MONROE — Green County officials are working to shore up the county’s policy on data center development, three months after approving a one-year moratorium on data center construction.

At issue — according to state zoning laws, officials must create a data center ordinance that finds room for such a legal use somewhere in Green County, said Zoning Administrator Adam Wiegel. Thus, even if they wanted too — and that seems likely, amid bipartisan backlash to water and energy-hungry data centers — the board could not ban data centers outright.

“How the county will address this, and the details around it, is an open question,” said Wiegel, adding that the actual policy will have to be drafted and approved by the committee; and eventually, the full county board.

On July 14, the county moratorium was passed nearly unanimously by the county board. The matter is on the agenda for discussion at the Land Use and Zoning Committee Meeting Scheduled for 3 p.m., Oct 12.

That meeting follows a pair of well-attended education sessions hosted by Green County Extension on the issue. The extension also maintains a page on its web site focused on data centers, and Wiegel said he anticipates additional materials from the sessions to be posted for public education.

Meanwhile, there have been no proposals for the development of a data center in Green County to date, Wiegel said. And officials have repeatedly and vehemently denied that the moratorium was conceived in response to one.

Social media is also a source of unfounded rumors of data center proposals in the region. Data centers also have become a symbol of the public’s reticence to embrace all-consuming tech, especially Artificial Intelligence.

Rising public opposition to data centers nationwide is largely driven by massive resource consumption — they require huge amounts of electricity and millions of gallons of water to cool vast banks of computer servers that are rarely, if ever, turned off. This strains local power grids, driving up residential utility bills, and leading to quality-of-life issues like constant noise pollution from cooling fans; and backup generators.

At least one published report said the Green County ban was “instigated” by a nearby project — a $1 billion data center campus in Rock County that would stretch across both the towns of Beloit and Turtle on Prairie Avenue. Social media also has been littered with unfounded rumors of data center proposals in the region.

Wiegel said it’s also unlikely that a data center will call Green County home in the near future, and if a proposal was floated, it likely would not be for a large facility. The reason, he said, is that the county lacks the robust electric and data connectivity to support such an operation without major infrastructure upgrades and investment.

“Mostly they need power and connectivity,” he said. “Most of the hyper-sized data centers are near larger towns or cities.”

Currently, the county may have an option to buy more time to make the rules for data centers, according to Wiegel. That would require implementing a six-month extension of the moratorium and he said the county is looking into that option.

Following a timeline posted on the extension data center page, the county will continue working on the new rules though June of 2027 before again taking action.

“It’s a question of how do we address this down the road,” said Wiegel. “Right now, it’s still an open question.”

The issue has become a flashpoint in competitive 2026 races. Candidates from both parties are running millions in ads in key races opposing new construction, proposing statewide moratoriums, or scaling back tax incentives.