The construction of a data center in Lawrence County, Ohio, has sparked calls for a moratorium in the neighboring city of Ironton, which has now passed a first reading at an Ironton City Council meeting.

Ironton residents were surprised when AI data center firm Strata Expense announced last December that they had begun building a data center in Lawrence County.

The facility, backed by server maker Supermicro and intelligence platform provider Ravel, is being built at 1476 County Road 1A in the Haverhill area. The land was sold to the developer by the Lawrence County Economic Development Corporation, which was present at a ribbon-cutting ceremony held by Strata Expense.

Ironton citizens expressed worry about the manner in which the data center was approved, its environmental impact, and the potential effect on the community. A petition, titled "Stop the AI data centers in Lawrence County, Ohio," has received 5,178 signatures at time of writing.

Those concerned attended a meeting held last week by Ironton City Council and Bill Dingus, the corporation’s executive director, where a moratorium on data centers in Ironton managed to pass on first reading. It will go to a second reading at Ironton City Council’s next meeting.

Ironton is located at Ohio’s southern border with Kentucky. Lawrence County, also in Ohio’s south, shares a border with Kentucky and West Virginia. The data center presence in both areas is negligible, and most of the state’s data centers are located around its main metropolitan areas, like Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.