{"id":792561,"date":"2026-07-30T03:19:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T03:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/792561\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T03:19:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T03:19:15","slug":"st-joseph-county-council-candidate-calls-for-data-center-moratorium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/792561\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Joseph County Council candidate calls for data center moratorium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind. (WNDU) &#8211; St. Joseph County Council candidate Jamie O\u2019Brien has called for a county data center moratorium. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The request came over concerns about Microsoft\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/05\/19\/microsoft-holds-open-house-granger-data-center-project\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/05\/19\/microsoft-holds-open-house-granger-data-center-project\/\">Granger data center project<\/a> and Amazon Web Services\u2019 (AWS) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/07\/23\/amazon-web-services-investment-st-joseph-county-data-center-campus-surpasses-138-billion\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/07\/23\/amazon-web-services-investment-st-joseph-county-data-center-campus-surpasses-138-billion\/\">New Carlisle data center campus<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Granger facility is expected to begin construction in late fall 2026 or early 2027. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">New Carlisle\u2019s center broke ground roughly two years ago. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe St. Joe County public, and many elected officials, are quite skeptical of data centers, including concerns related to utility usage, water usage and disposal, noise, construction, traffic and disruption to residential neighborhoods,\u201d said O\u2019Brien in a news release.<\/p>\n<p>Other data center coverage<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Granger center will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/05\/19\/microsoft-holds-open-house-granger-data-center-project\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/05\/19\/microsoft-holds-open-house-granger-data-center-project\/\">reportedly operate on a closed-loop system<\/a>, meaning that water will continuously recirculate through the site. AWS said that their facility will use water for<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/07\/23\/amazon-web-services-investment-st-joseph-county-data-center-campus-surpasses-138-billion\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/07\/23\/amazon-web-services-investment-st-joseph-county-data-center-campus-surpasses-138-billion\/\"> less than 2% of the year<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Microsoft also said that they have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/05\/19\/microsoft-holds-open-house-granger-data-center-project\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/2026\/05\/19\/microsoft-holds-open-house-granger-data-center-project\/\">utility agreement components designed to protect other rate payers<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to O\u2019Brien, four of nine current council members support adopting a moratorium. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">O\u2019Brien is the Republican candidate for Granger\u2019s seat in the St. Joseph County Council. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He said he will present a proposal for the moratorium in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Stay up to date on local news with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/\">WNDU<\/a> on-air and online. Be sure to download the 16 News Now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/content\/misc\/Download-Our-App-391782921.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wndu.com\/content\/misc\/Download-Our-App-391782921.html\">App<\/a> and follow our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC7AO1aI9S3A7vrSc9wLvA-Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC7AO1aI9S3A7vrSc9wLvA-Q\">YouTube<\/a> page as we continue to bring you the latest news coverage.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WNDU. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind. (WNDU) &#8211; St. Joseph County Council candidate Jamie O\u2019Brien has called for a county&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[336758,336757,97,252,253,336761,336762,336764,336759,336760,336763],"class_list":["post-792561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-aws-data-center","tag-granger-data-center","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-indiana-data-center","tag-jamie-obrien-data-center","tag-microsoft-data-center-indiana","tag-new-carlisle-data-center","tag-st-joseph-county-data-center","tag-st-joseph-county-data-center-moratorium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}