Attendees listen to multiple speakers during a panel discussion about data centers on Southwest Native lands on Friday, March 20, at Northern Arizona University. The Flagstaff City Council is not bound by the commission’s recommendation, and it could choose to authorize the CUP proposal, the prohibition proposal or neither proposal. Antol also said the intention of the originally proposed amendment was not to create a de facto ban on data centers. One commenter called data centers a “high-impact, low-benefit industrial use.” Another argued that tech companies are fundamentally untrustworthy and exploitative. Perry, the city’s chief information officer, compared data centers to freeways: providing valuable economic benefits, but at an environmental cost.

Source: Daily Sun April 07, 2026 17:15 UTC