Roughly 300 people crowded City Hall on Tuesday for a contentious hearing as the Birmingham City Council debated and approved regulations on data centers.
While city officials said they got it right with Birmingham’s first rules specifically for data centers, many in the crowd said the framework leaves too much uncertainty and too little public oversight.
“We have looked at all of these major concerns and created an ordinance that we genuinely believe produces one that is unmatched in the Southeast and stands among the nation’s strongest ordinances regulating data centers in the country,” said Hunter Garrison, deputy director of the Office of Resilience and Sustainability.
But Lauren Gibson, one of about 60 area residents who addressed the mayor and council, said the regulations show leaders weren’t writing an ordinance to get it right but just to produce something “good enough.”
“There are a myriad of lives impacted by these data centers, and I want you to understand that they're not just damn animals, they're not just damn kids, they're not just damn residents,” Gibson said. “We are your constituents, and we are yelling from our yards, from our rooftops and from the mountain tops that we do not like what we're hearing. And you seem to be deaf to our words.”
The changes in the city’s zoning code were designed to put guard rails on future data center developments, zoning staff told the council. Of particular concern are the largest of those projects, called hyperscale data centers.
The new rules set out 20 conditions for hyperscale data centers, with key provisions including a minimum lot size of 5 acres, 1,000-foot setbacks from transit stations, and stricter water use, power generation and noise control requirements.
While some speakers during the public hearing thanked the city for implementing a six-month moratorium on data centers in March and drafting regulations, none supported adopting the ordinance without revisions. Many argued changes city staff made after an initial public hearing in late April not only didn’t take residents’ comments into account but removed provisions that could have allowed public debate during the permitting process. They also said the regulations include few clear, quantitative standards for sound levels, water use, heat and emissions.
The public hearing portion of the City Council meeting began at about 11 a.m., by which time the council chamber, an overflow room with monitors and a makeshift holding room in the basement cafeteria had reached capacity, with a combined 200 or so people.
About 100 people remained outside in the heat well into the afternoon, waiting to offer their testimony.
“So many people who have to work for a living — myself included — took off today to be here to participate in democracy,” Jonathan Lendon, a District 3 resident, reflected on the public hearing process. “It’s a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t need to end here.”
Some speakers prefaced their comments by noting they’re neurodivergent or extremely shy and explaining how difficult it was for them to attend the meeting and talk in front of a crowd.
“I work from home,” said Elizabeth Castro. “I am not around people a lot. This is forcing me to come out.”
Castro said city staff haven’t adequately answered her questions about how residents would report potential violations of the regulations and which city departments would investigate those complaints.
Numerous residents – business owners, teachers, doctors and nurses – who spoke said they feared the new regulations would give them less of a voice in future data center regulations rather than more.
A key revision from the previous draft rules was the removal of a special exception process for hyperscale data centers in two zoning districts. When a land use requires the city to grant a special exception, the city’s zoning board must determine the use would not disturb public health, safety or welfare – a process that often includes public input. The change was a blow to advocates who urged it be kept in.
“Why I’m able to stand here matters as much as what I have to say,” said Birmingham resident David Butler. “Right now, this council still holds public hearings on data centers; the ordinance in front of you would take that away.”
Butler and Oxmoor Valley Neighborhood Association President Madelyn Greene are suing the city and Nebius Group over a massive and controversial data center the city permitted before its moratorium went into effect.
The Nebius elephant in the room
Despite the Nebius project not being subject to the new data-center regulations and councilors repeatedly warning hearing speakers not to bring it up, saying it wasn’t relevant to the discussion, the mayor and some of those same councilors used the project themselves to justify their decision to pass the ordinance Tuesday.
“The concern there is if we do not act today, there is room for growth from those entities that are currently permitted,” said Councilor Josh Vasa, after the public-comment portion of the hearing ended.
Several residents had questioned why the council needed to rush to adopt regulations that even city staff said needed more work, when three months remained in the six-month moratorium period.
Councilor Hunter Williams similarly emphasized the urgency with respect to the Nebius data center.
“I want to make sure that folks understand that, should we choose to delay this vote today, then the project that everyone has managed to bring up – even though we're talking about a specific ordinance – will have free reign to do whatever they want,” Williams said.
While the regulations the council approved don’t apply to projects with existing permits, city staff said they would apply to expansions of those projects.
“Once the amendment that was adopted today for the zoning ordinance is advertised per the state law requirements, any changes to their permitting would be subject to the new requirements,” said Kim Speorl, zoning administrator for the city.
When asked why the council couldn’t have amended the moratorium to prevent expansions of existing projects or add restrictions for them – instead of approving an ordinance the public and some councilors said needed further revision – a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said a city attorney would need to answer that question. The attorney was not immediately available.
An attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center who attended the hearing didn’t hesitate to reply.
“Oh, they could – short answer,” said Ryan Anderson.
Allison Black Cornelius, chief executive of the Greater Birmingham Humane Society, which had planned to build a new headquarters and model medical campus for sick and traumatized animals on 27 acres of land near the Nebius site, said the council’s action won’t change what happens with that data center.
“It's a disaster,” Cornelius said after the vote. “The [city] attorney got up this morning and said that they would be able to expand even with this ordinance, and then they [councilors] argued that you had to pass the ordinance so that they wouldn't be able to expand. They’re going to be able to expand anyway. And we know that that's their intention.”
Cornelius said the sound study that Nebius provided to the city didn’t measure the frequencies that animals hear. The Humane Society has constructed one building and was about to build the hospital and adoption center when the Nebius project was announced and donors started raising questions about effects on animals, she said.
Russell Johnson, a veterinarian and the Humane Society’s chief medical officer, told the council Tuesday that noise studies data centers rely on discount high frequencies and vibrations humans can't hear and underweight the low-frequency hums those facilities produce.
“A dog hears more than twice as high as we do, a cat higher, both at distances further than we do,” Johnson said. “That is not a small gap. In animals already under stress, chronic noise and vibration affect healing, behavior, immune function and recovery. Those are measurable medical outcomes, and nothing in this draft requires anyone to study them before approval.”
Cornelius said before the hearing Tuesday her organization hoped to bring to light eight big problems with the regulations, the most notable being removal of the special-exception requirement.
“That would be the death knell to this to the public's ability to have a fair hearing on a project like this coming next to their home or their business,” she said. “Second would be the fact that there's no monitoring, there's no independent review. So basically the city is going to let companies like Nebius or Open AI … give that information to the city, and there's nobody verifying whether it's true or not.”
Homes, schools and a center for people with disabilities are also located near the Nebius site.
The ordinance passed on a 6-3 vote, with Council President Wardine Alexander and Councilors Darrell O’Quinn and Sonja Smith opposed.
Alexander wrote in a statement that her vote was consistent with concerns she’s expressed since she became aware of the potential impact hyperscale data centers could have on Birmingham’s communities.
“I support economic development, innovation and job creation,” she wrote. “But I also believe projects of this magnitude require transparency, community engagement and strong oversight. The people of Birmingham deserve a voice in decisions that could impact their neighborhoods, infrastructure, resources and quality of life for decades to come.”
According to Rick Journey, the mayor’s director of communications, June 20 is the tentative effective date for the new regulations. The ordinance must be signed and proper legal notice issued before it becomes legally binding.
Conditions set for data centers
The ordinance maintains roughly the same 19 conditions for hyperscale data center applications as the draft considered in April, with one additional requirement. These provisions include strong protections that restrict certain activities and mandate some disclosures from developers.
If applications comply with all 20 conditions, no special exception processes and public hearing are required.
Diesel and gas power generation may be used only in emergencies and are strictly prohibited for routine operations. Onsite power generation is banned except for solar energy and fuel cells; however, energy stored in onsite batteries via the grid is permitted. Hyperscale data centers are also barred from discharging stormwater directly into the municipal water system.
To limit water consumption, the ordinance requires closed-loop cooling systems for large data centers rather than evaporative systems, which can consume millions of gallons of water per day. It also regulates how cooling water is flushed to ensure the removal of contaminants prior to discharge.
The minimum property size for hyperscale data centers is set at 5 acres. The required distance between hyperscale facilities and residential properties under the new regulations is 500 feet, although community advocates had asked that the distance be set at 1,000 feet. City zoning staff said only five properties within the city and adjacent to residential areas would meet the requirements for a hyperscale data-center site.
Written notification must be given to property owners within 500 feet of any new or expanding hyperscale data center, under the rules.
Noise mitigation measures — such as screening, landscape buffers, and pre- and post-construction noise studies — are required. However, critics questioned the enforceability of these provisions and whether a 500-foot buffer is large enough to screen surrounding neighbors from the data center operations.
Residents’ worries
Community concerns voiced during the hearing focused on transparency and public participation, the need for more specific technical standards and stronger measures to ensure accountability of the developers.
Multiple residents urged the council to require baseline studies of noise, air, soil and surface and ground water before developers disturb data-center sites.
“Without a baseline, no one can prove what the facility changed,” said Sheree Bishop. “If a neighbor's well drops, a stream shows contamination or the air shifts, the operator can simply say, ‘Prove it was us,’ and the record to do that would not exist.”
Speakers contended that technical experts should play a larger role in vetting potential data centers and warned that owners of those facilities are duping municipal leaders who don’t have the backgrounds necessary to understand what they’re approving, especially with the speed at which AI technology is advancing.
"I will say it appears to me that AI hyper scholars, they're looking for and targeting cities and communities where they think they have apathetic or uneducated voters, and perhaps leadership that can be duped or bought,” Maureen Bright said. “I think they made a mistake with Birmingham. I don't believe that about Birmingham voters or leaders, and I want you to prove it to us, Mr. Mayor and councilors."
Anderson, the attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center and a Birmingham resident, pointed to public turnout for the hearing as something positive.
“This is what democracy looks like, and it looks pretty good to me,” she said. “We deserve to have a voice in data-center development in our city, and we deserve to have a seat at the same table the big tech does, because these decisions influence the places where we live, work and play.”
Lauren Gibson and some other residents said city leaders will hear their voices in at least one place – the voting booth.
