A proposed data center ordinance was sent back to the borough solicitor for redrafting Thursday night after Jim Thorpe Borough Council members raised unresolved questions about fire safety, water consumption and what happens when a data center eventually shuts down.

Council had been poised to authorize the ordinance’s advertisement for a public hearing.

Solicitor James Nanovic told council members he had enough information to proceed with a rewrite but that the draft was not ready for public review.

Among the sharpest disputes of the evening was over water.

Lou Hall of the borough’s planning commission urged council to require data centers to use a closed-loop cooling system rather than drawing from local wells.

“We’re addressing hundreds of thousands of gallons of water,” Hall said. “I feel we should require a closed-loop system so that they’re not having to consume thousands of gallons of water. It’s going to be their responsibility to create a system where they can cool the water, like geothermal, as opposed to taking all the water from all the wells in the area.”

Borough Manager Maureen Sterner said the municipality likely lacks the legal authority to mandate a specific cooling system.

“What you do is you write your ordinance in a manner that incentivizes them to choose a closed-loop system,” Sterner said. “That’s what we’ll do.”

The question of where in the borough a data center could legally be built also remained unresolved. The draft ordinance would confine data centers to the industrial zoning district, but Sterner questioned whether that district was large enough to realistically accommodate one.

“If you put it in an area where they cannot actually do it … basically, they will sue us,” Sterner said. “We’ll spend lots of time and money in court, and we’ll lose.”

Nanovic said the required size of a data center is not a straightforward question.

“You’re going to allow whatever the standard size is,” Nanovic said. “It’s kind of like saying what size warehouse you have to accommodate.”

Hall said the borough still needs to get something on the books regardless of the unresolved details.

“I know we want to get an ordinance on the books so we don’t have anything coming in tomorrow and we have nothing to guide them,” he said. “We at least have something and move forward. We can always make recommendations to modify that.”

Fire safety drew significant discussion Thursday night as well. Hall raised concerns about the draft’s proposed 60-foot height limit, saying its origins were unclear and that it should be tied to what the fire department can safely handle.

“I just like to see that we restrict the height to whatever the fire department feels they can sufficiently fight fires,” he said. “If the applicant wants to go 60 feet, then they need to provide us with the equipment to be able to fight a fire at that height.”

He also called for applicants to supply any suppression chemicals, protective apparatus or other equipment needed to contain a blaze on site.

“It’s not fair to put that on the taxpayers,” he said.

Hall recommended the fire department be formally included in the commercial plan review process for any data center proposal so it can assess its needs before approval.

A further planning commission recommendation for the ordinance included a decommissioning plan, bonded for the life of the facility, to ensure funds would be available if an operator walked away. Nanovic, however, expressed doubt the requirement would hold up legally.

“Your bonding idea, I don’t think that would fly,” he said. “This would probably cost $20 million to tear down — a $20 million bond that would be in place for the life of the data center.”

Nanovic said he had reviewed written comments from council members ahead of the meeting.

“I will incorporate many of those comments,” he said.

No timeline for a revised draft was announced Thursday.