SKAGIT COUNTY, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Skagit County has rolled out a set of guardrails limiting the potential impact of data centers in rural areas.

Skagit County commissioners voted on Oct. 19 to adopt significant restrictions on the development of data centers.

All data centers are now banned in unincorporated areas except for the Bayview Ridge light and heavy industrial zones.

Any data centers that are built will have to be under 2,000 square feet, cannot exceed an electrical load of two megawatts and cannot be classified as utility developments.

Those restrictions will limit any data centers to small-scale operations, such as typical business server rooms.

The county had previously approved a year-long moratorium on new data centers in rural parts of the county.

County officials said at the time that they hadn’t received any applications for data centers yet, but were aiming to get ahead of what they see as an inevitable debate with no previous regulations surrounding them.

Blaine, Mount Vernon and La Conner have also placed moratoriums on data centers as they each work to develop a set of permanent regulations.