St. Clair County’s health doctor leaves data center rules to townships for now; county board weighs next steps Oct. 21

PORT HURON, Mich. — St. Clair County’s top public health doctor said Monday night that he does not expect the county to write its own health rules for data centers, as it did for large solar and battery farms, leaving the decisions for now with the townships and cities that control local zoning.

Dr. Remington Nevin, medical director of the St. Clair County Health Department, said near the end of the county Advisory Board of Health’s second public workshop on data centers that he had “largely determined” countywide regulations like those are probably not appropriate at this time. The county keeps the right to act later, he said, but he did not expect that it would need to, because local governments have the tools to regulate the projects with public health in mind.

The advisory board will take up next steps at its regular meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21, in the county administration building at 200 Grand River Ave., Nevin said. One option he has put forward is a technical assistance document to help local zoning boards, though he said he would not presuppose what the board decides. That meeting will also stream on the county’s YouTube channel.

Slides, resources and formal minutes from both workshops will be included in the board’s November agenda packet, which officials said is posted on the county’s online meeting document system about a week before that meeting.

The Oct. 12 session in the county commissioners’ meeting room ran nearly two hours, a format The Mitten Daily previewed last week. Nevin opened by describing zoning as, at root, a public health power, and laid out the choices a township can write into an ordinance. He defined the hyperscale facilities under discussion as those using 100 megawatts or more and said the department takes no position on any specific project.

Water drew some of his most specific numbers. A household well needs only a few gallons a minute, he said, while an evaporatively cooled facility at the 100-megawatt level might need hundreds. Port Huron’s water plant has roughly 21 million gallons a day of available capacity, he said, but the city of St. Clair’s plant has a total capacity of about 3 million gallons a day and Marine City’s about 2 million, by his estimate, so a single large campus on one of the smaller systems could use more than that city’s entire spare supply.

Michigan law generally bars local ordinances that regulate large water withdrawals, Nevin said, but communities can shape the outcome indirectly, for example by allowing the facilities only where adequate public water is available. Other tools he listed included noise limits measured at the nearest home that capture low-frequency sound, limits on testing backup diesel generators, stormwater standards, setbacks sized to the actual hazards, battery storage safety rules and emergency plans that local fire departments have reviewed. Recent large campuses have used about 30 to 50 acres for every 100 megawatts, he said.

The guest speaker, industrial hygienist and Air Force veteran Kristen Meghan Kelly, who Nevin said testified before a Michigan House oversight subcommittee in February, said she is not against the technology but against what she called a “reckless rollout” of heavy industrial sites near homes. Asked by the board’s chair for the one thing officials should take back to their communities, she said to update noise ordinances to cover tonal, low-frequency noise, and to require decommissioning plans backed by money held in escrow. She also urged local boards to treat large data centers as heavy industrial, not light industrial, while noting she was not giving legal advice.

Several residents used the public comment period to press for more help for smaller townships. Eileen Tesh of East China Township said more than 100 residents turned out for a township board meeting after a rumor that a large data center could go on the roughly 400-acre site of the former coal plant there, and she described township steps on a moratorium and on ending nondisclosure agreements with developers. Angie Defrain of Fort Gratiot Township said her township had decided against a moratorium or new ordinances after a draft was reviewed, and asked the county to help educate township officials.

The board’s chair answered that local zoning is “the ticket” and that the advisory board cannot act for individual communities. Its role, she said, is to get the information to as many municipalities and residents as possible.

Several St. Clair County townships have already paused new projects. Port Huron Charter Township’s board voted 6-0 on Aug. 17 for Ordinance No. 257, which stops the township from accepting applications for data centers and other high resource demand facilities for 12 months or until new zoning rules take effect, whichever comes first, according to the ordinance posted on the township’s website. Siting Radar, a website that tracks local moratorium actions and links to the source documents, lists adopted data center moratoriums in East China Township (Sept. 21), Burtchville Township (Aug. 17), Columbus Township (Feb. 10) and Greenwood Township (Jan. 21), an extension in Wales Township (Sept. 1) and a Clay Township planning commission hearing notice on a proposed moratorium (Sept. 23).

Ahead of the first workshop, the county said written comments on data centers can be sent to healthdept@stclaircounty.org or to the health department at 220 Fort St., Port Huron, and that they become part of the public record.

Sources:
St. Clair County, “October 12, 2026 St Clair County Advisory Board of Health Workshop” (video, SCCountyIT YouTube channel), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgixjJOCeLY
Port Huron Charter Township, Ordinance #257, Temporary Moratorium on Data Centers and Other High Resource Demand Facilities, posted Aug. 18, 2026, https://www.porthurontownship.org/news/ordinance-254-dda-and-tifa-plan-renewal
Siting Radar, “Data center moratoria by town, township and county”, https://sitingradar.com/data-center-moratoria
WGRT, “Health Board Hosts Data Center Workshop,” Oct. 7, 2026, https://wgrt.com/health-board-hosts-data-center-workshop/
St. Clair Area View, “Board of Health to host public workshop on data center development Sept. 15,” Sept. 11, 2026, https://stclairareaview.com/articles/news/board-of-health-to-host-public-workshop-on-data-center-development-sept-15/
Photo: Carl Lender, “Datacenter Server Racks (22370909788).jpg,” Nov. 4, 2015, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Datacenter_Server_Racks_(22370909788).jpg

Blue Water Area

Tags: Blue Water Area · News · County Government · Planning and Zoning · Fall Color