BRIDGEWATER, Mass. — The Bridgewater Town Council voted 8-1 Tuesday to adopt zoning rules for high-intensity data centers. Several councilors said the town needed protections in place now and could tighten them later.

Council President Paul Murphy, who introduced the ordinance, said it had come before the council several times and been sent back to the planning board before reaching a final version.

Councilor Kevin Perry said subcommittee discussions and public feedback led the council to lower the thresholds for electrical demand, water demand and facility size that would trigger the rules. "To move forward with this tonight is very important to get something on the books to protect us as a town going forward," Perry said.

Another councilor said the measure was modeled on rules adopted in neighboring Mansfield. That councilor said tailoring the language to Bridgewater rather than copying it word for word would make it harder to overturn in court.

Not everyone was ready to vote. One councilor asked the council to wait until it could hear from a resident who had proposed amendments. Those amendments would address cooling water discharged into the sewer system, tie electrical demand limits to the local grid and clarify how the rules apply to private ground leases on institutional and state land. Other councilors said the amendments could be added later.

During public comment, a resident urged the council to adopt exact technical standards, such as closed-loop cooling requirements and noise limits. The resident noted that Plymouth had paused data centers with a moratorium and that Mansfield had adopted tiered rules that bar the largest facilities. Another resident told the council she would prefer a moratorium of at least a year, or an outright ban.

A councilor who had filed a separate data center ordinance said he supported the measure as a framework and planned to bring his own proposal back as a supplement.

License plate readers

The council also voted 9-0 to send to advertising an ordinance from Councilor Sean Kennedy. It would create a new chapter of town law on municipal surveillance technology and remove the town's automated license plate reader systems, whether they come from Flock or another company.

Kennedy said he did not want to politicize the cameras, calling them "a police tool." He said his concern was the data they collect, where it goes and how it could be used. "It becomes a privacy issue when you can basically track everybody's daily routines," he said.

Several councilors said they would vote to advertise the ordinance but wanted the police chief at the meeting before a final vote. Two suggested a compromise that would keep cameras at the town's entrances and out of neighborhoods. One councilor said the technology had been used in a Bridgewater kidnapping case. Another said residents had privately told him they did not want the cameras.

The vote follows debates over data centers and license plate cameras in other Massachusetts towns. The Signal reported this week on Sutton residents' opposition to a proposed data center campus and on a push in Braintree to pause Flock cameras.