vi. Energy Use and Impact on the Electrical Grid (Section 6.1.7O.)

This was when Isaac Old, a noise and sound expert, joined us to review our ordinance with us and teach us many things about different types of sounds and their frequencies.

This was a very important moment considering noise and sound experts were proving hard to find up until this point.

More proposed amendments to the noise portion can be found here.

We went over proposed amendments for protecting wildlife and even discussed placing these amendments throughout zoning ordinances.

We also reviewed noise limit and minimum separation. And also went over a proposed draft of a letter of concern that we discussed could be sent out preemptively to other villages and municipalities either before they are approached by a data center company or so that they’ll take deeper consideration and care if they are already in talks with one.

You can see the draft letter here.