A group of La Pine residents and a campaign group, South County Collective Action, are working to gather signatures for a petition that aims to regulate noise and lighting at any future data centers in the city. The initiative aims to raise residents’ awareness around water and electricity usage, generator run time and number of employees at data centers.
The initiative petition comes after a proposal to build a bitcoin mining data center was shot down by the La Pine City Council in late May. The proposed data center raised concerns over electricity usage after residents discovered the data center would use over 15 times of electricity produced by the city of La Pine. Although the City Council rejected the data center proposal, the initiative would implement standards for any future approved data center.
“It was great that that specific proposal was rejected,” Deren Ash, chief petitioner for the initiative, says. “La Pine is still very potentially desirable for a data center due to our electricity rates, and small towns are commonly exploited by data centers.”
Although electricity usage was one of the top concerns for La Pine residents and organizers with SCCA, the initiative focuses more on preventing nuisances with data centers.
Organizers propose to keep noise coming from data centers at 55 dBA, which is just as loud as a refrigerator humming, from 8pm to 7am. The initiative would also prevent data centers from emitting low frequency noise, a phenomenon they say adversely affects the health of people in proximity and disturbs wildlife.
Light pollution is also of chief concern. Organizers with the initiative propose shielding outdoor lighting, focusing the light downward to avoid emanating outward and blocking view of the night sky. The group also wants light fixtures to shine with warm golden-amber tones. Specific types of lights, namely façade lighting, decorative lighting, searchlights and uplighting would all be prohibited from use.
Ash says that accountability is also an important component to the initiative, helping community members understand how the impact data centers have on the community. Under the proposal, each year a data center would be required to send a report citing its electricity and water consumption, generator runtime and the number of full-time employees on site.
Ash told the Source that the initiative needs 362 valid signatures in order to get the initiative on the November 2026 ballot. SCCA and volunteers have not started gathering signatures, but according to Ash, organizers will start canvassing in some La Pine neighborhoods this weekend.
“We are not specifically against A.I.,” Ash says. “There’s been a talking point coming out lately that the anti-data center people are just against A.I. They don’t really dislike data centers. It’s not about A.I. technology specifically. It’s about the impact that the data centers are having on communities.”
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