A Pennsylvania borough just put a number on paper that no interconnection filing ever does — 1.2 million gallons a day — and said no. If you're just joining us, we started this backlash story in Monterey Park, where voters overwhelmingly backed Measure NDC — the measure that directs a general-plan ordinance banning data center construction inside city limits. For developers, the worry is whether ballot measures, moratoria, and land-use rules turn into repeatable siting risks across power-constrained markets, not just one-off neighborhood fights. This is The Data Center Daily. Today — a borough water authority, two zoning dockets, and a $715 million Yondr bond pricing right into the Virginia drought. Matt's having a Monday. We're staying on Local data center bans and ballot backlash — follow the show and you won't miss what comes next. James Nanzo, over at The Cool Down, has the details. A Pennsylvania borough authority put it on paper — 1.2 million gallons a day — and said no. Hardest water number we've cited all week, from a borough water utility, not a regulator. What jumps out is the mechanism. A grid interconnection filing never quantifies a daily draw like that — but a municipal water authority just did, and used it as the basis for a pause. All week I've been looking for the constraint outside the power and transmission filings. We had a drought percentage, a 97% municipal-source stat — and now a daily gallon figure with a stop sign on it. A water clerk answered the question, not FERC. And no road-show deck quantifies it that cleanly. One point two million gallons is the kind of number that doesn't soften with a press release. Sofiah Nichole Salivio, writing in DataCenterNews US:
Yondr Group and JK Land Holdings, through their joint venture Yondr JK 1, have priced USD $715 million of senior secured notes to help fund a data centre project in Loudoun County, Virginia. The notes carry a 6.875% interest rate and mature in 2031.
Yondr JK 1 priced $715 million in senior secured notes — 6.875% coupon, maturing 2031, cash interest twice a year. Proceeds fund a 48 megawatt turnkey build in Loudoun County. 48 megawatts on 14.3 acres. That's a dense power-per-acre commitment, and the market now has a benchmark — 6.875% is the going rate for private construction capital on a mid-size Northern Virginia campus. Here's what gets me — this is real money. Not an equity press release, not an option dressed up as a deal. Qualified institutional buyers, first-priority liens on substantially all the assets. People wrote checks. And this lands right after the Pennsylvania piece we just hit — a borough authority halting projects over a 1.2 million gallon daily draw. So I've got the offering doc in one hand and a water hold in the other. Does that indenture say one word about drought restrictions on the cooling system in Loudoun? The article doesn't show a water-sourcing covenant, no. Liens, debt service reserves, financing fees — all spelled out. Cooling water, conspicuously not. Right. The bondholders get a first lien on the building. Loudoun ratepayers get to find out later whose aquifer fills it. Nobody on that road show is asking the question a Pennsylvania water authority just put on paper. From Patsy Montesinos at NewsChannel 5:
A proposed data center near the Nashville Zoo is heading toward a critical vote, with two regulatory bills advancing after Metro's Planning Commission recommended them Thursday night. The bills — one to establish zoning rules for data centers and another to pause new data centers— now face a public hearing and second vote at the Metro Council meeting on July 7.
DC BLOX bought the land, says it holds the permits, and tells the city the building's vested — quote, "this legislation is being driven by fear and not facts." Okay, counselor. The fact is 50 megawatts off a dedicated substation, next to the zoo, in a building over 202,000 square feet. And the dates are clean — Planning Commission recommended both bills Thursday, public hearing and second vote July 7, final vote later in July. One bill writes zoning rules for data centers, the other pauses new ones. This is what I mean. The Pennsylvania borough we just hit used a water authority. Nashville's reaching for the planning code. Same week, different legal instrument — nobody's waiting for a ballot box anymore. Though notice the lawyer's basically conceding the project moves forward regardless. Vested rights versus a zoning overlay is a fight the developer usually wins on timing. Maybe. But the council's drawing the line around scale — 50 MW, 50,000 homes' worth of draw. That's exactly the number the new rules have to define. Sloan can call it fear; the substation nameplate is the fact. Lexington Herald Leader writes:
Lexington’s planning staff released a draft of changes it thinks the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council and Planning Commission should adopt for existing zoning codes in order to define data centers, and where they can and cannot operate. The 20-page draft zoning text amendment prohibits any data center from operating in agricultural zones and does not allow major data centers — those it defines as any larger than 50,000 square feet — to locate anywhere in Fayette County.
Fifty thousand square feet. That's the cap. Anything bigger than that, Fayette County says no — not regulated, not conditional, just no, countywide. And it wasn't even close. The council voted unanimously on June 9th to draft this, and dropped a moratorium on permits through October 31st in the same breath. Same local-ban backlash we keep hitting — Lexington's just the newest market on the board. The trigger matters here. A developer bought the old Lexmark property on New Circle Road — former IBM data hall — and planned a long-term power capacity expansion. The purchase hits the paper, and the moratorium follows within days. So the move is: buy the building first, then find out you can't power it. After the Pennsylvania water hold we just covered, that's three different legal instruments in one rundown — ballot bans, water authority holds, and now a planning code rewriting the definition of 'data center' to zone it out. If you've got a data center story we should be watching, or a correction to something you heard, send it our way at datacenterdaily at lantern podcasts dot com. We read every note.
Next on the calendar: Metro Council has a public hearing and second vote on Nashville's data center zoning and pause bills on July 7. And in Lexington, the Planning Commission holds its public hearing on the proposed data center zoning text amendment on July 30.
You'll find links to every story we mentioned in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, that's the place to dig in. That's The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.