This highlights the core issue with these developments. Laws are created to handle this kind of situation. Michigan has the Zoning Enabling Act (MCL 125.3207) and the town had no land established as industrial zoning. By omission this amounts to a total ban in violation of Michigan laws.
It shows how laws are being used to set small townships who are barely keeping this side of legal for State laws can be manipulated. And this is a common refrain. Small towns don’t have the legal representation in local boards or governments to verify every single rule that States hand down and instead have to deal with violations as the appear.
This will continue to happen until States begin to grant smaller towns more authority over land use and zoning conditions. Which is why the “stop all data center construction” arguments at the Federal level are moot. The largest part that needs to be address needs to happen at each State level. Even if a law at the Federal level prohibited data centers for AI use under instate commerce, States still have a inherent right to the land that isn’t Federally owned and can just ignore those laws at the Federal level, they would never survive a 10th Amendment challenge.
The whole data-center thing HAS TO BE fought at the State level, there’s no other way around it.
This highlights the core issue with these developments. Laws are created to handle this kind of situation. Michigan has the Zoning Enabling Act (MCL 125.3207) and the town had no land established as industrial zoning. By omission this amounts to a total ban in violation of Michigan laws.
It shows how laws are being used to set small townships who are barely keeping this side of legal for State laws can be manipulated. And this is a common refrain. Small towns don’t have the legal representation in local boards or governments to verify every single rule that States hand down and instead have to deal with violations as the appear.
This will continue to happen until States begin to grant smaller towns more authority over land use and zoning conditions. Which is why the “stop all data center construction” arguments at the Federal level are moot. The largest part that needs to be address needs to happen at each State level. Even if a law at the Federal level prohibited data centers for AI use under instate commerce, States still have a inherent right to the land that isn’t Federally owned and can just ignore those laws at the Federal level, they would never survive a 10th Amendment challenge.
The whole data-center thing HAS TO BE fought at the State level, there’s no other way around it.