Data centers may not be constructed, expanded, or operated in unincorporated Crawford County without complying with the ordinance.

A Data Center Development Permit approved by the Board of Supervisors is required before a data center may be established, constructed, expanded, or operated.

Applications must be submitted to the Zoning Administrator with all information required by the ordinance and undergo administrative review for completeness and compliance.

An application that does not satisfy the ordinance's requirements must be referred to the Planning and Zoning Commission for review and recommendation before Board of Supervisors consideration.

The Board of Supervisors may approve, conditionally approve, or deny an application and must consider compliance, electrical, water, wastewater, and transportation infrastructure, as well as applicable Iowa Code requirements.

Data centers may be approved only in General Industrial, Limited Industrial, Business/Technology Park if established, Agricultural, or Rural Residential zoning districts; other zoning districts are excluded.

Data centers must comply with the underlying zoning district's setback and maximum-height requirements.

All outdoor lighting must use full-cutoff fixtures and may not project upward or negatively affect adjacent properties.

Operating equipment must meet an average hourly noise limit of 70 dBA at occupied structures on adjacent residentially zoned property and 75 dBA at occupied structures on adjacent nonresidential property, subject to specified measurement rules.

Following a complaint or reasonable cause, the County may require acoustical testing by a qualified professional; the complainant initially pays, but the data center owner or operator must reimburse the cost if a violation is found.

Backup-generator testing is allowed only between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., except for emergency operations and utility curtailment.

Construction traffic must use County-designated haul routes, and the developer must submit a construction traffic management plan covering anticipated volumes, timing, and mitigation.

Applicants must provide written confirmation from the local power provider that existing or planned infrastructure can safely accommodate the proposed electrical demand during peak consumption hours.

Water-cooled systems require written confirmation from the local water utility that existing or planned infrastructure can safely accommodate the proposed water usage.

Facilities using water-cooled systems must provide wastewater-flow estimates, disposal details, the receiving facility or discharge location, and written confirmation that wastewater infrastructure can accommodate the use.

All facilities must comply with Crawford County stormwater regulations.

Battery Energy Storage Systems must comply with NFPA 855 and require detailed fire-suppression and emergency-access plans.

Before any ground disturbance, the applicant must submit an emergency response plan addressing natural disasters, fires, security incidents, evacuation, egress routes, and emergency staging areas.

Facilities must comply with the Iowa State Building Code and applicable NFPA standards and must provide emergency contact information to County Emergency Management.

All buildings in a phased or multibuilding campus are evaluated in aggregate for the ordinance's electrical-capacity and water-use thresholds, preventing separate phases from avoiding a higher scale classification.

Medium-scale and large-scale data centers must submit a decommissioning plan covering removal, site restoration, hazardous-material disposal, and estimated costs.

The Board of Supervisors may require reasonable financial assurance for a medium-scale or large-scale data center's decommissioning obligations.

A data center is considered discontinued after 24 consecutive months of inactivity, after which the County may require implementation of the approved decommissioning plan.

Before or at the time of approval, every data center, regardless of scale, must enter into an Economic Development Agreement with the County approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Every five years after operations begin, data centers must submit peak electrical demand, applicable annual water-use, emergency-incident, updated emergency-contact, and continued-compliance information; substantial impacts inconsistent with approved plans or conditions may lead to enforcement.

Violations are subject to the penalties in the Crawford County Zoning Ordinance and applicable Iowa law.

Data centers of any scale may be approved in General Industrial, Limited Industrial, Business/Technology Park, Agricultural, or Rural Residential zoning districts, subject to a Board-approved development permit.

If the Zoning Administrator finds an application complete and compliant, it is submitted directly to the Board of Supervisors rather than first going to the Planning and Zoning Commission; the Board may approve, approve with conditions, or deny it.

Multibuilding campuses are permitted, and buildings, phases, and associated improvements identified in the development permit do not require additional Board approval solely because construction occurs in separate phases.

Air-cooled data center systems are permitted without additional review.

Electrical and water infrastructure may be provided through existing or coordinated planned infrastructure, allowing approval when the utility provider confirms that the system can safely accommodate the proposed demand.

Adjacent property owners may provide a written, recorded waiver allowing a higher average hourly noise level than the ordinance’s standard limits.

Backup-generator testing is allowed between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., and emergency operations and utility-curtailment events are exempt from those time restrictions.

Applicants may redact confidential or proprietary information from emergency-response submissions.

Information identified as a trade secret or otherwise confidential under Iowa Code section 22.7 is to be handled under the Iowa Open Records Act’s confidentiality exemptions, subject to the limits of that law.

The required five-year operational review is informational and shall not impose new conditions.

Existing data centers that do not conform to the ordinance may continue operating as nonconforming uses, subject to the Crawford County Zoning Ordinance’s nonconforming-use provisions.

The Economic Development Agreement is expressly characterized as a negotiated contractual obligation supporting lawful economic-development objectives and not as an unauthorized tax.