HB6252 — Businesses: other; thermal impact assessment requirements for certain data centers; provide for.

Companion to HB 6251, creating the Data Center Thermal Impact and Community Protection Act. The same 25 MW / 50 MW thresholds apply, and the same gate: a thermal impact assessment filed with the Public Service Commission at least 120 days before construction — baseline conditions, anticipated thermal impacts, modeling assumptions, mitigation alternatives, and a public summary — with copies to local governments and planning and zoning commissions, and no construction until the Commission issues a certificate of completeness (Sec. 5).

Two things distinguish it. First, it covers the ground the noise bill missed: HB 6139’s acoustic review dies without a building permit, but this act’s trigger is the statute itself — the continuous cooling plant’s heat pushed into the air and surroundings beside residential neighborhoods gets modeled, disclosed, and put on the record regardless of who the developer is. Second, it requires a postconstruction certification within 12 months of completion (Sec. 9) — a rare verification step that checks the filed projections against what was actually built.

Enforcement mirrors HB 6251: Attorney General or county prosecutor, civil fines up to $10,000 per day, injunctive relief, and no governmental-entity exemption in the introduced text. The act is explicit that it creates no land-use or permitting authority beyond the certificate (Sec. 2) — like its companion, it forces disclosure rather than granting a veto.

We support it alongside HB 6251, with the same strengthening asks: a substantive review standard or public hearing requirement, and penalties scaled toward HB 6138’s. Together the pair would give this community what it has been denied from the start — the project’s real numbers, in public, before construction.

Two further points from the text.

It is not tie-barred, and it reaches local government even where power does not. The act stands alone and takes effect 90 days after enactment, needing no other bill to pass first. And Sec. 5(4) requires the assessment to be filed not only with local clerks but with planning commissions, county planning commissions, zoning commissions and coordinating zoning committees. A township with no approval authority over a project still receives the assessment. That is a quiet answer to the Article VIII problem: it routes information to local government in a case where power does not flow there.

The confidentiality carve-outs hold the line on the essentials. As in HB 6251, a developer may designate proprietary information as confidential and it becomes exempt from FOIA — but Sec. 7(3) forbids that designation for the public summary, the general thermal study area, the types of impacts evaluated, the mitigation alternatives considered, and the general conclusions. The assessment must also state whether other nearby large-scale data centers may contribute to cumulative thermal impacts, which is the only provision in any of these bills that looks past a single site.