Bristol Innovation Park DPUD

A DPUD is a specific type of zoning application under the Elkhart County Zoning Ordinance that allows for detailed, site-specific planning. It requires a comprehensive set of submitted plans and narratives, and a full public hearing process before approval.

All landowners within 300 feet of the site will receive written notice of the Plan Commission hearing. Any member of the public may attend the hearing. There will also be a second public hearing before the Bristol Town Council. You may also submit questions through this portal beginning May 18th.

The Bristol Innovation Park DPUD is set up to generally allow all M-1 uses, as established by the Elkhart County Development Ordinance. The M-1, Limited Manufacturing district is designed to accommodate less intense manufacturing, as well as warehousing and other similar uses. Because the specific use is not yet known, the DPUD includes extensive buffering, enhanced noise and lighting requirements, and a robust list of pre-design or design activities required with the site design plan submittals. The full list of uses can be found in the proposed development standards for the DPUD, including ...

We don’t know who the user of the site will be. There are currently no prospects. The plan is being designed to allow for a wide variety of M-1 uses, including a data center, while providing provisions that will serve as protections for surrounding rural residential properties.

A residential buffer is a set of design elements that separate non-residential development from neighboring homes, reducing impacts like sound, light, and visibility. In the Bristol Innovation Park, this includes multiple techniques. Increased setbacks are incorporated to ensure a new M-1 building cannot be located within 500’ of any existing residential structure. A robust, three tier landscape design standard is required for all buffer areas including evergreen trees, deciduous trees, and native prairie grasses. In areas adjoining homes, a landscape berm between 8-10 ft will be used in combination with the landscaping to provide an affective barrier to light and sound impacts of the M-1 development.

Preliminary access points to adjoining roadways were included as part of the required DPUD filing. The PUD conditions require extensive traffic impact studies as a part of the "due-diligence" phase of planning. These studies will carefully assess new volumes and will outline specific requirements needed to manage traffic of the project.

The Bristol Innovation Park DPUD includes lighting and sound level regulations that are more restrictive than anything else in the Bristol area or applied to traditional development in Elkhart County. The proposed DPUD uses well established dark sky requirements to ensure lighting is downward and inward focused and does not incrouch into neighboring properties. This is done with a detailed photometric plan required prior to the issuance of permits.

The DPUD introduces a protective limitation designed to address both A-weighted and C-weighted sound, incorporating levels that are lower than the current Sound Ordinance approved in Bristol. Any potential developer will be required to submit an acoustic model to demonstrate they can comply with the required regulations prior to the issuance of permits. In addition to the included ordinance, the DPUD includes extensive residential buffering including 3-levels of vegetation and the use of external berms. Landscape buffers are an effective, visually pleasing way to mitigate sound impact. This approach is unprecedented in the area around Bristol.

There are different frequency ratings when it comes to recognizing and limiting sound impacts. The frequency rating relates to the response by the human ear. A-weighting (dbA) mimics how our ears perceive sound by cutting out low and very high frequencies. This weighting is typically used to evaluate environmental sounds. C-weighting (dbC) captures low-frequency emissions. This weighting is typically used to evaluate equipment sounds. Most ordinances deal exclusively in A-weighted classifications. The proposed ordinance includes C-weighted requirements to add another level of protection for residents.

There is a lot of discussion in the media recently about sound emissions. How sounds travel and what happens to these levels with distance and buffering is not a linear relationship. There is logarithmic equation that can help demonstrate what happens to sound with distance. There are useful tools that can help demonstrate this function: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/distance-attenuation. The regulations included in the DPUD are measured at the property line (you can use 1’ in the equation).  Below are examples of what sound equivalencies are

A Utility Master Plan covering sanitary sewer and water routes is a required part of the filing. This plan will be publicly available here once the application is submitted.

The site will be required to connect to and use the Town of Bristol's water and sewer. Until an end user is identified, expected volumes are unkown. There is no expectation that the Innovation Park will require more capacity than the Town can provide. Just the same, carefully prepared studies are required by the PUD "self imposed" conditions and will be required prior to project permitting.

Claims for high water consumption are likely linked to older data centers using outdated cooling systems. In recent years, datacenters have progressed in their method of cooling, which have become far less reliant on water. Page 6 of the DPUD narrative requires the extension of both municipal water and sanitary system to the full extent of the site. When an industry chooses to locate within the Town limits, they are required to provide the anticipated water and sewer demand. If the demand exceeds availability, the end user will either have to choose another location, limit development or incur the cost of expanding the system. All water usage coming from the Town’s municipal utilities is monitored and metered.

No. The best we can determine is that this is a misrepresentation of a permit granted for AWS in New Carlisle where they asked permission for dewatering discharge specific to construction. That is a temporary situation that allows for localized lowering of the water table without impact to nearby wells. For this DPUD, a dewatering plan is required and must include monitoring wells at the perimeter of the site. For daily discharge, all wastewater discharge from any industrial user is carefully monitored, including an Industrial Pretreatment Program (IPP). The IPP requires users to submit details outlining anything that could potentially end up in their waste stream. The Town, in conjunction with IDEM, determines what monitoring is needed. The industrial user is required to install monitoring points that can be tested at will. In addition, all businesses are required to provide annual reporting to the Town. If they are running their own pretreatment facility, that facility is required to be licensed as a waste pre-treatment facility with required testing and reporting to IDEM and the Town.

The DPUD does not specify a cooling system concept as we recognize that technology will continue to improve and will be subject to advancing technology. Also, that topic is narrowly focused on a datacenter, which may or may not be the end use of the site. The DPUD focuses on regulating water sources and other resource protections and not limiting the advancement of technology.

As with any industrial site in the United States currently, the site will be regulated by strict environmental regulations. Backup generators must meet all EPA emissions requirements and are required to be built on containment bases to avoid fuel leaking into groundwater. Back-up generators only run for the limited time required for testing or in the case of a total loss of power. Tech companies make a significant investment ensuring the electrical grid is stable and able to serve the site, so loss of power would likely only happen in a major emergency event.  As for threats to ground water, all industrial sites are required to operate under strict local, State, and Federal guidelines. Despite claims that tech companies discharge PFOS filled water into the groundwater or sewer system, that simply isn’t true. Although it happens infrequently, any water removed from the closed loop system is delivered to anEPA approved industrial waste treatment facility under required permit.

The Dowagiac facility was referred to by several people since it was recently covered on local news. That site was constructed in 1972 and converted to a data center in 2022. The building and equipment were not constructed with the modern standards used by data center developments. If you research the layout of the property (415 E Prairie Ronde St) you will see that the building and parking is built right up to the property line and immediately across the street from a very dense residential neighborhood. The news coverage mentions that you can hear 60 decibels up to 500’ away and that it is much quieter where there are evergreen trees. The proposed DPUD doesn’t allow a building within 500’ of a residential structure and includes extensive buffering. The noise ordinance that was adopted in Dowagiac this past March to address the noise complaints includes decibel levels that exceed that proposed in the DPUD. Their new revised limitsare 65 decibels during the day and 55 decibels at night. The proposed DPUD in Bristol requires sound levels below 60/55 accordingly and includes C-weighted levels that address low frequency noises typically filtered out by the humanear but felt through vibrations.

References to the current Bristol ordinance stating the allowed sound level is 80 decibels day or night is not an accurate representation as this only applies to an industrial use adjacent to another industrial use. None of the residents will be living in an industrial area, so using that criteria is inappropriate. It is important to note that the proposed DPUD will incorporate a more restrictive level at 60/55 dB. Finally, the speaker calls out a distinction that a datacenter runs 24/7, unlike an RV manufacturer. However, there isn’t anything in the ordinance that precludes an industrial site from operating 24/7. The best protection for surrounding residential properties is the noise restrictions as proposed.

Many comments were related to health concerns and potential harmful frequencies. Despite these concerns, there is no evidence that data centers cause cancer or any other health risks, produce harmful frequences, EMFs, or impact any notable risks to human health. Most of the health risk concerns from the public seem to  come from the concerns related to increased power demand, water consumption, and potential outputs from generators or other onsite equipment. All of these topics fall within strictly enforced impact criteria administered by local, state, and Federal Regulations. The other health concern that recently surfaced about data centers is related to low level sound emissions. Even though datacenters have been in operation for 40 years and hyperscale data centers for about 20, this concern has only recently been raised. There are no studies, but the concern only surfaced during the most recent surge in data center opposition. Some equate the sound to that of  a home air conditioner, which most people are accustomed to hearing without concern. Regardless the DPUD includes required levels for both A-weighted and C-weighted sound limitations. Advancing technology and the move to sustainable development by major tech companies have greatly reduced or estimated the health concerns.  

The end user will need to work with NIPSCO to ensure their power demands can be met. NIPSCO recently formed a separate company, GenCo, to isolate the costs of high energy users ensuring the high demand users will be responsible for all costs associated with the design and construction of power improvements to serve their site. While many area residents have experienced increases in their recent utility rates, this is not in any way associated with the potential project on this site. Those improvements have been planned and designed long before even the first rezoning was requested. Those improvements are most likely related to the aging infrastructure and increased residential demand. While the creation of GenCo ensures the end user pays for the costs associated with their project, the improvements made will strengthen the overall grid reliability for everyone. Relying on the large users to absorb the cost of enhancements is expected to translate to annual savings to residential households.

We recognize that there is a lot of fear about data centers negatively impacting property values. Research shows this is not the case. Here are a couple of resources that discuss the impact of data centers on property values:

https://rtrsells.com/do-data-centers-impact-my-home-value/
https://www.newsweek.com/how-data-centers-are-set-to-impact-the-value-of-your-home-11939599

The elements that impact property value or generate the most questions from potential homebuyers (as identified in the research) typically include proximity to cooling equipment or backup generators, appearance of fencing and front yards, and length of construction phase. The DPUD addresses proximity by incorporating substantial residential buffer yard setbacks. The appearance of front yards and fencing are addressed through the required landscaping and increased fence standards. The construction phase is addressed by requiring buffers to be installed prior to the construction of the building. While that won’t reduce the length of the construction phase, it will greatly reduce the negative impact of the construction.

A moratorium is a temporary pause to allow a municipality time to draft rules and regulations. The proposed DPUD standards are one of the strictest in the State and far more strict than anything that has been proposed in the region. We truly feel this could be a model for other communities currently under a moratorium. The DPUD is written to include a variety of uses including a data center. No matter the use, though, the DPUD is drafted to provide superior protections to the surrounding neighbors, along with extensive studies and potential improvements for the entire County.  Also, a moratorium is typically specific to future land-use requests. It does typically apply to any land currently zoned for a datacenter (anything M1, M2, or the portion of this site zoned for a datacenter) or under the process of review. Even if a moratorium is passed, a datacenter can still locate in Bristol or Elkhart County under the limited development standards of that particular jurisdiction. Passing this DPUD just ensures that if that happens, the neighbors and surrounding communities are protected.

There are a lot ofgreat resources. Two of the ones that are most related ot our region are:
https://www.jeffrea.com/ and https://nwidatafacts.nwiforum.org/.