Mayville puts firefighting-water bill on data centers and large storage

The requirement addresses a practical mismatch: facilities can introduce hazards that demand more preparation, water and expertise than a small department ordinarily has. The meeting account describes Mayville’s fire service as volunteer and/or paid-on-call, with limited fire-suppression infrastructure. Under the new rules, applicants would also fund specified reviews and inspections and provide financial security for eventual closure and cleanup.⁠1

There is an important limit to what is established. The council’s October 6, 2026 adoption is reported; the date enforcement can begin is not confirmed. The Advertiser said the ordinance was scheduled to take effect after publication in the Mayville Monitor on October 21. That date had already passed when the report appeared, but actual publication has not been verified. Nor have the official ordinance text and adoption minutes been independently verified for this account. Adoption and enforceability are not interchangeable.⁠1

Village President Kirsten Valentine and trustees Bill Barkowska, Margo Chambers, Beau Shaver and Kathy Freeland all voted yes, a 5–0 vote with every member present. Ordinance No. 114 adopts the 2024 International Fire Code, including its appendices, with local modifications. Fire Chief Terry Blackmer becomes the Fire Code Official, authorized to enforce the code, approve or deny related permits, and require inspections and safeguards.⁠1

The water requirement is not a universal tank size. Each covered applicant must provide an approved on-site supply, at its own expense, sufficient for the facility’s anticipated fire load. Its volume and delivery duration must support firefighting operations under nationally recognized standards, with the Fire Code Official’s approval.⁠1

The design must follow the current edition of NFPA 1142 and applicable International Fire Code provisions. Depending on the facility, the village may also require hydrants or dry hydrants, water-storage tanks, drafting points where firefighters can draw water, fire department connections, access roads and other necessary infrastructure. A promise that water will be available is not the same as an approved design showing how crews can use it.⁠1

The additional rules reach beyond familiar images of a battery warehouse or server building. The energy-storage definition covers stationary installations, modular units, shipping containers, enclosures and interconnected groups with aggregate nameplate storage capacity greater than 600 kilowatt-hours. Exactly 600 kWh does not cross that definition’s threshold. Kilowatt-hours describe stored energy, not the rate at which equipment delivers power.⁠1

Coverage is technology-neutral: lithium-ion, flow and sodium-ion batteries are listed alongside compressed air, flywheels, hydrogen and other storage technologies. The data-center definition likewise includes modular or containerized operations and related groups of units, not just conventional buildings. It explicitly reaches artificial-intelligence and cryptocurrency-mining equipment, as well as servers, storage, networking and similar electrical, cooling or backup-power systems used primarily for commercial, industrial, governmental or institutional computing.⁠1

The special high-hazard provisions exempt agricultural buildings, farm equipment, single-family and two-family homes, and on-site solar or battery systems installed primarily to serve their own parcel. Those exemptions concern the additional requirements—not the entire fire code. An ordinary household battery serving its property is not automatically treated as a covered large storage facility.⁠1

Applicants must address risk before receiving a permit. A hazard mitigation analysis, prepared under NFPA 855 and other applicable nationally recognized standards, must identify fire, explosion, thermal-runaway, hazardous-material and emergency-response hazards. It must also demonstrate how the design incorporates measures to reduce them. The Fire Code Official or a designee must review and approve it. This is a preventive test, not a finding that any particular proposal is unsafe.⁠1

Before a certificate of occupancy, applicants must submit an emergency response plan developed with the fire official. It must give responders emergency contacts, identify hazards and fire-protection systems, and explain isolation procedures, utility shutoffs and site access. Pre-incident planning information and anything else reasonably needed for a response must be included.⁠1

The obligation does not end at opening. Emergency plans must be reviewed and updated at least annually and whenever significant modifications occur. Covered facilities also face annual inspections by the fire official or a designee. The structure is continuing oversight, not a one-time filing.⁠1

The ordinance distinguishes the cost of evaluating a proposal from the cost of cleaning up after an operation ends. Before technical or legal review begins, an applicant must deposit an initial fee into village-held escrow. That money covers outside professional engineers, fire-protection consultants or legal reviews the fire official deems necessary. Applicants must also reimburse reasonable fire-department expenses for plan reviews, inspections and technical reviews.⁠1

Additional training and equipment charges are conditional. Applicants may have to fund specialized protective equipment, gas detection, containment equipment, consulting, thermal-runaway training or necessary apparatus upgrades. The council must determine those costs by resolution, based on documented needs identified during review. The list is not an automatic bill for every applicant, and the available account establishes no fixed initial escrow amount or total implementation cost.⁠1

Separate closure security must be provided before a permit is issued. It can take the form of a bond, irrevocable letter of credit, escrow or another security acceptable to the village, with the amount approved by the council. It must cover safe decommissioning, hazardous-material removal, demolition, disposal or recycling of energy-storage components, and site restoration if the facility closes, is abandoned or reaches the end of its useful life.⁠1

The distinction matters. Review escrow pays for deciding whether and how a proposal can proceed. Closure security protects against an operation leaving behind an unfunded cleanup. Neither serves its purpose merely because an account or bond exists; the consequential decision is whether the required amount covers the work.

Violations are municipal civil infractions carrying a fine of no more than $500, with no imprisonment under this ordinance. That ceiling applies to the penalty—not to water infrastructure, reimbursable expenses or required financial security. The fine is therefore a poor measure of the ordinance’s potential financial impact on applicants.⁠1

Mayville’s approach places the cost of preparing for a facility’s hazards on the applicant introducing them. But adopting that principle does not itself put water within reach of a fire crew, train responders or fund a future cleanup. Those protections depend on the approvals, documented costs and financial assurances that follow—and, first, on establishing when the rules actually took effect.