DeKalb residents are pushing city leaders for hard answers on water use, infrastructure strain and public oversight after the City Council approved a second large data-center project on the city's south side last December. The pressure campaign includes public-records requests, pointed questions at city meetings and calls for DeKalb to adopt rules modeled on nearby Aurora's data-center ordinances.
A Second Data Center Lands in DeKalb
The council approved the Edged project, planned by Endeavour Energy on roughly 560 acres, in December 2025, according to a City of DeKalb announcement. As described in planning documents reported by Shaw Local, the project, also referred to as Project Vector, would include four data-center buildings and two electrical substations, with the first building expected to be completed in late 2027 and the full site not projected to be built out until 2032. The city says the facility's equipment will not be cooled with DeKalb's potable water, relying instead on waterless chillers.
That approval came just a few years after Meta's data center near DeKalb came online, according to Shaw Local's reporting, which also noted the Meta campus covers 2.3 million square feet and was touted as representing more than $1 billion in investment in the local economy. The city has said Meta paid more than $46 million to local taxing bodies between 2022 and 2024. Separately, a report from Illinois Public Media states the Meta facility started operating in 2022 and is the company's only Illinois site, while Shaw Local's reporting places the 2023 date on five buildings coming online — accounts that differ on the exact year.
Residents Press for Aurora-Style Rules
DeKalb residents are mobilizing to halt consideration of additional data centers in the city's industrial areas until local regulations are put in place, per Shaw Local's reporting. At a city meeting on October 28, residents pressed officials to adopt Aurora-style requirements on transparency and water use. DeKalb 1st Ward Alderwoman Carolyn Zasada said she plans to ask Mayor Cohen Barnes to back a moratorium on new data centers and to pursue local rules holding developers accountable, adding that his support for such a moratorium and regulations would be valuable.
Two other officials have backed the residents' push, according to the Shaw Local report: DeKalb County Board member Meryl Greer Domina and 6th Ward Alderman Mike Verbic. Amy Doll, who heads the DeKalb Sustainability Alliance, wants local regulations similar to Aurora's that require transparency, public hearings and resident protections. Doll has also questioned the city's transparency around industrial water use — after DeKalb City Manager Bill Nicklas reported on October 19 that industrial users were consuming less water than in recent years, Doll said no data had been produced to support that statement.
Public Records and a Water Agreement Under Scrutiny
Jake McFarland has criticized the city for what he describes as shielding the public from data-center water-use information, and he wants data centers to pay their fair share through transparency and a full accounting of health and environmental impacts, per Shaw Local. DeKalb has a water agreement with Ventus Tech Services LLC, later renamed Goldframe LLC.
That September report shows the scale of the city's records workload broadly, logging 20 non-police requests and 153 police-related requests for a total of 173 requests that month. A separate December 2025 FOIA report confirms the city, as a public entity, is required to respond to records requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act. DeKalb officials have pointed to the economic benefits of south-side development as a counterweight to rising property-tax burdens, Shaw Local reported.
How Aurora Did It Differently
Aurora offers DeKalb a nearby template. After imposing a 180-day moratorium on new data-center projects in 2025 to develop new standards and hear public concerns, the Aurora City Council passed a suite of ordinances on March 24, 2026, according to NPR Illinois. The rules require sound-level studies and resource-consumption reports from prospective projects, updated zoning standards and City Council approval before construction begins.
Aurora now treats data centers as conditional-use facilities that must clear a public hearing and win council approval, a city official told WGLT. Applicants must submit water, energy-management and sound studies and plans at the time of application, with sound verification required after construction before an operating permit is issued. The ordinances also set a water-use effectiveness limit of 0.2 and prohibit evaporative cooling, and the rules apply transparent operating requirements to existing data centers, not just new applications, per Shaw Local's reporting.
Legal Tools — and Their Limits
Illinois municipalities generally have several tools available for regulating data centers, including enacting moratoriums on new applications, classifying the facilities as special uses, planned unit developments or conditional uses subject to case-by-case review, and securing annexation agreements for property outside city limits. Communities with home-rule power, including DeKalb, may also ban data centers outright, while Illinois counties — which lack home-rule power and cannot enter annexation agreements — can still create zoning districts, allow special uses, impose moratoriums and otherwise regulate land use within their jurisdictions, according to background compiled in the Shaw Local report.
But a moratorium is not a guaranteed fix. Sheilah O'Grady said developers who have already spent money relying on existing zoning may retain the right to build even after a moratorium takes effect, and that such a measure may not help once a developer has started construction, per the same reporting. DeKalb's own unified development ordinance references data centers and their use without actually defining them, and the city currently has one data center online and another under construction.
No Statewide Standard Yet
DeKalb and Aurora's divergent paths reflect a broader vacuum: Illinois has no single definition of a data center and conflicting counts of how many are operating or planned statewide. The proposed Illinois POWER Act, which remains pending in committee, would require data centers to produce environmental, water and energy impact assessments, provide public notice, negotiate community benefit agreements and report regularly on water use and energy-code compliance, according to Capitol News Illinois. The bill would specifically require water-use reporting four times a year to the Illinois Power Agency and a publicly accessible website, and would mandate the most water-efficient cooling method available, with closed-loop systems as the baseline.
A separate measure, Illinois House Bill 5755, would require at least one public hearing and a back-door referendum before a municipality could approve a data-center application, per Shaw Local. Gov. JB Pritzker has reportedly said his authority over data centers is limited, making a statewide moratorium unlikely, while Aurora, West Chicago, Normal and Bloomington have each imposed their own local moratoriums in the meantime.
Why Water Is at the Center of the Fight
The stakes extend beyond DeKalb. A single data center can use 5 million gallons of water in a single day — comparable to the water use of a medium-sized town — according to a report from CBS News Chicago, which cited Freshwater Lab figures showing U.S. data centers used 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023, a number projected to climb to 72.6 billion gallons by 2028. The Chicago Tribune has reported that data centers already account for 5.4% of Illinois' electrical consumption, with demand expected to rise 133% by 2030, even as the industry generated $2.6 billion in state and local tax revenue in 2024, per figures from the Data Center Coalition.
Other Illinois communities are wrestling with the same tradeoffs. For DeKalb residents watching those outcomes unfold elsewhere, the question now is whether city leaders will act before, rather than after, the next data center is already approved.
