Logan County officials are on track to consider and potentially vote on land-use applications for a $5 billion data center near Latham as soon as August after the local state’s attorney declared invalid a 12-month moratorium that the County Board approved in May.
Opponents of Hut 8 Corp.’s proposed Logan Prairie Data Center, who supported the moratorium on the processing of such applications, said the surprise ruling was another example of why Logan County, like other rural counties in Illinois considering data center proposals, is unprepared for the challenge of regulating developers in the ballooning industry. But they vowed to keep fighting the project.
“The county does not seem to have the resources to navigate through this,” Amanda Maxheimer, 36, a member and founder of Sustain Logan County Communities, told Illinois Times. “This moratorium situation is the biggest punch to the gut. … The whole thing has kind of just stunk.”
Illinois Times first reported in December that Hut 8, a publicly traded company based in Miami, wants to build a 500-megawatt data center in rural Laenna Township near Latham, about 30 miles northeast of Springfield.
Hut 8, at the request of county officials, withdrew its initial request to change about 250 acres of agriculturally zoned acres of farm ground to industrial zoning so county residents could be better informed about what would be the county’s largest-ever building construction project.
Logan County Board members on May 19 voted 6-4 in favor of the moratorium after months of board and committee meetings where data-center opponents – including a mixture of politically left- and right-leaning residents – vastly outnumbered supporters and despite Hut 8’s promises of $65 million in new annual property tax revenue or revenue through a community benefit agreement.
On June 18, the board on a 5-6 vote failed to approve a zoning ordinance specifically designed for data centers that would have made it easier for county officials to get developers to commit to certain safeguards tied to project approval.
The proposal was modeled after a measure adopted by the Sangamon County Board in 2025.
Until a few days ago, opponents of the Hut 8 proposal said they thought they had plenty of time to convince a majority on the all-Republican County Board to either turn down Hut 8’s plan, learn more about the data center industry or tweak and approve the proposed zoning ordinance if it appeared construction of one or more large data centers in the county was inevitable.
But State’s Attorney Bradley Hauge, also a Republican, advised County Board members during a closed-door meeting June 18 and before the board meeting that same day that proper procedures weren’t followed for the moratorium to be legally binding. Hauge wasn’t present for the May 19 moratorium vote.
Responding to IT’s request for an interview, Hauge said in an email that any proposed moratorium should have first gone to the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals for an advisory vote, then debated at public hearings before County Board members considered it for final passage.
Because those steps weren’t followed, Hauge said he advised the county’s zoning office to accept Hut 8’s land-use application and prepare for public hearings when the company submitted the applications in late June.
Logan County Zoning Officer Allan Green said he deemed the applications complete on June 29.
Hauge didn’t respond when asked why an earlier 60-day data center moratorium, approved by the County Board on Feb. 24, wasn’t ruled invalid at the time. That moratorium also didn’t receive an advisory vote from the ZBA.
County Board member and vice chair Dale Nelson said Hauge’s comments to the County Board on June 18 came after Hut 8 sent an email to county officials on June 16 in which the company contended the moratorium was improperly approved and wasn’t binding. In the email, Hut 8 threatened legal action if the county continued with the moratorium, according to Nelson.
The company’s application for rezoning of the proposed site from agriculture to industrial says the site’s “proximity to major utility infrastructure – high-voltage transmission lines, fiber-optic networks – makes it a natural and logical extension of the region’s existing industrial and energy infrastructure footprint.”
The application adds that the current zoning “imposes a financial hardship on the property owner and, more importantly, severely diminishes the property’s potential to contribute to the county’s tax base and job growth, which is contrary to the public good.”
As an alternative, Hut 8 asked for land-use approval as a conditional permitted use in an agricultural zone. The request is justified, according to Hut 8, because the facility “generates minimal traffic during operations, has no visible outdoor equipment storage” and “will have no operational impact – noise, odor, traffic or visual – on neighboring non-participating, agricultural property.”
The Hut 8 request says “significant setbacks, landscaping buffers and satisfaction of performance standards … will also ensure the facility has no adverse effects on the surrounding landowners and greater community.”
Hut 8 officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nelson told Illinois Times he hoped the revelation from Hauge about the validity of the moratorium would sway the board in favor of adopting the data center zoning ordinance so greater protections would be in place whenever Hut 8 filed its zoning application.
Nelson, who voted in favor of the data center ordinance, said he leans toward supporting Hut 8’s proposal because of the potential creation of 200 full-time jobs at the site with an average salary of $100,000 a year, and life-changing tax revenue in a county that in recent years has been rocked by job losses.
The latest in bad economic news includes the impending closure of Logan Correctional Center, which employs more than 400 people.
Nelson said it’s possible that Hut 8 would agree to safeguards involving concerns that focus on environmental hazards, noise, water use, property line setbacks and a decommissioning plan, all of which would have been required if a data center ordinance had passed. But approval of the data center ordinance would have given the county more leverage in negotiating with Hut 8, he said.
Nelson said he doesn’t fault Hauge for not alerting the board about the moratorium’s validity at the time it was approved. Board members backing the moratorium should have checked with Hauge ahead of time, Nelson said.
Hut 8 officials have said the data center wouldn’t use vast amounts of water from local water supplies because computer servers would be cooled with a “closed-loop” system that uses water that is hauled in from elsewhere and constantly recycled.
Opponents have said they worry the data center, regardless of its potential economic impact, would destroy the peaceful quality of life for nearby residents, bring unwanted noise, threaten nearby water wells, pose as-yet-undetermined health hazards and add to growing regional power demands that have caused Ameren electricity rates to rise.
“The public has been pretty consistent in saying this is not a good fit for the county,” Maxheimer said. “It’s a wild ride, and we’re still on the ride.”
