# Conway Data Center Noise Ordinance (O-23-55) Conway's 2023 ordinance regulating noise emissions from data-center operations within city limits — adopted at the September 26, 2023 City Council meeting per the [[Conway City Council Agendas and Minutes on Project Stratus|agenda]] referenced in the FOIA-2026-126 production. The ordinance establishes a **65-decibel noise limit at the property boundary** (the [[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|April 2026 Project Stratus FAQ]] cites this as "the same level as a conversation") and addresses hours of operation. O-23-55 predates the Project Stratus MOU by ~18 months and is the operative noise-control mechanism Conway staff cite when responding to constituent noise concerns about Project Stratus. ## How it appears in the corpus - **[[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|FAQ Q28]]**: "The primary limit on noise will be the 2023 Data Center Noise Ordinance (O-23-55)." - **FAQ Q29**: "Go to the city website and look up Ordinance No. O-23-55. It is a thorough process." (on enforcement mechanism). - **FAQ Q30**: "It won't be allowed to operate until it is in compliance." (on remediation if noise exceeds the limit). - **FAQ Q34**: "The noise ordinance limits noise at the boundaries of the property to 65 decibels. That is the same level as a conversation." - **FAQ Q35**: "The generators would be subject to the same noise ordinances. The noise ordinance does address hours of operation. The emissions would be regulated by ADEQ." - **September 26, 2023 City Council Agenda** ([[Conway City Council Agendas and Minutes on Project Stratus]]) — references O-23-55 adoption. The agenda PDF is image-only and the ordinance text itself is not in the FOIA-2026-126 production. ## Stakeholders - [[City of Conway]] — adopting authority. - [[Conway Planning Commission]] — administered the public-hearing process for the ordinance adoption (typical pattern for noise-ordinance adoption). - Adjacent property owners — beneficiaries of the 65 dBA boundary limit. - Data-center operators (including [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] going forward) — subject to the limit. ## Timeline - **September 26, 2023** — City Council adoption per the agenda in the FOIA-2026-126 production. - **April 2026** — Cited in the staff Project Stratus FAQ as the operative noise-control mechanism. - The full procedural history (public hearing, PC recommendation, readings) is not in the corpus. ## Notes The 65 dBA boundary limit is moderately stringent relative to other Arkansas localities but not exceptionally so; the FAQ's comparison to "a conversation" understates the regulatory significance for a 24/7 operating facility. Hyperscale data centers operate continuously, with cooling systems, generator-test cycles, and HVAC running at all hours. A boundary limit of 65 dBA at all times effectively constrains the facility's design — particularly for cooling tower fan selection, transformer placement, and the location of emergency-generator yards. The FAQ's enforcement framing ("It won't be allowed to operate until it is in compliance") is more aggressive than typical municipal noise enforcement (which usually involves citation and fine rather than operational shutdown). Whether the ordinance actually carries shutdown authority is not established in the corpus; the FAQ's framing may be aspirational. That Conway adopted a stand-alone data-center noise ordinance in 2023 — **before any specific data-center project was announced in Conway** — is significant. It indicates that the City was preparing the regulatory framework for hyperscale-data-center reception over a year before [[Project Stratus]] surfaced as a specific project. This fits the pattern visible in the FAQ Q1 statement that "[t]he company was working with Entergy Arkansas on finding suitable sites in the state" — Conway was on the candidate-site list well before April 2025. The wiki has not separately archived O-23-55 as a Tier-2 record. The ordinance text is publicly posted via the Conway municode. A follow-on web-archive of O-23-55 is warranted. A separate (in-drafting as of April 2025, not adopted as of FOIA-2026-126) **Conway Data Center Notification Ordinance** — Lauren Hoffman's draft data-center notice-and-operation regulations from the [[Conway Internal Staff Teams Chats on Project Stratus|April 21, 2025 Teams chat]] — would, if adopted, layer on top of O-23-55 by requiring half-mile-radius notice to residents prior to any data-center build commencement. That draft ordinance does not appear in the FOIA-2026-126 production in final form.