Start with a barn on a back road in Warren County, a house next to it, or a feed store a little farther down. Draw a circle 1,500 feet out from any of them. Under the zoning standards Bowling Green and Warren County adopted in June 2026, no data center building can go inside that circle. Draw a second circle at 2,000 feet, and no exhaust stack from a data center's power equipment can go inside that one either.
In a county where so much of the land is in agricultural use, those circles cover a lot of ground. So when you're weighing acreage or a farm-edge home, the useful question is what sits around the parcel. The protection comes from the neighbors.
The ruler starts at the neighbor's property
The joint zoning ordinance text makes "Data Center" its own use category. Its listed examples include cryptocurrency mining, artificial intelligence training and cloud computing. Every distance in the specific-use standards is measured outward from the data center site:
| What's being measured | Minimum distance | Measured to |
|---|---|---|
| Any data center structure or energy facility | 500 feet | The site's outer property lines |
| Any data center structure or energy facility | 1,500 feet | Any agricultural, residential or commercial district, structure or use |
| Any data center structure or energy facility | 1,500 feet | Any school, religious institution, hospital or nursing home |
| Exhaust stack, primary or backup power | 1,000 feet | The boundary of any adjacent property |
| Exhaust stack, primary or backup power | 2,000 feet | Any agricultural, residential or commercial district, structure or use |
The middle rows carry most of the weight. The Bowling Green Daily News summarized the 1,500-foot rule as distance from "any residential area." The ordinance goes further. The buffer applies to agricultural and commercial districts, structures and uses as well. A hay field counts, and so does a working farm or a roadside business.
Warren County Judge-Executive Doug Gorman was open about the intent. "We're not for data centers," he told the Fiscal Court, as WNKY reported. "What we've done from day one is, 'how do we put in an ordinance, the strictest requirements to ensure they look somewhere else?'"
Where the rules still leave room
Zoning sets the second limit. Data centers are a conditional use in Light Industrial, which means they need a separate approval. In Heavy Industrial they are permitted by right, so a project that meets the standards doesn't need a separate approval. At Bowling Green's first-reading vote, Commissioner Dana Beasley-Brown proposed requiring conditional-use approval in Heavy Industrial too. That amendment failed 3–2, according to WNKY.
With both limits applied, the remaining room is small. A site has to be zoned for heavy industry and sit far enough from every farm, home and business. Gorman said that under the regulations, only one privately owned property in Warren County could potentially qualify without a public hearing. The county has not publicly identified that parcel.
That one property also explains how the Fiscal Court voted. Fifth District Magistrate Eric Aldridge argued that a moratorium could create a loophole, because a developer might buy the property before the new rules took effect and then seek an exemption from future restrictions. "If we'd have done a moratorium, that leaves us vulnerable," he said, as WNKY reported. The court approved the first reading unanimously on June 11, according to the Bowling Green Daily News. Final approval was also unanimous, on June 25, 2026, the WKU Herald reported.
The city followed a similar path. Ordinance BG2026-6 received unanimous final approval on June 16. A proposed six-month moratorium failed for the second time, 3–2, with Beasley-Brown and Carlos Bailey in favor and Mayor Todd Alcott, Sue Parrigin and Melinda Hill opposed, according to the Bowling Green Daily News. The Planning Commission of Warren County lists the 2026 amendments as in effect.
What distance is expected to handle
Since setbacks do most of the work, it helps to know which concerns the ordinance leaves to them.
Noise is the clearest example. The standards set no decibel limit. Planning Commission head Ben Peterson told the city commission that the setbacks would address noise indirectly, the Daily News reported. The code does require applicants to describe the noise from any proposed power source.
Other effects are covered by direct rules:
- Backup generators. They may run only during outages or emergencies, apart from testing and commissioning. Each unit can be tested no more than once a week, between noon and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
- Water. Liquid cooling must be closed-loop, and cooling water must come from a public or semi-public system, never a private well. A water plan has to show the supplier can meet projected daily and peak demand without harming existing customers, and that the site is outside a wellhead-protection planning area.
- Heat. Exhaust may not raise the ambient temperature at the property boundary above natural conditions, measured four feet above the ground.
- Utility upgrades. The applicant pays for required electric, water, wastewater and stormwater improvements, and they must be in place before the facility operates.
- The end of the building's life. Applicants must file a decommissioning plan backed by financial assurance, as WNKY's summary of the rules explains.
The rules set no size limit. Peterson said that was intentional, so the standards would apply to data centers of every size. "Most of your 'polluters' are cryptocurrency (centers)," he said, according to the same Daily News report.
How to read the zoning around a parcel
Since the rules depend on what surrounds a parcel, the most useful due diligence is zoning research on the neighboring land. The Planning Commission of Warren County publishes a free Planning & Zoning map, linked from its web maps page. It shows parcel boundaries, address points, zoning, land use, development-plan conditions, building permits, past applications and site development plans.
A practical order for checking acreage or a rural home:
- Find the parcel and look at its own zoning.
- Widen the view and look for any Heavy Industrial or Light Industrial land nearby.
- Note what sits between that industrial land and the parcel, such as farms, homes or commercial uses.
- Check the past applications and site development plans on nearby industrial tracts.
- Compare against the Planning Commission's public-hearing docket and tentative agenda for pending cases.
As of late October 2026, the dockets don't show a data center case. The Planning Commission's July through October 2026 hearings list rezonings and development cases, and none is identified as a data center. The tentative agenda for the November 5 meeting lists two rezoning applications, and neither is identified as a data center. In June, Meredith Wilson of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce told city commissioners that no data center projects were in the works locally and that no state incentives were currently available for this kind of project, the Daily News reported.
This post covers the rules in general terms and isn't legal advice. If a specific parcel's zoning will affect your purchase, confirm it with the Planning Commission or a real estate attorney.
Why the debate is still open
The ordinance passed, but the argument over it continued. At an October 19 forum ahead of the Nov. 3 election, Bowling Green City Commission candidates split over the failed moratorium, WBKO reported. Hill defended the existing rules as "the strictest restrictions for data centers." Bailey said a pause would have allowed time to bring in outside experts. Beasley-Brown raised questions about karst topography and water use after a dry summer. Parrigin said in a written statement, "A pause does not stop a data center. A rule does!"
Whoever fills those seats, the ordinance in effect today stays in place unless it is amended. County leaders have said the rules can be revisited and strengthened if needed. If you're buying land, the zoning map shows where things stand today, and the dockets will show any change first.
Questions buyers ask about this
Is there a data center in Warren County now?
Bowling Green already has a smaller facility. WNKY reported that the BGMU Data Center, formerly the Lost River Data Center, has operated since 2012 as a partnership between BGMU and Western Kentucky University. The large regional project in the news is in Paducah, where WBKO reported a planned 1.8-gigawatt AI campus with construction expected to finish in 2031.
Could a data center raise my electric bill?
The city and county don't set utility rates. Local reporting attributes that authority to the utility boards and the Kentucky Public Service Commission. In September, the Daily News reported that an executive order from Gov. Andy Beshear bars utilities from raising rates to recover data-center costs.
Does owning farmland make a property more protected?
Under the ordinance, agricultural districts, structures and uses fall inside the same 1,500-foot and 2,000-foot buffers as homes and businesses.
At Jeremy Dawson Realtor Group, we review the zoning around a property along with the comparable sales before we put a value on Warren County acreage. If you're weighing land near an industrial tract, or wondering how the zoning around your own property affects its value, start with an instant home valuation and we'll go through the map with you.
