Happy Wednesday, everyone.

I want to thank you for joining us this evening for our third hearing on data center, our data center policy package.

Um, and thank you for sticking with us.

I think we've had two back to back four hour hearings where we have discussed this topic.

Um, at our last hearing, we had about 25 individuals to provide feedback on uh the legislation that we introduced, um, and we've made changes that we're hoping to present here today that reflect the feedback that we received.

Uh tonight we'll start by outlining ordinance 2560-2026, which is had a first reading on Monday's council agenda.

Next, we'll review the changes made to the water conservation policy and decommissioning policies that were introduced at the July hearing.

And finally, we'll outline the behind the meter generation draft that is being introduced today.

If you haven't, if you have been following the work of the committee, you will notice that we are not reviewing changes to the sewer tapping draft.

Uh that has been heard at previous hearings.

As I stated when we begin this work, we're all learning together, and we found through our research that we may be able to utilize what is currently in code differently to achieve our goals.

So we're gonna go back to the drawing board with those requirements, but hopefully at our next hearing we'll able to reintroduce that.

Uh while Dr.

Pruitt will elaborate on this point, one of the main changes you'll notice in the drafts is that we are no longer only applicable to data centers.

Too often, government is reactive, and in this is one of those moments.

Our communities have organized around data center development, and while I'm proud of Columbus for stepping up to meet the moment, I don't want another council to find themselves in the same situation down the line.

This is why we're going to shift the conversation from focusing solely on data centers.

Any heavy industrial manufacturer that is a heavy user of our natural resources has the potential to pollute or are increasing the need for infrastructure expansion.

They should all fall under these same regulations.

Not only to address existing technologies and industries, but to prepare for future technologies and industries that may pop up as technology and AI advance.

Before we begin, let me stop and see if Council President has any opening remarks.

Well, thank you, uh, Chair Weich uh for your leadership in organizing this third hearing on data centers uh and the package that council is working itself through.

To this point, many of the conversations to uh have focused on mitigating the environmental impacts of these data centers.

I'm joining the first part of this hearing today because we are working on legislation together that is about the financial impacts of data centers, both for people's pockets and for the city's budget.

I wanted to begin today with a little context on how we got here.

Last November, the administration asked council to raise utility rates.

Councilmember Weich, I give you kudos because you were able to ultimately negotiate downward the increase they were asking for.

But I was still concerned that while enormous new users like data centers were coming onto our regional water system and requiring massive expensive infrastructure build-outs to serve them, that our own residents should not put the bill for that growth.

So we passed legislation to require Columbus Water and Power to study this exact issue to figure out what we're charging these high volume users versus what it actually costs to serve them.

CWP did that work and came back to us in June.

And what they found is that there are really two things that we need to consider.

First is there's how much water there is that we uh water that would they that you use, and secondly, there's how much water you need at one point in time.

So if a customer uses roughly the same amount all the time, then our water department can plan for that.

But imagine a customer whose demand suddenly jumps to five or ten times its normal level.

Our system still has to be big enough to handle that peak.

We need enough treatment capacity, enough pumps, big enough pipes, enough water available that when that customer needs it.

And we have to pay for that capacity even when the customer is not using it.

CWP found that some large users have peak demand several times their normal usage.

One customer in this analysis had a peak nearly twelve times its average demand.

This raises an issue.

In utility jargon, it's called cost causation, causation.

In plain English, it means if we're only charging a Mesa use mega user for how much water they use, we're missing the broader point of how much infrastructure they're requiring.

And if their demand requires us to build more stuff, we need to understand what that stuff costs.

And they should pay be the one that pays for it.

This isn't just about data centers, it's any kind of major commercial or industrial project that requires this kind of usage.

But especially it's important for data centers because of a gap in how we think about their economic benefit.

Data centers would say that they generate a lot of economic benefit.

They would say that they bring private investment, create construction work, and generate revenue for the communities where they're located.

But we're not really building data centers in the City of Columbus proper.

It's mostly other cities in Franklin County that are cutting deals with data centers.

That's where the revenue is flowing, is to those other communities.

While Columbus Water and Power gets stuck building the infrastructure necessary to provide the water without the city getting any of that revenue to help pay for it.

This matters because we're entering a period of enormous investment in our water system.

Historically, Columbus has had uh extra capacity.

Much of that infrastructure needed to serve growth was already here and already paid for.

But CWP is telling us that we're reaching a point where future growth will increasingly require new infrastructure.

That's why we're planning the home road water plant, which will add 48 million gallons of water capacity per day, along with major transmission and infrastructure necessary to move that water.

And that new infrastructure is not free.

It's going to cost us billions of dollars, and someone's going to have to pay for it.

We're here today because I don't want a Columbus family that's been here for 30 years or a neighborhood small business to have to shoulder those costs.