Instead of banning data centers, the Aurora City Council is drafting regulations to address residents' concerns about energy and water consumption.

Currently a large data campus is under construction on an 80-acre plot on the eastern edge of Aurora, next to Denver International Airport. The Colorado data center is expected to be one of Xcel Energy Inc.’s biggest customers with a planned power capacity of over 177 megawatts.

Residents are raising questions over the environmental impact and water usage. But on August 10, the Aurora City Council voted 6-5 to reject an emergency ban proposed by Council Member Amy Wiles. Her ban would have placed a six-month moratorium on data center construction while the development standards were determined.

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The Denver City Council, however, was successful in passing legislation that put a moratorium on data centers in May for the entire city and county of Denver. Robert Austin, the joint city-county jurisdiction's communications specialist, told The Center Square that the legislation also established a working group to examine data centers.

Denver council members did not respond to The Center Square’s request to comment on whether they plan to assist neighboring cities like Aurora in the development and regulation of data centers.

Wiles told The Center Square that she was in favor of her proposed moratorium because it would “allow us the time to research best practices when it came to regulations, listen to the community and their concerns, and approach the future regulations with enough knowledge to make educated decisions.”

Wiles added she believed “research and data points are key to making the educated decisions our community expects and deserves of us." She also said she would support requiring a cost-benefit analysis that compares the economic benefits of a proposed data center against its anticipated water, energy and infrastructure demands.

Another proposed compromise would be requiring data center developers to use renewable or carbon-free energy. On the contrary, others believe energy sourcing should remain primarily an issue for Xcel and state regulators. In response to this, Wiles said she would “like to see a combination of both.”

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After rejecting Wiles' moratorium, the council instead passed a resolution brought by Council member Curtis Gardner to establish development standards for the data centers. On Monday, the council began drafting those standards.

At the council’s next meeting, it's set to vote on banning water-intensive evaporative cooling systems, which can use anywhere between 300,000 to 5 million gallons of water every day.

For a large data center, like the one currently under construction in Aurora, the estimated water usage is between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day, according to a Florida-based organization of members seeking to protect natural resources. The organization is the Florida Water & Pollution Control Operators Association.

The Aurora City Council is pushing the data centers toward using closed-loop alternatives that recirculate liquids, using significantly less water. As the state remains in one of the most detrimental droughts in its history, residents and council members are becoming increasingly concerned with the amount of water used by the centers.

While some have expressed their willingness to compromise by using the closed-loop alternatives, others are rejecting it completely, instead advocating for an outright ban on the centers.

According to Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor, the final vote on these regulations may come in late September or early October. But Wiles is not optimistic about the outcome.

“I don't believe with the way the council majority is currently voting that we will have a balance between the needs of the community and the needs of business[es]," Wiles told The Center Square.

She said she instead thinks that the “end results will favor large business over community concerns. I strongly support larger setbacks from neighborhoods, transparent reporting that covers energy and water usage, and I don't believe that will happen.”

With the plentiful land in industrial and warehouse areas, it's not necessary to build data centers next to neighborhoods, Wiles said.

The other Aurora City Council members did not respond to The Center Square’s request for an interview.