Extend the Moratorium on Data centers

[Martha Roden]

Dear County Commissioners,

I wholeheartedly support the extension of the moratorium against
datacenters in Larimer County.

These data centers house thousands of computers. These computers require
excessive amounts of electricity (especially if the computers are
running AI programs) and excessive amounts of water to cool them and
prevent overheating. They also generate excessive amounts of noise.

These data centers do NOT improve the quality of life for people or the
environment.

Do we really think we can afford significantly higher electric and water
costs during repeat droughts, and noise pollution near the warehouses?

I don’t!

I urge you to extend the moratorium. Better yet, make the moratorium
permanent. Datacenters are not good for people or the planet.

Sincerely,
Martha Roden

--
Martha Roden
Contract Technical Writer, Instructional Designer, and Usability Specialist
(970) 225-2572 (landline)
marth...@gmail.com

“Making the complex simple”

[John Kefalas]

Thank you for your input, Martha. The extension of the data center moratorium issue is on Monday's 3 PM land use hearing consent agenda. 

John Kefalas (he/him) County Commissioner, District 1

Commissioners' Office 200 W Oak St | 2nd Floor PO Box 1190, Fort Collins, CO 80522-1190 W: (970) 498-7001 Cell:  (720) 254-7598 jkef...@larimer.org | www.larimer.org Public Record Notice: All emails to the Commissioners are subject to CORA. To opt-out of having your message displayed on our public email portal, include "Private," "Confidential," or "Deliberative" in the subject line. This designation excludes the message from the public feed but does not guarantee confidentiality under state law.

[Martha Roden]

John,

The other thing that I forgot to mention is that these data centers do NOT provide jobs for people. Once they are up and running, the are pretty autonomous, have online monitoring systems, and need very few IT administrators.

So try to ignore folks who tell you the centers are necessary for jobs - jobs for whom and at what cost?

The negative costs of the data centers are astronomical!

Martha

[Jody Shadduck-McNally - Larimer Commissioner]

Dear Ms. Martha Roden,

Thank you for your email and inquiry. I am responding on behalf of the Larimer County Board of County Commissioners. We have a land use hearing on Monday, July 13th at 3 pm, where this decision is on the agenda. I have copied staff on this email to help forward your comments to the public comment. You can watch the hearing here :  https://larimercoco.portal.civicclerk.com/event/8139/files/agenda/10950

Respectfully,

Commissioner Jody Shadduck-McNally

Chair, Larimer County BOCC

	Jody Shadduck-McNally Larimer County Commissioner, District 3
	Commissioner's Office 200 W Oak St, Fort Collins, 80521 | 2nd Floor W: (970) 498-7003| M: (970) 939-0558 jshadduc...@larimer.orgl | www.larimer.org

Public Record Notice: All emails to the Commissioners are subject to CORA. To opt-out of having your message displayed on our public email portal, include "Private" in the subject line. This designation excludes the message from the public feed but does not guarantee confidentiality under state law.

On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 4:08 PM Martha Roden <marth...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Martha Roden]

Hi Jody,

Thank you so much for your response.

As I mentioned to John, not only are the energy and water requirements outrageous for these centers, but they do NOT provide lots of jobs. The servers are monitored by software and probably require very little human intervention.

And the servers are used primarily to run AI programs that are not of tremendous benefit to the average person. However, the CEOs of AI companies are probably the primary benefactors of the financial benefits.

In other words, data centers are NOT necessary for our lives.

Martha Roden