Where the data centers are going, and who is pushing back

Groton is Connecticut's entry on this map, which until now showed 22 facilities and no opposition at all. The town enacted its own moratorium on data center construction, and is grouped by the Rockefeller Institute with Peculiar, Missouri and Bangor, Maine among the communities that have successfully passed local moratoriums or bans. Worth noting how thin the sourcing is on small-town actions like this one compared with the coverage a Loudoun County or a Prince William gets -- a state reading as zero pushback on this map is often a reporting gap rather than a real absence, and Connecticut was one.

COUNCIL ADOPTED A PERMANENT BAN, UNANIMOUSLY. On 9 Sep 2026 Eastport's City Council enacted a citizen-initiated ordinance prohibiting large-scale data centres in the city, four weeks after a unanimous 180-day moratorium that expressly covered facilities underwater. The target is DeepGreen's tidal-powered AI data centre in the Western Passage off Kendall Head, since scaled back from a 400-acre, 51 MW, 170-turbine envelope to 27 acres and 15 MW. The council rejected a second citizen ordinance requiring a public vote on large developments after city attorneys called it unlawful, and voted to seek intervenor status at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which accepted DeepGreen's preliminary permit application in August. A tidal project in the Western Passage needs a federal licence, so the city is pressing its case at FERC as well as in its own code. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether FERC grants the four-year study permit, and whether the city ban can bind a tidal project beyond its shoreline.

BIDDEFORD'S PLANNING BOARD BACKED A BAN, UNANIMOUSLY -- IT IS NOT LAW YET. On 3 Sep 2026 the board supported an ordinance that would prohibit new data centers in Biddeford and stop any existing ones from growing; small operations could stay as they are. City planner David Galbraith said the reasons are mainly environmental and that the city knows of no large data centers now. The board holds a second reading on 7 Oct, and the City Council has the final vote. Maine towns have been acting one by one since Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a statewide moratorium in April. NOT ESTABLISHED: the council date and vote, and the ordinance's size definition.

UNANIMOUS VOTE TO START A PERMANENT BAN. Gorham's Town Council voted on 1 Sep 2026 to send a permanent data-centre prohibition to the Planning Board for a public hearing, building on the temporary moratorium the town adopted in June. No data centre has been proposed in Gorham; councillors described the facilities as out-of-state businesses that would extract value from the town. The ban cannot take effect until the Planning Board holds its hearing and votes to amend the Land Use and Development Code. Maine's governor vetoed a statewide moratorium earlier in 2026 (see pb-me-statewide-ld307), which has left towns such as Gorham to act one by one. NOT ESTABLISHED: the Planning Board hearing date, and the June moratorium's exact length and expiry.

ELLSWORTH PAUSED DATA CENTRES FOR 180 DAYS, 4-1. The City Council adopted the moratorium on 17 Aug 2026, effective at once, covering any data center in city limits. Councilor Steve O'Halloran voted no; Council Chair Patrick Lyons and Councilor Nancy Smith were absent. The ordinance cites a risk of overloading water, roads, fire protection and public safety, and the pause -- to about mid-February 2027, and extendable -- is for studying impacts and drafting ordinance changes. City Manager Charlie Pearce said workshops and at least one public hearing will follow, though none is scheduled. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether any project prompted it, and the hearing date.

Moratorium enacted after a state-level override effort failed -- Maine communities acting locally once the statewide route closed. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Moratorium enacted following the failed state override effort. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Moratorium enacted following the failed state override effort. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Maine lawmakers passed LD 307, which would have been the first statewide pause on large data centers pending a study of grid and electricity-cost impacts. Governor Janet Mills vetoed it for lacking an exemption for a planned site in Jay, writing that she otherwise would have signed it.

One-year moratorium to study zoning and health impacts. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

ANYTHING OVER 2 MEGAWATTS IS BANNED. Mansfield Town Meeting on 5 May 2026 adopted a zoning bylaw that prohibits data centres above 2 MW anywhere in town and bars all of them from residential and business districts; facilities of 2 MW or less are allowed only in some industrial and planned business districts, and only with a Planning Board special permit. The Boston Globe, via Boston.com, described it as the first near-total ban by a Massachusetts town; Holyoke's 2025 city ordinance is on this map separately. No project was pending -- planning director Sarah Raposa said the town wanted to be prepared before interest arrived. The 2 MW line is the detail to copy: it allows server rooms and small edge sites while excluding anything at hyperscale. NOT ESTABLISHED: the Town Meeting vote count and whether the Attorney General's office has completed its review of the bylaw. Not to be confused with Mansfield Township, NJ (pb-nj-mansfield-ban) or Mansfield, GA.

Holyoke enacted a ban on data centers in mid-2025, part of a cluster of municipal bans that summer.

VOTERS APPROVED THE MORATORIUM 1,335 TO 143. At a special town election on 8 Sep 2026, Nottingham adopted a 12-month pause on data-centre development, after a proposal earlier in the year drew enough backlash that it was withdrawn. The ordinance gives the town a year to study the land-use, environmental, infrastructure and fiscal effects; planning board chair Drew Stevens said that could end in permanent zoning that bars data centres altogether. The margin -- about 90 percent -- came from a town vote, not a board, which is how New Hampshire towns adopt zoning. Nottingham's fight also shaped its neighbours: Rochester's mayor cited it while drafting his city's zoning restriction. NOT ESTABLISHED: who proposed the withdrawn project and where, and the moratorium's exact expiry date.

A REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR SAYS SHE WILL WRITE A MORATORIUM INTO THE BUDGET. On 2 Sep 2026, after an Executive Council meeting in Durham, Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she will put a multi-year pause on new data centres into HB 2, the policy bill that travels with New Hampshire's two-year budget, because their power demand would raise electricity prices. The question came from Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill about a possible hyperscale site at Granite Shore Power's closed Merrimack Station coal plant in Bow; the Union Leader reports federal filings show a 350 MW grid connection being explored, NHPR that the size is unconfirmed. THE TIMING IS THE CATCH: a budget moratorium would not take effect before July 2027. Liot Hill called that too late and asked for an executive order or a special session; Ayotte has not said she will use either. On 18 Sep Senate President Sharon Carson said the Senate will look at legislation too, and House Democrats plan a 24-month bill. NOT ESTABLISHED: how long the pause would last, what size it would cover, or any bill text. WHAT TO ASK: whether the Bow project can file before July 2027, and whether a pause would reach applications already pending.

A ZONING WORKAROUND FOR A STATE THAT FORBIDS BANS. Rochester's council is weighing an ordinance that would bar data centres from every zoning district except the Recycling Industrial District, and require a conditional use permit even there. Mayor Chuck Grassie has said the point is that Waste Management owns most of that zone -- a restriction designed to work like a ban where state law does not allow one. The city considered a one-year moratorium and chose this instead. No project has been filed; Grassie cited informal interest in about 180 acres of industrial land. At the 18 Aug public hearing residents spoke for nearly two hours, mostly against data centres. The city said amendments raised that night would need more discussion before a final vote; NHPR reported that vote was set for 1 Sep. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the council adopted it on 1 Sep or later, and the vote. One radio station reported it as enacted on 19 Aug; the city's own account contradicts that.

MANCHESTER REVERSED ITSELF AND BANNED DATA CENTRES, UNANIMOUSLY. The Ocean County township council adopted Ordinance 26-48 on second reading in mid-September 2026 (reported 18 Sep), undoing an earlier decision that had let data centres into the township's redevelopment plan. The ban was introduced in late August. Council President Michele Zolezi said data centres are not permitted in Manchester, full stop. The ordinance takes effect after a 20-day wait. Residents who came to the meeting at Manchester Township High School were not reassured: they asked whether a developer could file during those 20 days, whether a lawsuit would follow, why the text has no definition of a data centre, and whether a moratorium should be layered on top. A use variance before the Zoning Board remains possible under state land-use law. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact meeting date, the roll call by name, and which redevelopment project had included data centres. Ask the township clerk for the adopted ordinance and roll call.

MILLBURN'S PLANNERS SAID NO TO A BAN, NARROWLY. On 17 Sep 2026 the Planning Board found the Township Committee's draft data-centre prohibition inconsistent with the master plan, and suggested a limit instead: accessory computing capped at 20% of a building or 10,000 square feet and 2 megawatts of dedicated capacity. A subcommittee will study technology and utility impacts on a short timetable. In New Jersey a governing body can still adopt an ordinance the planning board calls inconsistent, but it must state its reasons, so the next move is the committee's. NOT ESTABLISHED: the board's vote count and whether the committee will proceed, amend or drop the ban.

GLOUCESTER TOWNSHIP (CAMDEN COUNTY) ADOPTED AN ABSOLUTE PROHIBITION ON 15 SEP 2026, unanimously, with nobody speaking at the hearing. Ordinance O-26-16 bars commercial, industrial or large-scale data centres in every zoning district, overlay zone and redevelopment area. THE REDEVELOPMENT CLAUSE IS THE PART TO NOTE. The Pinelands Alliance argues that towns can let a banned use back in through redevelopment plans, and that neighbours are not individually notified when those plans are adopted. An ordinance that names redevelopment areas closes that route unless a later plan overrides it. A resident had earlier asked about a proposed data-centre listing in the township, and the administration was told to follow up. NOT ESTABLISHED: how 'large-scale' is defined or whether there is a size threshold, the roll-call names, and what the listing was. The source is an automated summary of the meeting video, so confirm against the adopted ordinance.

LINDEN PUT A CITYWIDE BAN ON THE TABLE ON 15 SEP 2026. Mayor Derek Armstead and Council President Michele Yamakaitis brought an ordinance to the Union County city's council prohibiting AI data centres in every zoning district. The city posted notice of Ordinance 70-53, adding data centres to its list of prohibited uses (Chapter 31-20.25), on 18 Sep. Officials cited electricity and water demand, noise, emissions and strain on local infrastructure against few permanent jobs; no specific project is named as the trigger. The city says it consulted the youth group Climate Revolution Action Network, which drafts many of these ordinances. NOT ESTABLISHED: the first-reading vote and the date of the public hearing and final vote. The city clerk's published notice of Ordinance 70-53 will give the hearing date.

MIDDLETOWN INTRODUCED A BAN ON 8 SEP 2026 WITH A FINAL VOTE SET FOR 21 SEP. Ordinance 2026-3536 would list data centres as a prohibited use in every zoning district of the Monmouth County township, next door to Holmdel, which banned them in August after a 40 MW application arrived. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the 21 Sep hearing went ahead and how the committee voted. What would settle it: the township clerk's record of the 21 Sep meeting or a local report of the second reading.

RARITAN TOWNSHIP BANNED DATA CENTRES IN SEPTEMBER 2026 AND CLOSED THE WAREHOUSE DOOR BY NAME. The Hunterdon County committee amended its land development code to prohibit data centres in every district and to say that warehouses, flex space and research buildings cannot contain one -- the conversions a developer would otherwise try. It keeps a narrow allowance: a server room inside a building, serving only that building, capped at 10% of floor area or 2,000 square feet, whichever is smaller. Mayor Brad Perry and the whole committee supported it. Compare Summit and Bernards, which also wrote their carve-outs down in numbers. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact adoption date (reported 21 Sep as 'recent'), the ordinance number and roll call. Ask the clerk.

ROCHELLE PARK IS WRITING RULES, NOT YET A BAN -- and its planner warned against a blanket one. At the Bergen County township's Land Use Board on 28 Aug 2026, members were told the governing body wants a data-centre ordinance drafted. Consultant planner Burgess advised barring large data centres while allowing small computer rooms serving a single business, with generator noise limits and assurances on water and power. His reason is worth noting for every New Jersey town counting bans: he said emerging case law treating some uses as 'inherently beneficial' may bring more lawsuits, and that master-plan language is sturdier than a flat prohibition. A draft is expected in October. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether a ban or a regulation will be introduced, and when. No data-centre project is pending in the township.

THE STATE CHOSE DISCLOSURE, NOT A PAUSE. On 27 Aug 2026 Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a law requiring data centres to report to the Board of Public Utilities every six months: total power, cooling and IT-equipment energy, peak daily water use, water sources and backup power. It is one of four pillars of the plan she announced in May -- reporting, a separate rate class (signed 7 Jul), help for towns negotiating with developers, and state technical assistance for towns reviewing projects. The same day, residents and Food & Water Watch confronted her asking for a statewide moratorium; her spokesperson answered that rather than a three-year study, the governor acted. That is the split this map keeps recording: by CRAN's count nearly 100 New Jersey towns have banned data centres, and the state will regulate them rather than pause them. NOT ESTABLISHED: the bill number and whether small facilities are exempt from reporting. WHAT TO ASK: when the first reports are due and whether BPU will publish them.

MULLICA INTRODUCED A SIX-MONTH PAUSE; ADOPTION IS NOT CONFIRMED. Ordinance 09-2026, posted by the township on 27 Aug 2026 at first reading, would halt approval, construction, expansion and operation of data centers in Mullica Township for six months while the Planning Board and Environmental Commission study the issue and make recommendations. It amends section 144-9 of the township code. Mullica is a Pinelands township. NOT ESTABLISHED: the second-reading date, the vote, and whether the pause has taken effect. Ask the township clerk.

The Jackson Township Council voted 4-1 on Aug 25, 2026 to ban data centres by ordinance, before a packed municipal building and after a large turnout. Councilman Chris Pollak drafted Ordinance 2026-25; the township contains part of the Pinelands National Reserve, and residents organising with Climate Revolution Action Network New Jersey pointed to grid strain and clean water. Councilman Nino Borrelli framed it as getting a law on the books BEFORE an application arrives, and noted the wording could later be tightened toward the stronger ordinance neighbouring Howell Township adopted. THE DISSENT IS THE MOST USEFUL PART OF THIS RECORD AND IS NOT A PRO-DATA-CENTRE POSITION. Council President Mordechai Burnstein, who opposes data centres like everyone else on the dais, voted no on the ground that the ordinance WEAKENS the township. Township legal counsel had already advised that data centres are not a permitted use anywhere in Jackson: under Township Code 244-6 any use not specifically permitted is prohibited, and data centres appear in no zone, so an applicant would already need a use variance. Burnstein argued that writing a definition into the code helps applicants and their lawyers rather than residents, citing a 2015 episode in which the township had no definition of dormitories, banned them, and opened what he called a can of worms. NOT ESTABLISHED: which reading is right. No court has tested it. But it is a live legal question under any municipality's land-use scheme, and it is not visible in any count of bans.

East Brunswick banned data centres unanimously on Aug 25, 2026, one of three New Jersey municipalities to act the same night alongside North Brunswick and Stafford Township. NO MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC SPOKE at the ordinance's public hearing -- worth recording because this map's records are usually built from packed rooms and hours of comment, and an unopposed, unattended, unanimous ban is a different political fact: by August 2026 this had stopped being contentious here. Before the vote the council made a clerical correction, changing "primary use" to "principal use" to match the terminology already in the township's land use code, a change made earlier at planning board level. Charlie Kratovil of Food & Water Watch spoke in support during general public comment after the hearing had closed.

North Brunswick prohibited data centres on Aug 25, 2026, the same night as neighbouring East Brunswick and as Stafford Township on the shore. Residents organised alongside Food & Water Watch New Jersey, The Watershed Institute and Climate Revolution Action Network. CRAN's executive director Ben Dziobek described the mechanism plainly: residents see what other towns have done, talk to each other, and demand the same protection, so each ordinance makes the next one easier. That is a claim about diffusion rather than about any local application -- nothing was pending here. SOURCING NOTE: this record rests on the advocacy release and ROI-NJ's report of it. The ordinance number and vote count have not been read directly and should be confirmed with the township clerk.

Stafford Township adopted Ordinance 2026-22 on Aug 24, 2026, the first ban in Ocean County. It supplements Section 212-4.1 of the township code, headed Additional Prohibited Uses, and the operative line is one sentence: all data centres are prohibited from operating anywhere in the township. The ordinance defines a data centre as a facility used to store and manage digital data -- a broad definition, which cuts both ways, since breadth is what makes a ban hard to route around and also what makes it vulnerable to the argument that it sweeps in ordinary server rooms. A resident told the council she hoped it would set a precedent among other shore towns; one Ocean County town, Jackson, followed the next night. NOTE THE DRAFTING ROUTE, because it differs from the objection raised in Jackson: Stafford added data centres to an EXISTING list of prohibited uses rather than writing a new definitional section, which is the narrower move.

Howell Township's all-Republican council voted UNANIMOUSLY on Aug 18, 2026 for an ordinance that, in its own words, RECONFIRMS data centres as a prohibited use under the township's existing zoning rules -- introduced Jul 14, after the township had already adopted a moratorium by unanimous vote the previous December. THAT WORDING IS THE POINT, and it answers the objection raised in Jackson. Jackson's council president voted against a ban there arguing that writing a new definition into the code helps applicants' lawyers, because uses not specifically permitted are already prohibited. Howell drafted around exactly that risk: rather than creating a new prohibition it declares an existing one, which leaves nothing new for a developer to argue was absent before. Two neighbouring Monmouth-area townships took opposite drafting views of the same legal question within a week of each other. Resident Joe Bizonos of Howell Connections framed it as being proactive in a farm town with natural resources to protect; residents organised with Climate Revolution Action Network. Mayor John Leggio and the council backed it.

CRESSKILL BANNED DATA CENTRES ON 12 AUG 2026 WITHOUT A SINGLE PUBLIC COMMENT. The Bergen County borough council adopted Ordinance 26-44-1700 unanimously, adding a definition of data centre to its zoning code and prohibiting the use. Council Member Schultz-Rummel moved it and Council Member Savas seconded. No project is on record as having prompted it, and no resident spoke at the hearing. NOT ESTABLISHED: the introduction date and whether any application was pending. The borough's 2026 ordinance library holds the adopted text.

THE BAN PASSED; THE PROJECT IT WAS AIMED AT MAY NOT BE COVERED. Holmdel's Township Committee banned data centres unanimously on 11 Aug 2026. But three days after the ordinance was introduced on 21 Jul, Bell Works owner Somerset Development filed a site plan for a 108,000-square-foot, 40-megawatt data centre inside an existing building at 101 Crawford Corner Road. The township's own attorney, Michael Collins, told the public that New Jersey's time-of-application rule means a complete application is judged under the zoning that existed when it was filed -- before the ban. THIS IS THE GAP IN EVERY BAN ON THIS MAP: an ordinance protects a town only against applications that arrive after it. The Planning Board took the application up from 1 Sep and has up to about 120 days. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the board approves it, and on what conditions. WHAT TO ASK: the Planning Board's hearing dates for the Bell Works site plan.

A LOSS, IN THE STATE WITH THE MOST BANS. While three dozen New Jersey municipalities were prohibiting data centres, Vineland approved the next phase of a large AI data-centre project in August 2026 over resident objection -- NJ.com reported residents erupting at the meeting, one telling officials they had been sold out. THIS RECORD EXISTS BECAUSE THE MAP NEEDS IT. New Jersey is being described nationally as the state that said no, on the strength of a ban count kept by advocacy groups. A count of bans cannot show the towns that said yes, and a reader who sees only the bans will misjudge what is actually happening in the state. WHAT HAS SINCE BEEN ESTABLISHED: the developer is DataOne, building for Nebius. The phase approved in August is an LNG tank and fuel-cell plant; DataOne later drew stop-work notices for starting it before city approval, neighbours filed a class-action suit over noise, and on 22 Sep 2026 the state fined DataOne $1.07 million for running 62 gas generators without air permits (separate records). NOT ESTABLISHED: the Planning Board's vote on the phase. The approval itself is still recorded from Patch's summary of NJ.com.

Jersey City, the second-largest city in New Jersey, voted to ban data centres within its limits in August 2026, alongside Howell and Bayonne in the same week. It is the largest municipality on the state's ban list and the one that most complicates the picture of this as a suburban and rural movement -- a dense city with existing commercial infrastructure prohibiting a commercial use outright. SOURCING NOTE: recorded from Patch's statewide roundup and its linked local report; the ordinance number and vote count have not been read directly.

A DEFINING ELECTION ISSUE, then a 5-0 vote. Bayonne's city council approved a data-centre prohibition unanimously and Mayor Sharon Ashe-Nadrowski signed it, making Bayonne -- by Patch's count at the time -- the 23rd New Jersey municipality to ban them. THE DIFFERENCE FROM MOST ENTRIES ON THIS LIST is that Bayonne had something concrete to refuse: no data centre operates there, but three were proposed in the preceding year, including a large AI facility at the Delta Self-Storage site on New Hook Road. Residents packed council meetings for months and the question became a defining issue in the city's mayoral election -- a rare case on this map where a data-centre fight was fought at the ballot box rather than only in a council chamber. The campaign was backed by Friends of Liberty State Park and state Senator Angela McKnight. Resident Jennah Reddick, who led it, said the point was that residents rather than developers held the power, and that they had been told it was a losing fight.

THE ONLY TOWN ON THIS MAP THAT PUBLICLY WORKED OUT THAT ITS OWN THRESHOLD WAS THE LOOPHOLE. Summit's Common Council spent months not on WHETHER to prohibit data centres but on how to DEFINE one in the ordinance, adding them to the prohibited land uses in Chapter 35 of the city's Development Regulations. The draft turned on a 20-MEGAWATT PEAK POWER THRESHOLD. Municipal Land Use Manager Augusto Thomaso said the benchmark came from industry standards: a traditional server room runs around that level, while a large AI data centre can need hundreds of megawatts. COUNCILMAN JAMEL BOYER MADE THE OBJECTION THAT EVERY JURISDICTION WRITING ONE OF THESE SHOULD READ. His point was that the threshold sat at the top of the fastest-growing category, so the ordinance would bar the rare giant while leaving the door open to the common kind, and that as written it did not prohibit what residents were actually asking to be prohibited. Council members and residents raised the same worry from the other side -- that newer, smaller-scale projects are designed and operated in ways a strict power cutoff does not capture. THE COUNCIL AGREED AND REMOVED THE NUMBER: staff and consultants were directed to draft a revised ordinance dropping the automatic 20 MW classification, introduced Jul 7 with a public hearing on Jul 28. The prohibition reaches major redevelopment sites including the former Bristol Myers Squibb campus. Planner Joe Burgess noted the trade-off officials keep citing: heavy construction work, few permanent jobs afterwards. WHY THIS RECORD MATTERS BEYOND SUMMIT: a megawatt threshold is the most common way these ordinances are drafted, and it is a ceiling, not a floor -- it defines exactly how small a facility has to be to escape. Summit is the case where that was said out loud before adoption rather than discovered afterwards.

CHERRY HILL SAID NO WITH NOTHING ON THE TABLE. The township council unanimously adopted a ban on large-scale data centres on 27 Jul 2026, drawing the line between AI and cloud facilities and the small server rooms ordinary businesses keep. Mayor David Fleisher said Cherry Hill should not be a guinea pig while the technology changes. WHAT THE BAN ACTUALLY DOES is worth stating precisely: it does not make a data centre impossible, it forces any applicant to seek a use variance from the zoning board, the hardest approval in New Jersey land use. It is one of a run of South Jersey bans the same summer -- Medford, Mansfield, Chesterfield, Millville -- while Vineland, down the road, approved a large AI campus. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ordinance number and the size or power line that separates 'large-scale' from a server room.

A BAN ON SOMETHING ALREADY NOT ALLOWED -- ON PURPOSE. Mansfield Township in Burlington County adopted its data-centre prohibition 4-0 on 15 Jul 2026. The township says data centres were already not permitted under its code; it named them as a prohibited use anyway, with a definition, specifically to make legal challenges harder. That is the opposite bet from the one Jackson's council president made when he voted no, arguing that writing a definition gives developers' lawyers something to attack. Deputy Mayor Kelly Stobie framed it as protecting quality of life; the township cited water, open space and electricity rates. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ordinance number, and whether any application was ever contemplated.

TWO LAND USES, ONE ORDINANCE. Neptune Township's committee banned data centres on 13 Jul 2026 in the same ordinance that bars immigration detention facilities -- the only entry on this map to pair them. Deputy Mayor Derel Stroud said both raise serious concerns, from resource use and environmental harm to due process and public safety. ROI-NJ counted Neptune the 25th New Jersey town to ban data centres; that ordinal is not attributed and does not match other counts. Nothing was pending in Neptune. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote and ordinance number.

LEBANON TOWNSHIP ADOPTED ORDINANCE 10-2026 ON 8 JUL 2026, making data centres a non-permitted use in every zoning district. The Hunterdon County township's ordinance defines the use broadly -- conventional data centres, AI processing, cloud computing and cryptocurrency mining -- rather than setting a megawatt or floor-area threshold. A committee member tied it to rural character, groundwater and the electrical infrastructure such sites demand. This is the township, not Lebanon Borough. NOT ESTABLISHED: the roll-call tally, any carve-out for accessory server rooms, and whether a proposal prompted it; nothing in the meeting record names one. The township clerk has the adopted text.

New Jersey enacted the Data Center Fair Share Act (S731/A796) on July 7, 2026, the rate-class pillar of the four-part plan Governor Mikie Sherrill unveiled in May: reporting (signed Aug 27, own record), a separate rate class (this law), resources for towns negotiating with developers, and state technical assistance for towns reviewing projects. The law creates a separate ratepayer class so large data centers pay for the grid upgrades and energy their operations require, rather than shifting those costs onto residential and small-business customers, and pairs with energy and water reporting and community-benefit standards. Environmental groups had pressed for a stronger three-year moratorium on facilities over 20 megawatts.

HAMPTON BANNED DATA CENTRES IN EVERY ZONE ON 29 JUN 2026. The Sussex County township committee adopted Ordinance 2026-13, amending Chapter 108 of its code, unanimously among members present; Committeewoman E. Klose moved it and Committeeman E. Ramm seconded. Residents who spoke thanked the committee. No project is on record as the trigger. NOT ESTABLISHED: the number of members present, the effective date, and whether any application was pending. This is Hampton Township in Sussex County, not the several other Hamptons in New Jersey.

Hardyston adopted Ordinance 2026-12 unanimously on 24 Jun 2026, prohibiting data centres in every zoning district. No developer had approached the township; residents' concern was a 64-acre town-owned parcel on Route 94 whose zoning allowed data centres among other uses -- so the ban closes a door the township itself held open. THE REASON FOR THIS RECORD IS THE COUNT: Hardyston is not on the 33-town roster CRAN supplied to Patch on 20 Aug, two months after it acted. That fits CRAN's later statement that the real number is nearer 100 than 40, and it is one more reason no single New Jersey figure should be repeated without saying whose list it is.

OLD BRIDGE IS THE REDEVELOPMENT LOOPHOLE IN ONE TOWN. Mayor Debbie Walker said on 24 Jun 2026 that data centres were already barred from every ordinary zoning district, because in New Jersey an unlisted use is a prohibited use -- but that two of the township's adopted redevelopment plans, Crossroads and Jake Brown Road, had allowed them. A council majority voted on 9 Jun to draft an ordinance adding data centres as a prohibited use everywhere. The Pinelands Alliance now counts Old Bridge as a ban. NOT ESTABLISHED: that the ordinance was introduced and adopted, on what dates and by what vote, and whether it amends the redevelopment plans, which is where the permission sat. Ask the clerk for the ordinance number and whether Crossroads and Jake Brown Road were changed.

A BAN THAT WRITES DOWN WHAT IS STILL ALLOWED. Bernards Township's committee unanimously adopted Ordinance 2599 in June 2026, banning data centres in every zone and deleting 'data processing centers' from the permitted uses in its E-1 to E-5 office zones -- where they had previously been allowed. It names what is barred: colocation, cloud computing, server farms, cryptocurrency mining and wholesale digital infrastructure. And it exempts server rooms that stay accessory to another use and fall under stated limits on size, electrical load, infrastructure and standby generation. That second tier is the answer to the problem Medford ran into, where a broad definition swept in homes and doctors' offices. Mayor Ana Duarte McCarthy's case was sewer capacity: she said a 200,000-square-foot data centre could send 100,000 gallons a day into sewers, five times a typical office complex. NOT ESTABLISHED: the actual numeric caps -- read the ordinance before copying it.

BANNED FIRST, DEFINED LATER. Medford's council unanimously adopted a data-centre ban on 23 Jun 2026, and within weeks its own Planning Board found the problem: the ordinance defines a data centre as any facility that stores, manages or processes digital data, and a board member pointed out that his house fits. Read literally it could reach medical offices, cell towers and any business running servers. The board set up a subcommittee to rewrite it, and the township planner proposed separating types of data centre -- the tiering that Bernards Township wrote in from the start and that New York's statute uses. THIS IS THE COST OF COPYING A MODEL ORDINANCE QUICKLY: breadth makes a ban hard to route around and also easy to attack as sweeping in lawful uses, which is the argument developers are already making in Monroe, Montgomery and Andover. NOT ESTABLISHED: the revised text or when council will vote on it.

Vernon Township's council adopted Ordinance 2611 on 23 Jun 2026 by a 5-0 roll call, banning data centres -- defined as facilities primarily engaged in storing, processing or hosting digital data and high-density computing, including cloud, cryptocurrency mining and AI processing and the cooling, generators and utility equipment that serve them. It exempts ordinary IT at schools, hospitals, government buildings and businesses, and keeps cell sites and fiber lines permitted. Unlike Bernards Township, it sets no numeric size or power cap; the exemptions are by type of user, not by scale. One of three Sussex County bans that month, with Andover (now under suit) and Hardyston. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether any project was pending. SOURCING: an AI-generated summary of the meeting video (Citizen Portal) plus a local newspaper listing; the ordinance itself has not been read.

ASBURY PARK PASSED A RESOLUTION, NOT AN ORDINANCE. On 17 Jun 2026 the council unanimously adopted a resolution opposing data centres in the city and urging Governor Sherrill and the Legislature to pause new construction statewide. Patch's headline called it a ban; its own text, TAPinto and GovTech all describe a resolution. In New Jersey a use is barred by zoning ordinance, so unless a later ordinance exists, Asbury Park is a statement of opposition on a list of bans -- the same kind of slippage as Sayreville's moratorium. Its stated concerns (grid, cooling water, noise, air quality, diesel backup generators) stand. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether a zoning ordinance followed.

A LOCAL BAN AND A REQUEST TO THE STATE, THE SAME NIGHT. Red Bank's council voted unanimously on 11 Jun 2026 to ban data centres in the borough, and in the same meeting asked the state to pause large-scale data-centre construction everywhere until there is real oversight -- the first New Jersey municipality to make that request. Mayor Billy Portman said he supports a statewide ban until the impacts can be removed. Several towns later paired their bans with the same request, and the state answered in August with reporting rules instead of a pause. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ordinance number; confirm the ban was adopted by ordinance, since Asbury Park's similar action a week later was only a resolution.

Monroe Township banned data centers by ordinance on April 22, 2026 after months of packed, hours-long meetings over water quality, pollution, and noise. Developer Hexa Builders answered with a $300 million lawsuit -- now removed to federal court -- claiming the ban violates equal protection and even free speech, after the township denied its application for a 1-million-square-foot data center and warehouse. The case tests whether a town that says no can be litigated into yes, and its price tag is aimed at every other municipality weighing a ban.

APPROVED, UNDER CONSTRUCTION, AND OPPOSED AFTER THE FACT. While New Jersey towns were passing bans on projects that did not exist, Kenilworth in Union County already had one: a $1.8 billion AI data centre under construction. More than 100 residents came to a borough council meeting in June 2026 to protest it, and ROI-NJ reports residents say they were never told it would be built in their community. NJ.com's headline says the borough approved it. THIS IS THE CASE A BAN COUNT CANNOT SHOW: a ban protects a town only before an application lands. The same week, Warren Township committeeman Daniel Croson, whose town had just banned data centres, said no single town can solve this and asked the state for a statewide moratorium on large-scale facilities -- which Governor Sherrill has declined. NOT ESTABLISHED: who is building it, its size in megawatts, when and by what vote the borough approved it, and whether any legal challenge exists. WHAT TO ASK: the borough's approval resolution and whether notice went to neighbours.

Warren Township's committee voted 5-0 in June 2026 to ban AI data centres. What makes it worth a record is what its own committeeman said next: Daniel Croson said the town was proud of the ban but that no single town can solve this alone, and asked the state for a statewide moratorium on large-scale data centres until real protections exist. That is a town telling the state its own ban is not enough. Governor Sherrill has since declined a statewide pause in favour of reporting rules and a rate class. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact adoption date and ordinance number.

A BAN THAT FOLLOWED A SMALL PROPOSAL, NOT A HYPERSCALE ONE. East Greenwich Township has adopted an ordinance prohibiting future data centres, Mayor Jim Philbin said, as NJ.com reported on 12 Jun 2026. What prompted it was American Tower's Mt. Royal Data Storage Facility: about 16,000 square feet and nearly 4 megawatts, plus roughly 3,500 square feet of power equipment. That is an edge site, a fraction of the size of the campuses driving the statewide fight. American Tower withdrew the application before a 30 Jun hearing. Residents organised as East Greenwich Grassroots, led by Anthony Chan. WHY IT IS WORTH A RECORD: most New Jersey bans are aimed at AI-scale facilities, but this one was triggered by a 4-megawatt site. That is the size class a megawatt threshold like the 20 MW line in Summit's first draft would have let through. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ordinance number, adoption date and vote, and whether the withdrawal came because of the ban or before it.

A MORATORIUM BEING COUNTED AS A BAN, AND THE HEADLINES DID IT TOO. Sayreville's borough council voted 4-3 to adopt an EIGHTEEN-MONTH MORATORIUM on data centres -- a temporary halt with an expiry, not a prohibition. It was introduced in June with a public hearing set for Jul 20. THE SLIPPAGE IS VISIBLE IN THE COVERAGE ITSELF: TAPinto's headline calls it a ban while its own first line calls it an eighteen-month moratorium. Patch described it accurately as a temporary halt. GovTech ran it under a headline about bans emerging in four New Jersey communities. WHY THIS RECORD MATTERS BEYOND SAYREVILLE: it is the test case for the New Jersey count. Advocacy tallies put the state at roughly 38 municipal BANS, the most in the country, and Sayreville appears on that roster. If a temporary moratorium is being counted as an outright ban, the headline figure is measuring two different things -- and this map records the difference as `paused` versus `blocked` precisely because they are not the same. A moratorium expires on a date; a ban has to be repealed. THE 4-3 MARGIN IS ALSO WORTH KEEPING. Most New Jersey ordinances recorded here passed unanimously or near it; Sayreville's council split, after what was reported as a lengthy and at times heated discussion. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the moratorium has since been extended, allowed to lapse, or converted into a permanent prohibition, and the borough clerk is the route to that rather than a search.

GREENWICH TOWNSHIP BANNED DATA CENTRES ON 21 MAY 2026 AND NOBODY CAME TO SPEAK. The Township Committee in Gibbstown, Gloucester County, adopted Ordinance 107/2026 unanimously, prohibiting data centres within the township; the public hearing opened and closed without a single comment. This is not East Greenwich, its neighbour, which banned data centres in June after a 4 MW proposal was withdrawn. Greenwich is an industrial riverfront town, which is exactly where a developer would look, and it is absent from the published advocacy rosters -- another sign that the statewide counts miss towns in both directions. NOT ESTABLISHED: the roll-call names, how the ordinance defines a data centre, any exemptions, and whether a specific proposal prompted it. The township clerk can supply the adopted text.

THE BIGGEST ONE ANY NEW JERSEY TOWN HAS STOPPED. Millville's commissioners banned data centres on 19 May 2026, and the ban killed a live proposal: A1Data Center's 2.6-million-square-foot campus drawing 1.4 gigawatts, the largest data-centre project yet blocked in the state. Unlike most entries on New Jersey's ban list, which were passed with nothing pending, Millville had a specific, very large application in front of it -- which is also what makes it the likeliest to be tested in court, as Monroe, Montgomery and Andover already have been. Climate Revolution Action Network led the campaign, pairing students with local farmers. Neighbouring Vineland, in the same county, approved its own large AI campus. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count, the ordinance number, and whether A1Data has sued. WHAT TO ASK: whether A1Data's application was complete before the ban, since a complete filing can lock in the old zoning.

GREEN TOWNSHIP BANNED DATA CENTRES 3-0 ON 18 MAY 2026, after waiting on its own planners. The Sussex County committee's Ordinance 2026-04 adds data centres to the prohibited uses in every zone, defining them to include servers, network gear, transformers, substations, generators and cooling. The hearing was carried to April and the vote was postponed on 4 May because the Land Use Board's review had not arrived. Voting yes: Bader Qarmout, Deputy Mayor Michael Rose and Mayor Virginia Raffay; members DeYoung and Phillips were absent. Residents spoke on water, power and rural character; nobody spoke against. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether any project was pending. One meeting summary for 1 June attaches the ban to a different ordinance number whose text is a salary schedule; the township's own list shows 2026-04 as the data-centre ordinance.

BANNED IN MAY, SUED IN JULY. Andover Township adopted Ordinance 2026-13 on 12 May 2026, prohibiting data centres everywhere in the township. On 10 Jul National Land Developers LLC sued in Sussex County Superior Court over a roughly 100-acre former airport site, arguing the ban had no valid land-use purpose and that the township skipped notice steps the Municipal Land Use Law requires. It asks the court to void the ordinance and award fees. THE NOTICE CLAIM IS THE ONE TO WATCH: it does not depend on whether data centres are good or bad, and if it succeeds it tells every town that rushed an ordinance to redo it properly. NOT ESTABLISHED: any hearing date or ruling as of 22 Sep 2026. WHAT TO ASK: the Sussex County case management order.

HARRISON TOWNSHIP (GLOUCESTER COUNTY) HELD ITS BAN BACK A MONTH TO DO IT BY THE BOOK. In April 2026 the township committee tabled an ordinance prohibiting AI data centres and rescheduled adoption for 18 May. The reason: the Joint Land Use Board had cancelled the meeting at which it was to check the ordinance against the master plan. That step, a planning-board consistency review before adoption, is the kind of procedure the developer suing Andover says was skipped there. Mayor Adam Wingate said the township would revisit the ban if concerns about grid strain, energy, cooling water and environmental impact were answered, and until then data centres would be prohibited. NJ 101.5, in a roundup published after Millville's 19 May vote, listed Harrison Township among towns that had adopted a ban. NOT ESTABLISHED: the adoption date, ordinance number and roll call. The tabling date as reported (18 Apr) fell on a Saturday and should be checked. This is the Gloucester County township (Mullica Hill), not the Town of Harrison in Hudson County.

WINSLOW INTRODUCED A BAN ON 14 APR 2026, AND IT STOPS AT THE PINELANDS LINE. The township committee's ordinance was set for a public hearing and final vote on 26 May. It prohibits data centres in all non-Pinelands zoning districts. It defines a data centre as a building occupied mainly by computer or telecom equipment where digital information is processed, transferred or stored, and it expressly includes cryptocurrency mining, blockchain processing and server farms. Mayor Marie Lawrence cited the electricity, water and infrastructure load on local utilities, and the zoning change was found consistent with the master plan. NOT ESTABLISHED: that the 26 May vote happened, or how it went. No report of the final vote was found, though Winslow appears as a ban on both CRAN's 20 Aug roster and the Pinelands Alliance's 14 Sep list. Also not established: what rules apply to data centres in Winslow's Pinelands-area districts, which the report says this ordinance does not reach. What to ask the township clerk: the adopted ordinance number and the roll call.

PHILLIPSBURG BANNED DATA CENTRES IN APRIL. The Town Council gave final approval in mid-April 2026 to an ordinance prohibiting data centers and related uses in every zone, according to WRNJ and News 12. The ordinance defines data centers as facilities for storing, processing and managing digital data, including supporting infrastructure. Mayor Piazza said it ensures balanced development; the town cited power and water demand, noise and strain on local resources. The council has since moved to back the ban with a master-plan update. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count and ordinance number. Some rosters still list Phillipsburg as pending; that is out of date.

WATERFORD TOWNSHIP BANNED DATA CENTRES 4-0 ON 8 APR 2026, one of the earliest bans in South Jersey. Ordinance 2026-12 prohibits them in every zoning district. It also forbids reclassifying a data centre as some other commercial or industrial use to get around the ban, a clause many later ordinances lack. The township committee adopted it after a presentation by Rowan University student Jonathan Duff, working with Mayor Stephanie Jones-Freitag, on power, water, wastewater, aquifer draw, noise and electricity prices. The presentation projected a 267% rise in residential rates within five years of full operation; that is the presenter's projection, not a measured result. The ordinance leans on Waterford's status as a Pinelands community. Nothing was pending in Waterford; the presentation pointed to East Greenwich, Millville and Franklin as places where projects were appearing. NOT ESTABLISHED: the roll-call names, whether small accessory server rooms are exempt, and whether any application has tested the ban.

AT LEAST FOUR SALEM COUNTY TOWNS HAVE BANNED DATA CENTRES, MOSTLY BEFORE THE STATEWIDE WAVE WAS NEWS. Mannington went first, adopting Ordinance 26-01 unanimously on 5 Mar 2026 to prohibit data centres in every zoning district. Quinton followed on 5 May (Ord. 2026-05, two votes to none, one member absent), Pittsgrove on 27 May (Ord. 2026-06, 5-0) and Woodstown Borough on 14 Jul (Ord. 2026-8, unanimous). Each amends its land-use chapter the same way, which reads like a shared model ordinance. The Pinelands Alliance counts ten Salem County municipalities; this map can confirm four from meeting records. Oldmans introduced a ban and reportedly adopted it, date not established. CARNEYS POINT IS COUNTED AS A BAN BUT IS NOT ONE ON THE RECORD WE FOUND: on 20 May its Ordinance 1093 split the committee -- one yes, two no, one abstention -- despite a 651-signature petition, and the mayor proposed a subcommittee to rewrite it. NOT ESTABLISHED: Elsinboro, Pennsville, Pilesgrove and Upper Pittsgrove, which rest on the Pinelands list alone. Ask each township clerk for the adopted ordinance number and roll call.

PEMBERTON TOWNSHIP (BURLINGTON COUNTY) WAS AMONG THE FIRST NEW JERSEY TOWNS TO BAN DATA CENTRES. NJ 101.5 reports it adopted an ordinance in February 2026, earlier than Monroe (April) and Millville (May), which usually get the credit for starting the wave. NJ.com, reporting East Greenwich's ban on 12 Jun, also named Pemberton Township among the towns that had already acted, and it is on the Pinelands Alliance's 14 Sep list. On this evidence the 'Pemberton' on CRAN's roster is the township, not Pemberton Borough. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ordinance number, exact date, vote, and whether the ban reaches the township's Pinelands-area districts. The township minutes or its code on eCode360 would settle it.

LOGAN TOWNSHIP (GLOUCESTER COUNTY) IS REPORTED TO HAVE BANNED DATA CENTRES IN SPRING 2026. The trigger appears to have been rumours of a large AI data-centre project rather than an application on file. NJ 101.5 listed Logan among towns that had adopted bans in the two months before its late-May roundup, and the Pinelands Alliance's 14 Sep list includes it. A syndicated news story, headlined to say rumours of a massive AI data centre drove the town to act, could not be read. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ordinance number, adoption date and vote, what the rumoured project was, and whether small accessory server rooms are exempt. Ask the township clerk for the adopted ordinance. If the ban was passed on rumour alone, it is also a test of the objection raised in Jackson that a ban written with no application in hand gives developers' lawyers something to attack.

UNION TOWNSHIP'S BAN HAS PASSED FIRST READING, and whether it was finally adopted is not established. TAPinto Union reported that the Township Committee in Union, Union County, unanimously approved on first reading an ordinance prohibiting AI data centres in all zoning districts. CRAN's 20 Aug roster and the Pinelands Alliance's 14 Sep list both count Union Township as a ban, but neither links to an adopted ordinance, and we have not seen a report of the second reading. This is Union Township in Union County, not Union Township in Hunterdon County. NOT ESTABLISHED: the first-reading date, ordinance number, and the date and outcome of the second reading. The township clerk can confirm; if the ordinance was adopted, this becomes a 'blocked' record.

A PAUSE WITH A CUT-OFF DATE BUILT IN. Orangetown's Town Board adopted Local Law 5 of 2026 on 25 Aug 2026, halting applications for data centres and battery energy storage systems town-wide for 180 days, with one further 180-day extension available by resolution. There is no size threshold -- every data storage facility is covered. THE DETAIL WORTH READING is the exemption: any data-centre application filed before 1 Jul 2026 may keep moving through review, so the pause reaches only projects that arrived after the town started talking about one. A hardship waiver exists but requires more than ordinary processing delay, a hearing within 30 days and a decision within 15 after. The Board says it will use the time to rewrite zoning around noise, emissions, energy and water demand, and strain on utilities. Orangetown is in Rockland County, the first county in New York to back the state's stalled Responsible Data Center Development Act. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote, and whether any application beat the 1 Jul cut-off. WHAT TO ASK: the town clerk, for applications received before 1 Jul 2026.

On July 14, 2026, Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order making New York the first US state to impose a data-center moratorium -- a pause barring the Department of Environmental Conservation from issuing permits or licenses for new large (hyperscale) data centers while regulators develop standards for their energy, water and environmental impacts. Hochul opted for the executive order rather than signing the Legislature's moratorium legislation, which her office called complex and in need of further work. BILL LINEAGE, RESOLVED: what passed on Jun 4, 2026 was the omnibus RESPONSIBLE DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT ACT, S10642 (Gonzalez) / A11560 (Barrett, Kelles, Tapia, Glick), both introduced Jun 1. The earlier numbers this record originally carried -- A10141 (Kelles, introduced Feb 9, 2026) and S9144A (Krueger and Gonzalez) -- were the SEPARATE PREDECESSOR moratorium bills that were folded into the omnibus, along with S6394A, S8540, S10546, S10847 and S8546. So both sets of numbers are real; only S10642/A11560 passed. More than 30 hyperscale projects drawing an estimated 10,000 MW had been proposed across the state. Update, July 14, 2026: Hochul signed Executive Order 62 -- the nation's first statewide data-center moratorium -- pausing discretionary DEC approvals for data centers of 50 MW or more that DEC had not deemed complete by Jul 14, while the Department of Public Service produces a generic environmental impact statement with public hearings. She acted by executive order rather than signing the legislature's broader bill, which she is expected to veto by year-end; the EO lets her own the issue on her own terms in an election year. Moratorium bills are now alive in Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Virginia. CORRECTION FROM THE ORDER'S TEXT: EO 62 sets NO FIXED EXPIRY. It lasts until the Department of Public Service delivers its final generic environmental impact statement and findings, with no deadline for that; the 'one year' in coverage matches only the clause giving DEC twelve months to report on water withdrawals. Facilities primarily for manufacturing, research, education and medical care are exempt. Other clocks in the order: an ESD community investment framework and a DPS interconnection working group within 60 days (mid-September, compliance not reported) and a DPS transmission report within 90 days.

Albany's Common Council voted 12-0 on Jul 6, 2026 for a resolution backing a proposed statewide one-year data-center moratorium, with Councilmember John Williamson abstaining. The resolution bans nothing in Albany itself -- it was municipal pressure aimed at Governor Kathy Hochul, who had not acted on the Legislature's moratorium bill after it cleared both chambers. The No Kings Collective rallied outside City Hall beforehand; Bryan Paz-Hernandez said the point was to press the governor as well as support the resolution. Residents cited electricity rates, water use, noise and the thin job numbers. City officials said no data-center proposal had actually been submitted to the council -- only ideas -- and Councilmember Deborah Zamer said the discussion was driven partly by uncertainty about what might come. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT, and it is not quite what the campaign asked for: Hochul did not sign the bill. On Jul 14 she issued Executive Order 62 imposing a one-year pause on new hyperscale data centers instead, her office describing the legislation as complex and needing further work. The campaign got a statewide moratorium by executive order rather than by statute -- a real win, and a more fragile instrument than the one it was pushing for, since an order can be unwound without the Legislature. See pb-ny-state-moratorium-2026.

The Clay Town Board adopted Local Law No. 6 of 2026 on Jun 29, 2026, a one-year moratorium pausing zone changes and special permits for large-scale data centers, AI computing facilities, cryptocurrency mining and similar high-intensity computing uses, after a public hearing on Jun 15. No data-center project had been proposed in Clay -- the board acted before an application arrived, with Deputy Town Supervisor Joseph Bick saying the town did not want to be caught off guard and expecting proposals to keep coming. Officials were explicit that the pause is not a permanent prohibition: the town intends to write local regulations during the year and is working with the Onondaga County Executive's office on a study. The same meeting adopted a Battery Energy Storage System law creating Chapter 209 of the town code, which ended a separate six-month BESS moratorium -- the template the board says it will follow for data centers. Clay is the town where the Micron semiconductor plant is being built, so its industrial-load posture carries weight in Central New York. Neighbouring Lysander and Manlius took up their own pauses, and the state imposed a one-year hyperscale moratorium by executive order two weeks later.

After a nearly two-hour public hearing, the East Fishkill Town Board approved a three-year moratorium on data centers on June 25, 2026, barring permitting or consideration of any data center until July 1, 2029 pending federal and state studies of power and water use, noise and heat. It joined more than 100 active local moratoriums nationwide.

Hundreds of residents in the Town of Tonawanda spoke out against Riverview Innovation and Technology Campus, a 2 billion dollar, 500,000 square foot, 300 megawatt data center proposed for the former Tonawanda Coke site, citing pollution, utility costs, and noise.

The Lysander Town Board near Syracuse passed a six-month data center moratorium after more than 350 residents turned out against the proposed 300 megawatt Ranalli Lysander data center on a 120-acre campus.

After the Lansing zoning board ruled that TeraWulf's proposed Cayuga Data Campus, on the site of a former coal plant, was a permitted use, the groups CLEAN and FLX Strong filed an Article 78 lawsuit in January 2026 to annul the decision. They and Tompkins County officials are fighting a permit to draw more than a million gallons a day from Cayuga Lake, a drinking-water source, to cool the data center.

The Town of Perth in Fulton County passed a one-year data center moratorium, with the town supervisor citing energy use and a desire to maintain local control.

SUPERVISORS REJECTED THE PLAN 3-0. On 9 Sep 2026 Clinton Township's supervisors -- chair Ken Coles, Brian Non and Brad Bates -- denied Linde Corporation's preliminary land development plan for a campus of 20 server buildings and two gas-fired power plants on former mining land near Browndale, finding it incomplete and out of compliance with the township's subdivision and land development ordinance. The Planning Commission had recommended denial 3-0, with one member recused. It was the first data-centre application in Wayne County, and meetings drew 100 to 200 residents for months. The same night the board adopted data-centre-specific SALDO rules for any future filing. The fight had already cost the township its chair: Mark Lopatofsky resigned in July after residents raised his son's part-ownership of the township's engineering firm. NOT ESTABLISHED: the site size (758 acres per the USA Today Network, 682 per WVIA), the $6 billion figure (one outlet), and whether Linde appeals to Wayne County court. The denial was on completeness grounds, so a corrected resubmission is possible.

A PAUSE MEASURED IN WEEKS, BECAUSE THE NOTICE WAS NOT POSTED. Springhill Township's supervisors in Fayette County meant to adopt data-centre and power-plant ordinances in early September 2026 but had to table them to satisfy Pennsylvania's notice-posting rules. To cover the gap they passed a resolution refusing applications for either use until the next meeting on 17 Sep. The trigger is land, not an application: power company Nadara holds a right to buy 800 acres near Gans from the Fay-Penn Economic Council, and nothing has been filed. The notice problem is the same issue a developer is suing Andover, New Jersey over. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the ordinances were adopted on 17 Sep, and whether a resolution can lawfully refuse applications at all. WHAT TO ASK: the 17 Sep minutes.

THE SUPERVISORS SETTLED; THEN A JUDGE VOIDED THE ZONING UNDER IT. On 2 Jan 2026 Clifton Township's supervisors unanimously approved a settlement with developer 1778 Rich Pike LLC, which plans five two-story data-center buildings on three campuses across about 534 acres. It raised the height limit from 35 feet to 65, plus up to 15 feet of rooftop equipment, in exchange for conditions: industrial land only, no nuclear or gas generation on the southeast campus, wastewater treated outside the township, 400-foot setbacks from homes and tighter noise limits. Residents said they would sue. On 20 Aug Judge Mark Powell ruled the township's May 2025 data-center zoning amendment void; the solicitor says it never became law. The township is rewriting the ordinance, and residents asked for half-mile buffers, 35-foot heights and water limits. NOT ESTABLISHED: what the ruling means for the settlement, and the outcome of the 17 Sep hearing.

East Vincent Township officials unanimously rejected a 1.9-million-square-foot data center proposed for the historic Pennhurst State School site after months of resident campaigning. Backers cited reuse of a derelict property; opponents cited scale, traffic, and historic preservation.

Archbald Borough Council voted 5-0 to deny the Project Scott data-center campus in March 2026, following organized resident opposition in the northeastern Pennsylvania community.

SUPERVISORS DENIED THE OVERLAY 2-1. Ransom Township's supervisors in January 2026 rejected Scranton Materials' request for a data-centre zoning overlay on its 819 Newton Road property, land zoned for open space and conservation. Robert Wells and Gerald Scott Jr. voted no; David Bird supported the request. The plans showed six buildings 120 feet tall, each roughly the size of two and a half football fields, with about 27 acres of stormwater ponds and 50-foot retaining walls close to neighbours' lines. The turn came when a resident's attorney, Laura McGarry, told the board the company had called no witnesses and authenticated none of its exhibits -- a hearing, she said, at which nothing had been heard. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether Scranton Materials has reapplied or appealed; the township solicitor was unsure whether it could.

ZONING BOARD DENIED A 600 MW CAMPUS 5-0 -- AND THE DEVELOPER KEPT COMING. On 23 Dec 2024 Jessup's Zoning Hearing Board unanimously rejected Breaker Street Associates' plan for six 130-foot data-centre buildings, about 1.1 million square feet on 131 acres, because the substation feeding it sat in a residential zone and the board would not treat it as an accessory or public-utility use. The borough council also adopted rules confining data centres to industrial land south of Casey Highway, capping height at 50 feet or four storeys and requiring utility-capacity proof, noise studies and 500-foot generator setbacks. The developer, a unit of Catalyst Commercial Development, went back to the zoning board to appeal the substation denial; a hearing was held on 18 Nov 2025. NOT ESTABLISHED: the outcome of that appeal, whether any appeal reached Lackawanna County court, and the council ordinance's adoption date. Neighbouring Archbald is on the map separately.

COUNCIL BANNED DATA CENTRES 6-1. On 16 Sep 2026 Cumberland's Town Council amended its zoning ordinance to list data centres as a prohibited use anywhere in town. At-large Councilor Peter Bradley was the lone vote against. No project had been proposed; the council acted after watching another Rhode Island town struggle when a developer arrived before the town had any rules. Neighbouring Smithfield acted earlier (see dc-ri-smithfield-data-center-ban). NOT ESTABLISHED: Bradley's stated reason, the ordinance number, and whether the ban has a size threshold or exemptions. SOURCING: the only report read, from Uprise RI, says it was produced by having software summarise the meeting transcript; the vote has not been checked against the council's minutes.

Smithfield banned new data centers outright, one of the first US towns to do so.

Governor Phil Scott vetoed H.727, the Sustainable Data Center Deployment Act, on May 28, 2026. The bill, which cleared the Senate 26-3 and passed the House with near-unanimous support, would have created a regulatory framework for data centers of 20 megawatts or more -- PUC-reviewed utility contracts to shield other ratepayers from infrastructure costs, full Act 250 permitting, on-site renewable power, and community payments. The House override attempt failed 83-52 on the session's final day, so the veto stands.

Lake County moved to impose a temporary moratorium on data centers in unincorporated areas while it develops guidelines, amid intense opposition to the Grayslake T5 campus. ADOPTED. The Lake County Board approved the pause on Sep 8, 2026 -- eight months, through May 2027, covering unincorporated areas only. It does not touch the Grayslake T5 campus, which the village approved and which received its first building permit earlier the same month; so the project that drove the fight is outside the pause it produced. More than 1,200 people submitted comments. The zoning board of appeals backed it unanimously on Aug 18 and the county's zoning committee on Sep 2.

MATTOON PAUSED DATA CENTRES FOR A YEAR, AND THE THRESHOLD IS SMALL. The City Council passed a moratorium on new data-center developments larger than 21,780 square feet -- about half an acre -- in early September 2026; the city announced it on 3 Sep. It covers the city and the area up to 1.5 miles outside where Mattoon has zoning authority. The city cited water, environment, health, power costs, city services and finances, and itself noted that the size limit is small next to hyperscale campuses that spread over hundreds of acres. Existing operations are unaffected. The pause lasts a year and ends only by council action. TV reports describe the vote as unanimous. NOT ESTABLISHED: the recorded vote, the exact meeting date, and whether any project prompted it.

THE MAYOR ASKED FOR A PAUSE; THE COUNCIL HAS NOT GIVEN ONE. On 11 Aug 2026 Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order setting up enhanced regulatory review of data centers and called on City Council to halt data-center expansion until permanent rules are in place. He gave no length or scope for the pause. Zoning Committee chair Ald. Gilbert Villegas called it a political stunt and said the mayor should instead send an ordinance turning the existing data-center working group's recommendations into law, pointing to property-tax revenue and union jobs. Chicago has 39 data centers, and ComEd says about 100 projects across northern Illinois want a combined 33 GW. Conversions are moving downtown, including lower floors of 300 W. Adams. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether any moratorium ordinance has been introduced, and what the executive order requires in practice.

THE COUNTY'S OWN PROSECUTOR VOIDED THE MORATORIUM, two days after the developer threatened to sue. Logan County's board adopted a 12-month moratorium on large data centres on 19 May 2026 by 6-4, after an earlier 60-day pause in February. On 16 Jun Hut 8 Corp. emailed to say the moratorium had been improperly adopted and threatened legal action. Hut 8 wants to build the 500-megawatt, $5 billion Logan Prairie Data Center on about 250 acres in Laenna Township near Latham. On 18 Jun State's Attorney Bradley Hauge told the board in closed session that the moratorium was invalid. As a zoning measure, he said, it needed an advisory vote from the Zoning Board of Appeals and public hearings before the board could act. The same night a data-centre zoning ordinance failed 5-6. Hut 8 then tried to annex the site into the Village of Latham, with a benefit agreement reported at $8-11 million a year, but the village cancelled its 3 Aug vote for lack of support. The defect was one of procedure, not policy, which is the same kind of claim a developer is pressing against Andover, NJ. NOT ESTABLISHED: anything after 31 Jul, or whether the county has re-adopted a pause through its zoning board. AFTER JULY: once Latham cancelled its Aug 3 annexation vote, the county pulled Hut 8's items from the Aug 5 Regional Planning Commission agenda and the August hearings did not go ahead; the project is stalled, not approved (Illinois Times).

Bloomington's City Council passed a six-month moratorium in late May 2026 on hyperscale data-center proposals -- those drawing 5 MW or more -- after the Town of Normal had already paused. The city is using the time to write rules: a public forum with a panel on Aug 26, then Planning Commission public hearings on Oct 1 and Nov 5, with officials also examining whether an outright ban is legally open to them. McLean County adopted its own data-center zoning requirements in June. NOT ESTABLISHED: Normal's current expiry date, and the Bloomington council vote count. SEP 22, 2026: Normal's council extended its moratorium six months, to May 31, 2027, with one dissent (Andy Byars); the town said it did not want to write rules only to see the General Assembly impose something different.

Lockport postponed indefinitely any data-center proposals on May 28, 2026 after broad resident pushback over a possible center at the old Chevron property.

Champaign County voted on April 23, 2026 to establish a one-year moratorium on new data centers over 10,000 sq ft, citing 'mystery' proposals and concerns about the Mahomet Aquifer that supplies nearly a million residents.

More than 100 residents packed a Bourbonnais council meeting to oppose a possible data center; officials moved to require a special-use permit to retain control over any development on manufacturing-zoned land.

Pekin's mayor announced on March 9, 2026 that the city would not move forward with a proposed data center near Lutticken Lake, drawing applause -- though the city had already signed a $4.5 million purchase contract with the developer.

THE MORATORIUM LOST AND THE PROJECT WON, which is the shape this map under-records. On Feb 19, 2026 the Sangamon County Board's zoning and land use committee voted down a proposed six-month moratorium on data-centre zoning decisions -- and the county's Zoning Board of Appeals met IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD the same evening and unanimously recommended CyrusOne's $500M, 600MW campus on 280 acres of farmland in Talkington Township near Waverly for a conditional permitted use. Residents objected that the moratorium was killed before they had spoken. WHO VOTED WHICH WAY, per the Illinois Times: for the moratorium, Republican David Mendenhall and Democrats Reggie Guyton and Linda Douglas-Williams; against, Democrat Kevin McGuire and Republicans James Schackmann, Jeff Thomas, Greg Stumpf and Tom Rader. Board member Marc Ayers had proposed it. THE COUNT IS REPORTED TWO WAYS and we do not resolve it: WCIA and the datacenterwatch digest describe a 5-3 committee vote, the Illinois Times a 4-5 advisory vote the same day. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT matters as much: on Mar 23 the full County Board voted 15-13 to TABLE rather than approve, before an audience reported at more than 700 -- and then approved the conditional permitted use in April, about fifteen days later. A packed hall bought a delay, not an outcome. Emails obtained under FOIA by the Coalition for Springfield's Utility Future, a residents' group opposed to the project, showed CyrusOne was in contact with county officials before the committees began discussing data-centre zoning guidelines at all.

Brennan Investment Group withdrew a roughly $2 billion data-center proposal in Barrington Hills in January 2026 after a Change.org petition gathered over 1,300 signatures, canceling its plan-commission presentation.

Ogle County passed its own moratorium on data centers as the northern-Illinois buildout accelerated.

McLean County restricted data centers to manufacturing zones only -- blocking them from farmland -- and required developers to disclose water and energy use.

Yorkville residents, represented by a Plainfield firm also active in Joliet and Grayslake, sued to overturn the Project Cardinal approval after a marathon council meeting.

A group of unincorporated Will County residents sued to challenge the rezoning behind the approved 795-acre Joliet Technology Center.

A coalition of Lake County residents and property owners prepared a lawsuit seeking to vacate the village's approvals of the T5 @Chicago IV campus, arguing the process was deficient.

Aurora enacted a 180-day moratorium on data centers and warehouses in September 2025 and advanced some of the strictest data-center regulations in the country.

Delayed twice, not dead. Councilman Russ Jehl's proposal to create a Data Center & Community Quality of Life+ Task Force -- the centerpiece of his transparency package around Google's multibillion-dollar southeast Fort Wayne campus -- was first held 8-0 on Jun 16, 2026 after council members said they did not know how the group would operate, and again on Jul 14, pushing the vote to Sept 8. The politics of the first delay matter: Councilwoman Rohli Booker, who represents southeast Fort Wayne, had not been included in drafting the legislation and warned that claims of investment flowing to her district could later justify sending it fewer resources. By July she and Councilman Geoff Paddock were co-working the proposal, with open questions on committee size, appointment power, whether recommendations bind, and timeline. Booker's framing shifted to forward-looking protections on the theory that more data centers are coming. THE PROJECT UNDERNEATH: Google's full plan calls for 12 buildings phased across an 892-acre site east of Adams Center Road, land already zoned industrial, so zoning will not stop the buildout -- each building needs only individual permits. Hatchworks LLC, a Google subsidiary, has asked IDEM for 143 additional diesel generators; the comment period closed Nov 17 with more than a hundred residents opposing at hearing, and a decision is still pending. THAT CHANGED ON SEP 8. Jehl withdrew the task force and his oversight-board proposal; Booker introduced a 365-day moratorium on new data-center projects, exempting Google's campus and directing Planning Services to draft permanent standards, plus an advisory Community Infrastructure and Environmental Review Commission. Jehl backed it. On Sep 22 the council held the moratorium three weeks, to Oct 13, to review several amendments. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether it passes, and IDEM's decision on Hatchworks' 143 generators.

THE MAYOR BANNED STAFF DATA-CENTRE NDAS, AND CALLED IT SYMBOLIC. South Bend Mayor James Mueller signed an executive order on 16 Sep 2026 barring city staff from signing non-disclosure agreements about data centers. He said the ban is more symbolic than practical, arguing no information was actually withheld because of such agreements, and said he learned only recently that the public works director and city engineer had signed NDAs with Amazon in 2023. Council members Oliver Davis Jr. and Sherry Bolden-Simpson have filed their own bill to ban the agreements; it gets a first reading on 28 Sep. Mueller says he will veto it, on the ground that the council cannot dictate how the executive branch handles contracts. NOT ESTABLISHED: the order's text, whether other NDAs exist, and how the council votes. Ask the clerk for the 28 Sep agenda.

THE COUNCIL SHELVED ITS OWN PAUSE, 8-1. Michigan City's Common Council voted 8-1 at a mid-September 2026 meeting (reported Sep 19) to table an ordinance that would have paused permits and tax abatements for data-centre projects while the plan commission writes zoning rules. Council attorney Nick Snow said the planning commission should play a direct role in any legislation that would change the zoning code. Existing projects, including Google's data centre at the former Federal Mogul property, were never covered. Environmental advocates objected: Ashley Williams of Just Transition Northwest Indiana said the delay opens the floodgates, and residents worried the planning department would promote data centres rather than restrict them, pointing to a proposal to add a data-centre district to the zoning code. The council says it will draft a resolution directing the planning department instead. It came the same week neighbouring St. Joseph County took up an outright ban. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact meeting date (the report's weekday and date disagree), who cast the lone vote against tabling, and when the resolution comes back.

ELKHART'S COUNCIL VOTED 9-0 ON AUG 27, 2026 to stop taking applications for data centers AND battery storage facilities until Dec 31, 2027. The pause covers the city only -- not Elkhart County. It lands on a live proposal: Edge Compute had floated converting the former Bayer plant with more than $120 million of investment, and that application now waits. Councillors said they want rules on noise, water and electricity before anything is permitted; dozens of residents spoke for the pause, some asking for a permanent ban. Council President Arvis Dawson argued the city loses nothing by waiting -- it has water and sits on a transport hub, so developers will come back. The regional chamber of commerce disagreed, warning of investment going elsewhere. Pairing battery storage with data centers is unusual on this map. NOT ESTABLISHED: one outlet describes the pause as at least six months rather than a fixed end date; the ordinance text has not been read.

KOKOMO WENT THE OTHER WAY: ITS COUNCIL VOTED 6-2 ON AUG 24, 2026 TO MAKE DATA CENTERS A PERMITTED USE ON INDUSTRIAL LAND, and its president explicitly rejected a moratorium as kicking the can down the road. The amendment sets setbacks of 200 feet from residential districts and 300 feet from any home, and adds no noise, water or power standards beyond ordinary industrial rules. Voting no were Jeff Plough (R) and Bob Stephenson (D); Crystal Sanburn (R) was absent. Eleven residents spoke against, asking for decommissioning plans and stronger protections. The Plan Commission had recommended it on Aug 17 -- 5-1 according to WISH-TV, 5-2 according to the Kokomo Lantern, which names Tina Durham and Cathy Stover as the no votes. The city had added hundreds of acres of Howard County farmland for industrial use in March. NOT ESTABLISHED: the outcome of the Sept 14 second reading and whether the council amended the setbacks before final passage. SEP 14: final reading passed 8-1 (Bob Stephenson no), per the Kokomo Lantern, with a 350 ft buffer from existing homes as reported.

The Indianapolis City-County Council voted 23-1 on Aug 10, 2026 to halt new data-center permitting in Marion County until at least Dec 31, 2027, to cheers from a packed Public Assembly Room and an overflow room. The Metropolitan Development Commission gave final approval 6-0, making the pause binding. It was sponsored by Council President Maggie Lewis with Mayor Joe Hogsett's support, and follows months of protest over water, energy and noise. Staff will convene a committee of experts and residents to study campus size, building height, sound levels and environmental impact. THE MOST DURABLE PART IS NOT THE PAUSE. Councillors attached a floor amendment writing a DEFINITION of data center into the county zoning code: a facility primarily used to store, manage, process or transmit digital data, covering server farms, AI training and cloud computing, while excluding IT incidental to another permitted use, wireless communications infrastructure, utility substations and public safety or postal facilities -- and specifying that a facility is not automatically exempt merely because the data relates to wireless or broadband. A moratorium expires; a zoning definition does not, and it decides what future rules can even reach. THREE APPROVED PROJECTS ARE EXEMPT and they are the ones that drew the most opposition: DC Blox in Warren Township, Metrobloks in Martindale-Brightwood, and Sabey in Decatur Township, a campus spanning roughly 18 football fields. Campaigners who had packed meetings and held dozens of rallies watched all three approved earlier in the same year. THE LONE NO VOTE IS WORTH READING PROPERLY: Republican Michael-Paul Hart, who last year successfully fought off a Google data center in Franklin Township, argued the city should set clear development standards instead of a ban, that developers will simply use the pause to draft blueprints for when it lifts, and that the question will land on the next council. The pause expires shortly after the 2027 mayoral election, so whoever wins decides what follows. THE SAME NIGHT, A BID TO REMOVE THE APPROVERS WAS REFUSED 7-17. Councilor Jesse Brown tried to add a proposal to remove members of the Metropolitan Development Commission -- the appointed body that approved DC Blox, Metrobloks and Sabey -- arguing some commissioners had ignored the communities affected. The council voted 7-17 not to put it on the agenda, so it was never debated on its merits. It is the only attempt on this map to unseat the appointed approving body rather than the elected one.

VALPARAISO'S COUNCIL VOTED UNANIMOUSLY ON AUG 10, 2026 FOR A DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM WITH NO END DATE. Ordinance No. 16 of 2026 took effect immediately after the Plan Commission heard it on Aug 4. Most pauses on this map carry a fixed term -- six months, a year, occasionally five. An open-ended one inverts the burden: it runs until the council chooses to lift it, rather than lapsing unless renewed. NOT ESTABLISHED: what the ordinance covers, whether any project is exempt, and what condition ends it. The ordinance text is posted on the city website but could not be retrieved; the Times of Northwest Indiana report is paywalled. Worth asking the city clerk for the adopted text and whether adoption of zoning rules automatically ends the pause.

A SCHOOL IS NOW A PLAINTIFF. Irvington Community Schools, Eastside Community Action and residents Madison Monfreda and Megan Lapa filed for judicial review in August 2026 of the Metropolitan Development Commission's July 15 approval of DC Blox's $2 billion, two-building campus on Indianapolis's east side, and asked for a stay until the court rules. The site, a former Ford plant at 305 Fintail Drive, sits about 850 feet from Irvington Community Elementary. School leaders cite up to 31 backup generators and the risk of disturbing contaminated soil during construction, with dust reaching ventilation used by children with asthma; they also fear losing enrolment in a network already running a deficit. The project is one of three approved before Marion County's moratorium and exempt from it, so the court is the only remaining check. NOT ESTABLISHED: the filing date, the court and cause number, and whether any stay has been granted.

IT PASSED. The New Albany City Council approved a one-year data-center moratorium unanimously on final reading on Jul 16, 2026, blocking new data centers and multi-building campuses larger than 100,000 square feet while the city studies impacts on infrastructure, utilities, environmental resources and noise. Mayor Jeff Gahan proposed it on Jun 9 to let the city examine the issue before proposals arrive, and the Plan Commission recommended it after a public meeting. The reasoning was specific rather than symbolic: officials said New Albany has no room for a campus on the scale of the $800 million Meta facility under construction across the river in Jeffersonville, but that smaller facilities could still be proposed under existing zoning, and residents responding to a survey mailed with sewer bills asked for clearer rules first. The dissent-that-wasn't belongs in the record: council member Scott Blair voted for the moratorium while warning that prohibiting data-center development could inhibit growth for companies with an existing presence in the city. New Albany is among the first Southern Indiana cities to pause construction outright, in a state where Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted at least 17 counties with temporary moratoriums by mid-2026.

St. Joseph County's council voted down a $13 billion data-center campus near New Carlisle on July 21, 2026, ending a ten-hour meeting where residents lined up past midnight. The county already hosts an Amazon build; speakers argued the second campus's water and power demands were being priced onto them. One of the largest dollar-figure rejections recorded here.

A one-year moratorium about 40 miles from Chicago while the town weighs zoning and utility rules.

RESIDENTS AND THE HOOSIER ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL SUED ON MAY 1, 2026 over the Metropolitan Development Commission's Apr 1 approval of variances for Metrobloks' roughly $500 million data center in the east-side Martindale-Brightwood neighbourhood. The petition for judicial review in Marion Superior Court 6 argues the commission misapplied variance standards and that the developer never produced adequate environmental, water, utility or traffic studies. The 14-acre site sits near homes, a library and a grocery store. Residents framed it as environmental racism and said the decision felt predetermined. Metrobloks is one of three projects exempt from Marion County's later moratorium, so as with DC Blox the court is the remaining check. NOT ESTABLISHED: any ruling or hearing since May.

A one-year ban on data center development; several Indiana counties enacted similar suspensions.

Up to a one-year moratorium covering data centers, solar and battery storage together -- a combined-infrastructure pause rather than a data-center-specific one. Part of Indiana's county-level wave. Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted 11 counties with data-center ordinances and at least 17 with temporary moratoriums by mid-2026, against roughly 60 hyperscale facilities proposed statewide in two years, in a state whose 2019 legislation largely exempted data centers from sales tax. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

12-month moratorium passed unanimously after the Area Plan Commission recommended it 5-0. Part of Indiana's county-level wave. Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted 11 counties with data-center ordinances and at least 17 with temporary moratoriums by mid-2026, against roughly 60 hyperscale facilities proposed statewide in two years, in a state whose 2019 legislation largely exempted data centers from sales tax. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

A data center rezoning proposal in Kosciusko County failed unanimously, and nearby Leesburg refused to rezone 554 acres, part of a wave of rural Indiana rejections. Developers say the projects bring tax base; residents cite farmland, water, and bypassed public review on unincorporated land.

Huntington County commissioners imposed a data-center moratorium in February 2026 that remains in effect while the planning commission drafts a zoning approach. Many residents at public meetings opposed allowing data centers in the county at all; officials said no project had been formally proposed. SOURCING CAVEAT: this record currently rests on a single aggregator relay (strisker.com weekly data-center digest) and no local primary has been obtained. The underlying official agenda or vote record has not been read directly. Treat the specifics as unconfirmed until a local source is attached.

12-month moratorium on hyperscale data centers. Part of Indiana's county-level wave. Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted 11 counties with data-center ordinances and at least 17 with temporary moratoriums by mid-2026, against roughly 60 hyperscale facilities proposed statewide in two years, in a state whose 2019 legislation largely exempted data centers from sales tax. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

One-year moratorium covering wind, solar, data centers and small modular reactors together. Part of Indiana's county-level wave. Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted 11 counties with data-center ordinances and at least 17 with temporary moratoriums by mid-2026, against roughly 60 hyperscale facilities proposed statewide in two years, in a state whose 2019 legislation largely exempted data centers from sales tax. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Temporary moratorium on data center construction. Part of Indiana's county-level wave. Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted 11 counties with data-center ordinances and at least 17 with temporary moratoriums by mid-2026, against roughly 60 hyperscale facilities proposed statewide in two years, in a state whose 2019 legislation largely exempted data centers from sales tax. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Minutes before the Indianapolis City-County Council was set to vote, Google withdrew its rezoning request for a 468-acre data center after hundreds of residents packed the meeting in opposition and the proposal was expected to fail.

One-year moratorium that EXPIRED in February 2026. Recorded because an expired pause is not a permanent protection, and Marshall has been miscited elsewhere as an outright ban. Part of Indiana's county-level wave. Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted 11 counties with data-center ordinances and at least 17 with temporary moratoriums by mid-2026, against roughly 60 hyperscale facilities proposed statewide in two years, in a state whose 2019 legislation largely exempted data centers from sales tax. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Provident Realty's data center proposal in Burns Harbor drew sustained grassroots pushback at public hearings through 2024, leading the developer to withdraw its petition in October 2024 with no updated plan submitted since.

A LOSS, recorded in full because this map has been carrying too few of them. The Salix City Council voted 3-2 on Aug 20, 2026 against a one-year data-center moratorium, clearing the way for MidAmerican Energy and Google to keep exploring a project on roughly 900 acres the town annexed in April. In JULY the same council had voted 3-2 the other way, instructing attorneys to draft the ordinance -- so this was a reversal, not a rejection of something new. THE SWING VOTE'S REASONING DESERVES TO BE READ RATHER THAN DISMISSED. Mayor Pro Tem Denise Burkhart supported the moratorium in July and changed her position after Google was publicly identified as the prospective customer in early August. Her argument was that the resolution would have barred the city from communicating with Google for a year, and that residents' unanswered questions about water and energy use are precisely what those conversations would answer. Supporters were not asking to reject the project, only to pause it. Two theories of caution, and one prevailed by a single vote. THE MEETING ITSELF IS PART OF THE RECORD. It came more than a week late: officials postponed the Aug 12 session after death and terroristic threats were posted on social media. The Salix Guardian Alliance, which opposes the development, condemned the threats and said one individual's actions had halted the process for everyone. After the vote tensions flared, Mayor Kevin Nelson called for officers, and council member Gene Monk and others were visibly upset. No one was arrested. WHAT IS STILL UNSETTLED: Woodbury County is challenging the annexation in court, alleging Salix failed to properly notify property owners and took in land that did not border city limits. The county already has its own one-year moratorium covering unincorporated areas. And the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, which owns land a few miles away, passed a resolution opposing hyperscale data centers on or near its reservation; tribal council member Keely Bassette Purscell told the Salix council that decisions made inside its city limits carry beyond them. Google's Trent Fellers told the council the company is in early planning with water and energy use not yet finalised. Rezoning, the annexation suit and those specifics all remain ahead -- just without the cool-down residents asked for.

THE COUNTY IS SUING THE TOWN. Woodbury County went to Iowa District Court in early August 2026 to void Salix's April annexation of about 900 acres -- the land Google and MidAmerican Energy are exploring for a data center. The county says four of the five parcels did not share the 50-foot boundary with the city that Iowa law requires, that it was denied the chance to consult before the vote, and that the maps and road descriptions were wrong. Three residents separately allege adjoining landowners never got the required 14-day written notice. Salix moved to dismiss on Aug 20, the same day its council voted 3-2 against a moratorium. The mechanism matters: the county's own 12-month pause stops at its unincorporated line, so the annexation -- not a moratorium -- decided which government controls the site. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the county and residents filed as one case, and any ruling on the motion to dismiss.

A county that had just written one of Iowa's strictest data-center ordinances paused itself anyway. On Jul 1, 2026, after nearly three hours of public comment in a standing-room meeting, the Linn County Board of Supervisors voted 2-1 for an 18-month moratorium on new applications to rezone unincorporated county land into the EU-3 Large-Scale Data Center district, effective immediately and running to roughly January 2028. Supervisor Brandy Z. Meisheid, who proposed it as a pause, said elected officials do not have enough information to make sound decisions and are being asked to decide faster than they can learn; Kirsten Running-Marquardt joined her, citing transparency. The county adopted its data-center ordinance only in February -- requiring water studies, a water-use agreement with tracking and reporting, an economic development agreement, setbacks, noise limits, traffic and emergency planning. THE DISSENT IS THE POINT AND IT BELONGS HERE: vice chair Sami Scheetz voted no, arguing the February ordinance already provided the guardrails and that pausing makes the Iowa jurisdiction with the strongest resident protections closed for business, pushing projects toward places with the weakest rules -- specifically the small cities inside Linn County, which the county cannot zone. That prediction has a live test case next door: Salix annexed nearly a thousand acres of farmland where MidAmerican Energy is exploring a data center. A developer at the meeting, Jim Condon, disputed the water concerns for closed-loop designs. The moratorium does not reach cities, because the board has no zoning jurisdiction there. At least eight Iowa counties now have data-center moratoriums.

The Council Bluffs City Council voted unanimously against a proposed one-year moratorium on new data centers. Mayor Jill Shudak had requested the pause so staff could rewrite the city's data-center zoning and weigh strain on water and sewer capacity, which officials said is already running high. Several council members worried a moratorium would signal the city was closed to business and preferred to keep handling projects case by case.

Woodbury County supervisors approved a one-year moratorium on data centers in unincorporated areas at a June 23, 2026 meeting, leaving existing and previously approved applications untouched. Leaders said they knew of no ongoing projects in those areas. CONFIRMED FROM THE COUNTY: supervisors adopted Resolution 14064 on June 23, 2026, 5-0 (KTIV), a 12-month moratorium on accepting, processing or approving any class of data-center application in unincorporated Woodbury County, rescindable or extendable by later resolution. Existing facilities, already-approved applications and routine maintenance are exempt. It does not reach the 900 acres Salix annexed in April -- which is why the county went to court over the annexation instead (see the Salix records).

A local moratorium on new data centers pending zoning review.

Facing a third hyperscale proposal, Ida County moved to adopt extensive data-center zoning rules in early 2026 amid disputes over water use, after a nearby Cedar Rapids facility was fined for drilling unpermitted wells. Residents pressed for binding limits on groundwater and grid costs.

MARYSVILLE'S COUNCIL VOTED UNANIMOUSLY ON SEP 14, 2026 FOR A 12-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM. For a year, no application to build or establish a data center will be accepted, processed or approved anywhere in the city's zoning jurisdiction, while the council studies the use, hears residents and rewrites the zoning ordinance. Server rooms that serve another business are excluded. No project has been named. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether any inquiry prompted it. (Vote date inferred from a Sep 16 report of a Monday meeting.)

FRANKLIN COUNTY, KANSAS PAUSED DATA CENTRES FOR THREE YEARS in late August 2026 -- triple the usual one-year study period. County Administrator Derek Brown said commissioners concluded the county needed to research the industry and write policies and procedures before it would accept any application. No project is named in local reporting. A three-year pause is closer to a ban than a study, and it outlasts at least one commission election. NOT ESTABLISHED: the meeting date, the vote count, and whether a developer had approached the county.

The Flint Hills Digital Campus -- 1,000 acres on the west edge of Emporia -- was announced June 2, 2026; the city commission annexed the land the next day, and all hell broke loose in a town of 25,000 that lost 1,200 manufacturing jobs in recent years. Civic leaders admitted they had worked with the developer for eight months but said NDAs barred naming it; a Kansas Reflector columnist reported the purported developer swore under oath he was not involved. More than 400 people packed a six-hour planning hearing where speakers turned their chairs when the project's representative approached the microphone. Emporia Neighbors United ran a boycott of pro-project businesses, then a petition drive: the first 1,400-signature petition was bounced on a filing technicality, the second was certified July 21 -- forcing the city to either enact a data-center prohibition ordinance or put it to voters. The commission took up rezoning July 22 at a meeting where one attendee was arrested. An unlikely coalition -- young and old, tree huggers and Bible thumpers, as the local columnist put it -- against a chamber of commerce promising jobs: the whole national fight, compressed into one Kansas town.

El Dorado's commission invalidated a citizen-led petition against data centers and asked a court to weigh in -- the second Kansas town in a month where the fight moved from the hearing room to petition law. Paired with Emporia's certified petition ninety minutes up the turnpike, Kansas is becoming the test of whether direct democracy can reach data-center decisions at all.

KALAMAZOO PAUSED NEW DATA-CENTRE APPLICATIONS ON SEP 21, 2026, for roughly a year. The City Commission adopted the moratorium and set a public hearing at its next meeting to write it into the zoning and development code, which staff say is what makes it enforceable under Michigan's zoning enabling law. Assistant City Planner Bobby Durkee said a year should be enough to write the guardrails. The city has used the same tool twice before, for digital billboards and marijuana zoning. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote, the date of the code hearing, and whether a specific project (local TV has linked the debate to a 'Harbor Farmz' development) prompted it.

ZEELAND TOWNSHIP'S BOARD UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED A ONE-YEAR MORATORIUM ON DATA CENTERS AND ENERGY FACILITIES IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 2026, replacing an earlier pause while it rewrites its master plan. Supervisor Kerri Bosma said the aim is to plan without pressure; no applicant is pending. Bundling data centers with energy facilities is deliberate: RWE Americas' Silver Maple Solar application is suspended before the Michigan Public Service Commission, and the township is using the tool it controls on both. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact vote date (sources give Sep 1 or Sep 9).

GARFIELD TOWNSHIP ADOPTED A ONE-YEAR MORATORIUM ON DATA CENTRES AND CRYPTOCURRENCY MINING, UNANIMOUSLY, ON AUG 25, 2026. The Grand Traverse County township first gave itself the power: in July its planning commission recommended a zoning change allowing a moratorium, after hundreds of residents filled a hearing, citing the region's freshwater and thin job benefits. The board then used it, writing the pause into the zoning ordinance rather than a stand-alone resolution, which is harder to attack in court. It can be extended six months. The only known proposal is small: an Illinois developer, Tom Cervenka, filed incomplete plans to reuse a building on Cass Road. Supervisor Joe McManus said the turnout showed the township was on the right path. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether Cervenka's plan is frozen or grandfathered.

VOTERS KILLED THE REZONING, 2,314 TO 269. On 4 Aug 2026 Augusta Charter Township voters repealed Ordinance 2025-02, which the township board had passed unanimously on 22 Jul 2025 to rezone 522 acres of farmland near Milan from agricultural-residential to general industrial for Thor Equities' hyperscale campus -- part of an 810-acre, 19-parcel site. The count, reported by the Sun Times News, was 89.5 percent against; WEMU put it at about 90 percent. The referendum happened because residents organised as Protect Augusta Charter Township filed 957 signatures against 561 required in 2025. The land stays agricultural. Residents have since filed to recall all seven trustees who approved the rezoning, and the Planning Commission is drafting rules for 'high resource demand facilities'. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the recall qualifies for November, and whether Thor Equities pursues the site another way. BACKGROUND: the fight followed neighbouring Saline Township's rejection of a similar campus, and was marked by accusations of harassment on both sides; an early report put the campus at 822 acres, a figure the ordinance does not support. THE RECALL FAILED ON A TECHNICALITY: on Aug 12, 2026 the Washtenaw County Clerk rejected recall petitions against all seven board members because circulators listed their mailing cities rather than their township of residence, per The Cool Down citing MLive. It will not be on the Nov 3 ballot.

182-day moratorium passed 7-1, effective Jul 27, 2026 through Jan 25, 2027. The state capital pausing while the legislature will not is the contrast worth noting. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

They wanted a ban and the law would not let them have one. The Haring Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Jul 13, 2026 for a six-month moratorium on data-center construction, before a crowd that largely wanted more -- several residents and board members said outright prohibition was the goal. The township's legal consultants, Mika Meyers PLC, advised that Michigan's Zoning Enabling Act forbids exclusionary zoning: a use has to be permitted somewhere in the township, and court decisions have gone against total bans. So the board took what the law allows -- a pause -- and directed the planning commission to work with counsel on a permanent policy that makes data-center construction difficult without formally prohibiting it, to be enacted when the moratorium expires. Zoning administrator Michael Green named water usage and noise as the driving concerns, said a couple of developers have already expressed interest in the township, and called the technology too new to regulate blind. A resident cited the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council of Michigan finding that data-center economic benefits are modest and concentrated in the construction phase. Wexford County's seat-adjacent township joins a Michigan wave: at least 27 communities had active moratoria by late February and the count has grown since, while the statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) remain stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. The ceiling Haring hit -- pause yes, ban no -- is the same one every Michigan township on this map operates under.

Wixom's city council unanimously voted down a developer's request to lift the Detroit suburb's six-month data-center moratorium early, keeping the pause (March through August 2026) in force while officials study the effects. A rare procedural moment on this map: not a fight to impose a moratorium, but a developer trying to end one -- and losing 7-0. WIXOM ENDED ITS MORATORIUM EARLY AND REPLACED IT WITH SOME OF THE STRICTEST RULES IN MICHIGAN, by late August 2026. The city paused data centres on Mar 24 for six months and in July refused, 7-0, a developer's request to lift it. Wixom Industrial One, working with Sansone on a 55-acre, three-building campus off Wixom Road, then sued in federal court. The council's answer was to adopt the rules the pause was for: data centres only as special land uses in industrial districts, 1,500-foot setbacks from homes, schools and parks, no drawing on well water, and required sound studies. The city now argues in the Eastern District of Michigan that the suit is moot because the developer's plan was filed under the old rules. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ordinance's adoption date and vote, and whether the court has ruled.

PAUSED FOR TWELVE MONTHS, UNANIMOUSLY, AND WITH NO PROJECT ON THE TABLE. Delta County's Board of Commissioners adopted a moratorium on data centers and cryptocurrency mining in late July 2026, approving it without discussion after the county Planning Commission recommended it on Jul 6. For a year county staff will not accept, process or approve applications, rezoning requests or special land-use requests for either use while the commission researches impacts, drafts zoning amendments, coordinates with utilities and neighbouring governments, and holds public hearings. Bundling crypto mining with data centers is the notable choice: both are power- and noise-heavy uses that most rural codes never anticipated. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact meeting date and expiry, and which townships run their own zoning outside the county's reach.

One-year moratorium passed 7-1 amid public outcry. Flint carries particular weight in any fight over industrial water and utility burdens. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Added to Michigan's tally of more than 20 local data center moratoriums in 2026.

In April 2026 the local utilities authority passed a yearlong halt on extending water and sewer service to data centers, blocking projects including one tied to the University of Michigan and Los Alamos.

MASON REPEALED ITS DATA-CENTRE ZONING 4-2 ON MAR 16, 2026 RATHER THAN SEND IT TO VOTERS. Ordinance 266 had created a special district for hyperscale data centres with tighter noise and emissions limits and a requirement to prove water, sewer and power capacity. A referendum petition filed Mar 2 would have put it on the ballot; the council repealed it instead. Mayor Russell Whipple said repeal kept the city's options open, but also acknowledged the city was now in chaos. Data centres fall back under ordinary M-2 industrial zoning, with none of the special limits. It is not clear who gained: the group behind the petition has not disclosed its funding, and one local outlet questioned its aims. The mayor and a council member now face possible recall. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether new rules have been adopted since.

12-month moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

One-year moratorium in one of Michigan's largest cities. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

180-day moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Four-month moratorium with an extension option -- among the shortest recorded, which means it has likely already lapsed or been renewed. Worth a status check. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Six-month moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

One-year moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Six-month moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

180-day moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Six-month moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

One-year moratorium adopted unanimously. The city cited a zoning code that did not yet define or regulate data centers and 2025 inquiries from Fortune 100 companies eyeing nearby large parcels. Saline flagged a second exposure worth tracking generally: projects proposed just OUTSIDE city limits that could seek annexation to reach city utilities. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

12-month moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

One-year moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Washington Township in Macomb County joined Michigan's roster of more than 20 local data center moratoriums amid resident concerns.

Residents in Lenox Township organized against a proposed data-center campus after a promotional website appeared online. Township officials initially denied any developer had applied, but public-records requests showed the supervisor and deputy supervisor had already been contacted. Residents packed meetings and filed a petition to recall four members of the board of trustees.

One-year moratorium. Green Charter is the township that recalled its board over a separate large-scale industrial project, so its posture carries local history. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

180-day moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Six-month moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Six-month moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

180-day moratorium. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

TWO-YEAR moratorium -- the longest in the Michigan wave and among the longest anywhere on this map. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

90-day moratorium, later extended. Part of Michigan's local moratorium wave -- the largest in the country, with at least 27 communities holding active pauses by early 2026 while statewide bills (HB 5594-5596, SB 1018-1020) stayed stalled under a governor who calls a moratorium a non-starter. Michigan townships cannot ban data centers outright: counsel across the state reads the Zoning Enabling Act to forbid exclusionary zoning, so a use must be permitted somewhere. A pause plus restrictive permanent zoning is the ceiling available to every jurisdiction on this list. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Saline Township's board voted 4 to 1 to reject rezoning for a 16 billion dollar OpenAI and Oracle Stargate data center, but the developer sued for exclusionary zoning, the township settled within weeks, and construction proceeded over near-unanimous local opposition.

A proposed data center in Fife Lake, Michigan was scrapped after local opposition.

It moved. After discussing a moratorium at a Jul 6, 2026 work session without voting, the North Mankato City Council voted UNANIMOUSLY to set a public hearing for Aug 3, 2026 on an ordinance authorising a study and imposing a one-year moratorium on data centers. The proposed ordinance defines a large-scale data center as a facility primarily used for storing, processing, managing or transmitting digital data that exceeds 250,000 square feet OR uses at least 50,000 gallons of water per day, and sweeps in supporting infrastructure -- offices, cooling systems, generators, water storage, utility substations -- while excluding small computing facilities incidental to another use. City Attorney Chris Kennedy told the council the pause is meant to give the city time to define what a data center even is and how it should be regulated, with the study to cover water consumption, electrical demand, noise, lighting and siting, review other Minnesota cities' ordinances, and track state and federal rules. Resident Benton Bakke pressed for a stricter definition with a smaller building footprint. Context worth carrying: North Mankato was one of five Minnesota cities the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy sued over data-center approvals, but MCEA dropped its case here after no project materialised -- so this is a city regulating in the absence of a proposal. Neighbouring Mankato passed its own one-year moratorium unanimously on Jul 13, and Blue Earth County is considering one.

Mankato's City Council voted unanimously on Jul 13, 2026 for a roughly one-year moratorium covering data centers AND high-impact utility consumers -- a category wider than data centers alone, which avoids the definitional fight over what counts as one. Staff will study localized impacts and how other communities regulate the facilities, and the council may act sooner if the work finishes early. Residents raised farming and agriculture, water, resources, health and climate. The demand that stands out: resident David Turner urged the council never to sign a non-disclosure agreement with any prospective data center, warning that NDAs move the whole process behind closed doors. That anti-NDA push is now a live legislative issue in Michigan and Minnesota both. A speaker for the industry side argued Minnesota data-center projects use local union labour and high-efficiency cooling. Neighbouring North Mankato and Blue Earth County were weighing their own pauses.

After Inver Grove Heights imposed a moratorium reaching a project already in its pipeline, the developer threatened a $150 million lawsuit, arguing the pause is retroactive as applied. Alongside Monroe Township's $300 million suit in New Jersey, the litigation playbook against towns that say no is now its own pattern on this map.

A COURT STOPPED THIS ONE, not a rulebook. The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy sued the City of Faribault and developer Archer Datacenters over the city's handling of a proposed data center, and the case reached the Minnesota Court of Appeals. In a June 2026 opinion the judges sided with MCEA, holding that the city needed to conduct a more rigorous environmental review. That ruling kicked the project back to the city, and the council responded by extending Archer's deadline to submit further information into 2027 -- so the practical effect is a pause of at least a year and a half, imposed judicially, without the city ever adopting a moratorium. Faribault does also plan to develop and consider data-center standards covering water use, electricity use and air emissions, which is where this record started, but the standards are the aftermath rather than the story. WHY IT MATTERS TO THE MAP: Faribault and Pine Island are the two Minnesota cases where opponents won in court on environmental-review grounds, and they establish a route that does not depend on persuading a council -- an inadequate review is reviewable. MCEA has brought parallel suits over Lakeville, Hermantown, North Mankato and Monticello.

THE CASE THAT COULD UNDO MEGAWATT THRESHOLDS EVERYWHERE. Developer Eagan Capital sued the City of Eagan over its moratorium on data centers drawing more than 9 megawatts, arguing the city overstepped because only the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission may regulate power. If that argument succeeds, it reaches far past Eagan: a megawatt trigger is the most common design in American data-center moratoriums, and this map records many -- Sunbury's 25 MW ballot cap, Santa Fe County's 1 MW threshold, Lakeland's 50 MW large-load rule, Baltimore's 10 MW pause, Seattle's 20 MVA definition. A ruling that power thresholds are preempted utility regulation would force every one of them onto different ground, most likely square footage or water use. Eagan is one of several Minnesota cities with moratoriums, alongside Inver Grove Heights, Rosemount and Minneapolis.

The city adopted a six-month pause on data centers larger than 350,000 square feet in May 2026 while it studies zoning and utility impacts.

In May 2026 a Goodhue County judge issued a temporary restraining order halting Project Skyway, a roughly 500-acre Google-backed data center near Pine Island, after the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy sued over a streamlined environmental review that did not account for the project's scale, which could draw as much as 2,700 megawatts. The pause was a breakthrough for a grassroots movement spreading across Minnesota.

Minnesota's two data center moratorium bills, HF 4888 and SF 4298, died when the Legislature adjourned in May 2026 without a hearing.

Data center moratorium, one of the Twin Cities suburbs acting alongside Eagan, Inver Grove Heights and Minneapolis. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Data center moratorium adopted, part of the Twin Cities cluster. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

A YEAR-LONG PAUSE ON DATA CENTRES, FOLDED INTO AN ENERGY MORATORIUM. Cedar County, Missouri commissioners on Sep 8, 2026 paused new large solar, wind, battery-storage and data-centre projects outside city limits for 12 months, with one possible six-month extension; existing projects and small on-site systems are exempt. The commissioners, who declined interviews, called it due diligence on water, power, noise, drainage and health. No project is known to be pending. Opponents came from the other direction: a resident objected that the public never got a vote, and a local business owner called it backdoor zoning and questioned whether a Missouri county without zoning has the authority. NOT established: the vote count, the statute relied on, and dates for the promised public forums.

TABLED, REVISED, PASSED. Joplin's council tabled its data-center ordinance 9-0 in early July, sending it back to Planning and Zoning for stronger pollution standards and utility-rate protections. On Aug 3, 2026, after nearly two hours of public comment, council adopted the revised rules UNANIMOUSLY. What passed: data centers confined to heavy-industrial zoning and requiring a special use permit rather than being allowed by right; a 45-decibel limit at property lines adjoining residential uses with pre-construction sound testing to document baselines; mandatory wastewater pretreatment and pollutant scans; state and federal emissions compliance; and Tier 4 backup generators. A tabling that produced a stricter ordinance a month later is the pattern worth naming -- the delay was the leverage.

120-day moratorium passed 8-0, halting new data center applications while the city builds a public-interest evaluation framework. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Data center moratorium adopted, in the same season Missouri landed two of the year's largest commitments -- a $15B Google campus and a separate $10B Amazon campus, both in Montgomery County. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Capstone Technology Campus LLC withdrew all rezoning and annexation requests for a proposed data center at 6321 Pickett Road on June 26, 2026 after organized opposition; residents are pressing the City Council for an 18-month moratorium to set safeguards before any future project.

After the Festus City Council approved a 6-billion-dollar CRG data center over public objection, voters removed four of the eight council members and a group filed suit seeking to reverse the rezoning. The developer and city point to investment and tax revenue; opponents cite a lack of public say over power, water, and noise. ON AUG 24, 2026 THE COUNCIL ANNEXED THREE MORE PARCELS FOR CRG, 5-2 -- four days before a new state law would have limited it. Dave Boyer, Karl Weekley, Allen McCarthy, Kevin Dennis and Mike Cook voted yes; Dan Moore and Rick Belleville voted no, and Belleville's motion to postpone for more study failed 5-2. The 6.55 acres on Highway 67 were taken in just ahead of a Missouri law, effective Aug 28, allowing a city one annexation every two years and requiring 25 percent contiguity -- a law Crystal City is now challenging in court.

After the City Council backed a 6 billion dollar data center, Festus voters removed several members in 2026, an early sign of electoral fallout from data center fights.

A JACKSON COUNTY JUDGE RULED ON MAR 25, 2026 THAT INDEPENDENCE RESIDENTS CANNOT FORCE A VOTE ON NEBIUS'S TAX BREAKS. The city granted the Dutch AI company 20-year, 90 percent tax incentives worth more than $6 billion for a 400-acre data-centre campus near Route 78 and Little Blue Parkway. Residents organised through a Facebook group of more than 100,000 members and started a referendum petition; the city refused it, and the judge agreed that the charter allows no referendum once an ordinance is in effect. Lead plaintiff Rachel Gonzalez said the group was weighing an appeal; residents went on to gather some 5,000 signatures anyway and turned to the Apr 7 council elections. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether an appeal was filed, and how the April election went for council members who backed the deal.

JOPLIN'S REFERENDUM DRIVE AGAINST THE WILDWOOD RANCH DATA CENTRE FELL SHORT IN MARCH 2026. The Joplin Sustainable Technology Alliance tried to force a public vote on the two ordinances council passed in January to annex and rezone about 540 acres for the project. By KOAM's count it gathered 2,832 signatures on the annexation petition against more than 5,032 required, and 2,348 on the rezoning petition against more than 5,048. Council certified both insufficient. The group then turned to council itself: in August Joplin adopted stricter data-centre rules after tabling them (see pb-mo-joplin-ordinance-tabled). NOT ESTABLISHED: the developer, and the certification date.

After a packed four-hour hearing where most speakers demanded an outright ban, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen voted 7 to 8 against a data center moratorium in February 2026, a narrow margin that signaled deep division.

In Pacific, Franklin County, a special planning-and-zoning meeting ended within minutes when developer Beltline Energy withdrew its rezoning request for a proposed $16 billion data center -- an auditorium packed with residents ready to speak against it never got the chance to. Withdrawal under pressure is its own category: the project pulled before the vote it would have lost.

Facing a $1.5 billion Diode Ventures proposal, residents of Peculiar organized as Don't Dump Data in Peculiar over visual impact, noise, and property values. In October 2024 the city amended its zoning ordinance to remove data centers entirely, blocking the project outright.

KEARNEY'S COUNCIL APPROVED PROJECT HORIZON UNANIMOUSLY ON SEP 8, 2026 OVER RESIDENTS' OBJECTIONS. SDV and Mara Holdings will expand a cryptocurrency-mining data center from 100 to about 368 megawatts. Residents argued about water for livestock, the site's closeness to a veterans home, and what the community gets back. The council attached conditions instead: closed-loop cooling projected at 2 to 5 million gallons a year and a 55-decibel noise cap with sound walls. The developers project $20 million a year in property tax and 59 jobs, with construction from late 2026. It lands while Nebraska counties are adopting pauses one after another -- this is a city that said yes. NOT ESTABLISHED: how the water and noise limits will be monitored after opening.

Seward County commissioners voted on the morning of June 30, 2026 to impose a one-year moratorium on data-center construction, set to lapse either on a vote to extend or as soon as the county finalises data-center regulations -- whichever comes first. Commission chair Misty Ahmic put the reasoning in terms worth quoting for how much of this map it describes: a moratorium is not a decision and is not saying no, it is saying the county needs to be sure that if business arrives, it is right for Seward County. Her stated fear was procedural rather than environmental -- that absent both a pause and a rulebook, a developer could muscle through a regulatory process that was never designed for projects this size. Seward became at least the tenth Nebraska county with a moratorium in force.

On June 16, 2026 residents filled the district courtroom in Beatrice and spilled into the room next door for a four-hour Gage County Planning Commission meeting on a data-center moratorium. When Janice Jacobsen of Adams asked the room how many supported it, close to every hand went up; her read was that these were people wanting assurances that safety would be addressed. The objections were water and electricity, and underneath them the question of who the projects are actually for -- Wanda Garrett of Beatrice put it as the people putting the data centers in not really caring about Gage County. The state senator backing Nebraska's data-center buildout responded to hearings like this one by saying her understanding is that most facilities use closed-loop water systems, which is the crux of the dispute rather than an answer to it.

By the end of June 2026 at least ten Nebraska counties had data-center moratoriums in place, with five more weighing them, according to Nebraska Public Media News -- a state-level pattern assembled entirely out of county votes, with no statewide ban. Two things make Nebraska distinct. First, it is the only state served entirely by public power: there are no investor-owned utilities, so every kilowatt a data center draws is bought from a utility owned by its own customers, and the ratepayer-subsidy argument that is abstract elsewhere is arithmetic here. That is the premise behind the legislative push to require that new generation and transmission built for data centers be billed to those data centers rather than to households -- as Sen. DeKay framed it, keeping ratepayers from having to build generation they will not use and will not benefit from, and putting the financial onus on the private entity. Sen. Rita Sanders argued the opposite side, that Nebraska needs the capacity because everything from hospitals to robotics needs more electricity, and said her understanding is that most data centers run closed-loop water systems. Second, the county officials involved are not framing this as opposition. Jon Cannon of the Nebraska Association of County Officials expects counties to conclude they need their regulations in order and to pause a range of development, not just data centers -- which is why so many of these lapse automatically once rules are finalised rather than on a further vote.

VOTERS IN TWO ADAMS COUNTY TOWNSHIPS DECIDE ON 3 NOV 2026 WHETHER TO ADOPT ZONING AT ALL -- the only tool left to them against a data centre projected to draw 1,300 megawatts by 2032. The Ohio Capital Journal reports the ballot zoning plans are meant to protect rural and agricultural character, and that the project would use more than 20 times the power of the entire county. WCPO reported the developer as 68 Yards LLC, on land around the retired Stuart power plant in Sprigg Township, with about 320 acres of forest to be cleared; the Army Corps of Engineers issued it a federal wetlands permit in February. Residents began three petitions in March -- township zoning, a statewide constitutional ban, and repeal of a Sprigg Township resolution from 26 Jan. Food & Water Watch says Sprigg also adopted a 12-month moratorium. NOT ESTABLISHED: the ballot townships' names from an official source (reported sites point to Sprigg and Monroe), and what the 26 Jan resolution granted. The Adams County Board of Elections ballot list will settle the names. The 26 Jan resolution declared that Sprigg Township had no intent to change the zoning at the former Stuart power plant site -- in effect, a signal the site stays open to the project -- and one of the three March petitions asked trustees to rescind it. On 2 Mar trustees passed a separate one-year 'voluntary' moratorium on data centres; what a voluntary moratorium binds is not established.

FAYETTE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS APPROVED A TEMPORARY DATA-CENTRE MORATORIUM, reported Sep 22, 2026. As proposed, it freezes zoning applications, zoning approvals and building permits for data centres for one year in the unincorporated parts of most of the county's townships -- Concord, Green, Jasper, Madison, Marion, Paint and Perry were named in the proposal. It follows a run of annexation petitions as landowners and developers try to move parcels between jurisdictions before large projects arrive -- the same move that defeats county pauses elsewhere. NOT ESTABLISHED: the date and vote of adoption, and whether the final version covers seven or eight townships.

THE OHIO SUPREME COURT KEPT WILMINGTON'S DATA-CENTRE RULES OFF THE NOV 3 BALLOT ON SEP 18, 2026. Residents led by Quintin Koger Kidd had collected enough signatures for a citizen ordinance setting limits on noise, light, emissions, generator testing, water use and heat, with fines of $5,000 to $10,000 a day. The Clinton County Board of Elections refused to certify it, unanimously, in August, and the court agreed: the ordinance let residents sue data-centre operators directly, and the court held a city cannot create that right. Court News Ohio reports the vote as 5-1-1; one outlet reports 6-1. Kidd says a revised version is already being drafted. The fight is not over: four referendums on rezonings for another data-centre project ARE on the Nov 3 ballot. NOT ESTABLISHED: the developer behind those rezonings, and the status of residents' federal lawsuits.

CONNEAUT VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a charter amendment capping data centres at 25 MW. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

DEFIANCE VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a charter amendment capping data centres at 25 MW. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

GRANVILLE VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a charter amendment capping data centres at 25 MW. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

OREGON VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a charter amendment capping data centres at 25 MW. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

UPPER SANDUSKY VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a charter amendment capping data centres at 25 MW. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

URBANA VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a charter amendment capping data centres at 7.5 MW -- the lowest cap on an Ohio ballot. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

HUBBARD VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a full ban on data centres -- per OCJ the only Ohio city voting on a complete prohibition. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

ASHVILLE VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a data-centre referendum that reached the ballot after a legal fight. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

GROVE CITY VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTRE MEASURE ON NOV 3, 2026: a referendum requiring citywide consent for heavy-industrial projects (broader than data centres); Pleasant Township is part of the same petition drive. It is one of 18 Ohio communities with a data-centre question on the November ballot, by the Ohio Capital Journal's count -- most using the citizen-petition charter-amendment template first seen in Sunbury, which sidesteps a council that would otherwise decide. The statewide version missed the July signature deadline, so local ballots are the route that is live this year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the project that prompted it, the signature count, and the exact ballot language.

PIQUA IS RUNNING THREE CAMPAIGNS AT ONCE AGAINST A META PROPOSAL the Ohio Capital Journal puts at 1,400 megawatts. A citizen charter amendment capping data centres at 25 MW is on the Nov 3, 2026 ballot. Organiser Alisha Lange's group is also pursuing a full data-centre ban by petition, likely for a special election, and recalls of the mayor and commissioners. A 25 MW cap against a 1,400 MW project is not a regulation, it is a refusal. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the recall petitions have been filed or certified, the date of any special election, and the project's status with the city.

JOHNSTOWN'S VOTERS WILL DECIDE A DATA-CENTER BAN ON JAN 5, 2027. Residents petitioned for a charter amendment and cleared the Ohio Constitution's 10 percent signature threshold, but too late for the Nov 3 ballot; on Sep 10, 2026 the city council adopted an emergency ordinance, skipping the usual second reading and hearing, to send the question to a special election instead. The council's role was to set the date, not to decide the question. Coverage relayed by a digest says the Licking County petitions would bar facilities drawing more than 25 MW -- the same template used in Sunbury, Pataskala, Granville and about ten other Ohio towns -- while a meeting summary describes an outright prohibition; the ballot language will settle it. Johnstown sits in the Licking County corridor where the largest central-Ohio campuses are being built. NOT ESTABLISHED: the council vote count, the exact threshold in the amendment, and which project the petitioners were aiming at. SOURCING: the council action is taken from an automated summary of the meeting record; the local newsroom's report could be seen only by headline.

LIBERTY TOWNSHIP, KNOX COUNTY, PROHIBITED DATA CENTRES BY RESOLUTION ON SEP 3, 2026. The township's representative at the county planning commission said the point was to say plainly that data centres were not welcome until rules are in place. It is one of four Knox County townships -- with Wayne, Clinton and College -- that sent zoning changes to the county this summer that define data centres, bar them, or add a catch-all line recommended by the county prosecutor so a data centre cannot be approved under another name. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote, whether the Sep 3 action is the final zoning amendment, and whether the other three townships have adopted theirs.

THE CITY CLERK BLOCKED THE PETITION AND OHIO'S SUPREME COURT SAID SHE HAD NO POWER TO. On 3 Sep 2026 the court ruled 7-0 (one justice concurring in judgment only) that Sidney's clerk wrongly rejected a 561-signature citizen petition for a charter amendment creating a way to recall city officials, because the statute she relied on covers ordinance petitions, not charter amendments. The city must forward it to the Shelby County Board of Elections and, if the signatures hold, put it to a special election. The Ohio Capital Journal ties this to three data-centre-related petitions in Sidney. NOT ESTABLISHED: what data-centre proposal drove the recall effort, what the other two petitions say, and when the special election will be held. Ask the Shelby County Board of Elections for the verification result and date. THE PROJECT IS AMAZON'S. The recall push follows Sidney City Council's approval of Amazon Web Services' $3 billion 'Project Galaxy' campus off Millcreek Road -- a development agreement with a 30-year, 100% property-tax abatement, with Amazon paying $50 million in lieu of taxes over 15 years, approved in October 2025, and further data-centre agreements adopted in April 2026 over residents' pleas to table them. The three petitions reached their signature thresholds and were filed at City Hall in mid-July 2026. The charter-recall petition's organisers named in the Supreme Court case are Matthew Turner Jr., Steven Taylor and Marcia Montgomery; the clerk who rejected it is Kari Egbert. NOT ESTABLISHED: what the other two petitions propose.

THE OHIO SUPREME COURT RULED ON SEP 1, 2026 THAT TRENTON HAD TO LET ITS VOTERS DECIDE A DATA-CENTER CAP. The council had refused to certify a citizen charter amendment by reading the charter to require 820 signatures; the court held only 128 were needed, and residents had 336. On Sep 3 the council put the measure on the Nov 3 ballot. It would bar new data centers drawing more than 25 megawatts; the Amazon Web Services campus already under construction is not affected. THE SAME NIGHT, the city presented a plan to annex about 600 acres from Madison and St. Clair townships for a second AWS campus, with AWS offering $5 million to each township and millions more for roads and brownfields. Both townships had already objected. On Sep 15 Trenton withdrew the annexation petition a day before the county hearing, keeping the right to refile -- by local reporting, to see how the Nov 3 vote goes. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether AWS pursues the site through the townships or Butler County zoning instead.

LIMA'S COUNCIL APPROVED AN 18-MONTH PAUSE ON NEW DATA CENTERS IN SEPTEMBER 2026 -- with Google's already rising inside the city and untouched by it. Mayor Sharetta Smith said the city wants standards for location, water and power before a second one arrives, and pointed to shifting state and federal policy as a reason to be ready. The city's utilities director stressed Lima has water to spare -- five reservoirs holding 15 billion gallons -- so this is a pause about planning rather than scarcity. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote date and count.

PATASKALA'S COUNCIL REJECTED ALIGNED DATA CENTERS' 200-MEGAWATT CAMPUS ON AUG 25, 2026, accepting its Planning and Zoning Commission's June 3 recommendation after a meeting of more than three hours. Aligned had promised more than 100 jobs and over $5 billion of investment for three buildings powered partly by on-site fuel cells. It is not the end: residents gathered more than 500 signatures to put a data-center ban to Pataskala voters in November, so the city will vote on the category after its council has already refused the project. NOT ESTABLISHED: the council's vote count, the ballot wording, and whether Aligned appeals or seeks to leave the city, as a developer threatened in an earlier Pataskala rezoning fight.

Residents put it on the ballot themselves -- the council only certified it. A citizen petition committee gathered more than 450 signatures against a requirement of roughly 172 and delivered them to Sunbury city offices on Jul 6, 2026; Mayor Joe St. John confirmed 351 were verified as city residents, and on Jul 15 the City Council unanimously certified the measure to the Nov 3, 2026 ballot. The role of the council there was ministerial, which is the point: this is direct democracy routing around the body that would otherwise decide. The charter amendment would cap data-center peak load at 25 megawatts, a threshold that excludes essentially every hyperscale facility being built in central Ohio -- new campuses commonly run 100 to 1,000 megawatts. The target is a proposed $2 billion Amazon Data Service campus in the city's new business and technology park, after months of dispute. WHY THE BALLOT AND NOT THE COUNCIL: Sunbury's existing data-center moratorium runs only through Jan 31, and residents concluded the Amazon project could simply be approved once the pause expired. Resident sponsor Trey Dockendorf, who lives less than a mile from the site, framed it as sending a message and as giving residents a say in the outcome. The measure's language is drawn from Conserve Ohio's proposed state constitutional amendment, which failed to gather the roughly 413,000 signatures needed for the Nov 2026 statewide ballot by the Jul 1 deadline and now targets the 2027 primary -- so the local charter route is what is actually live this year. Pataskala, in Licking County, is running a parallel charter campaign against a proposed 200-megawatt Aligned Data Centers facility. Ohio has roughly 224 data centers, 139 of them in central Ohio.

Two instruments, one city. Massillon City Council first passed a 180-day moratorium unanimously on Apr 6, 2026 -- no zoning, building or other permits for data centers during its life -- and hired attorney Terry Seeberger (up to $15,000) to draft zoning recommendations. The follow-on zoning ordinance was amended in July to restrict data centers to heavy-industrial districts and expand residential setbacks to 400 feet, then delayed for a work session Jul 13. FINAL ADOPTION OF THE ZONING ORDINANCE NOT YET CONFIRMED by a primary -- the moratorium is the verified instrument; confirm the ordinance vote from council minutes. Stark County split screen: Plain Township passed a 12-month moratorium in March, while Perry Township trustees approved a tax abatement for a planned data center Mar 24 over resident objections.

A statewide initiative to bar data centers above 25 MW gathered more than 73,000 signatures. Organizers said it would not make the 2026 ballot but would continue. Industry groups warn such a cap would block large AI projects.

BUTLER COUNTY COMMISSIONERS VOTED UNANIMOUSLY IN JUNE 2026 TO PAUSE DATA CENTERS FOR SIX MONTHS in the six townships where the county controls zoning -- Hanover, Lemon, Madison, Milford, Oxford and Ross. The moratorium bars approval, construction and permits for any data center there. It does not reach cities, villages or townships that write their own zoning, which is where the current fights are: a 141-acre Amazon Web Services campus is already being built in Trenton, and a 29-acre proposal in Hamilton has been on hold since January. Commission President T.C. Rogers said developers could not answer questions the board considered pertinent; Commissioner Don Dixon said the county needed to understand what it would be committing residents to. Why it matters beyond the townships: Trenton pulled its annexation of about 600 acres from Madison and St. Clair townships in September, and any route back to that land through county zoning now runs into this pause. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact vote date, the expiry date (about mid-December by arithmetic), and whether the county will extend it or adopt standing rules.

JEROME TOWNSHIP'S MORATORIUM EXPIRED IN JUNE 2026 AND DATA CENTRES ARE NOW MOVING IN. The Union County township was among the first in Ohio to pause data centres, in September 2025, for nine months. It used the time to adopt land-use restrictions in March 2026, and once the pause ran out, data centres entered development under those rules. It is the ordinary end of a moratorium, and it is worth recording: a pause buys time to write rules, and rules regulate rather than refuse. Residents had complained earlier in the year about how the township handled developers. NOT ESTABLISHED: which projects are proceeding, what the March rules require, and the outcome of a reported appeal over the moratorium.

The Archbold village council is weighing a data center moratorium amid community concerns over power and water use.

On July 9, 2025, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio ordered AEP Ohio to create a data-center-specific tariff, adopting a settlement joined by commission staff and the Ohio Consumers' Counsel. The tariff, effective that month, allocates the cost of the new transmission infrastructure needed to serve fast-growing data-center load to those data centers rather than spreading it across residential, commercial, and industrial customers, and requires large facilities to make longer-term commitments and demonstrate financial backing.

Governor Larry Rhoden signed SB 135, the Data Center Bill of Rights for Citizens, on March 24, 2026 (alongside HB 1038), after statewide moratorium bills stalled. Applying to data centers with 10 megawatts or more of peak demand, the law requires developers to pay the electric-system costs their projects cause and to show their water use is compatible with local supply, and -- notably -- prohibits the state from limiting local governments' authority to regulate or ban data centers, keeping the moratorium option in local hands.

READ THIS AGAINST THE VIRGINIA DILLON'S RULE RECORD -- it is the same question answered the opposite way. South Dakota adopted Senate Bill 135, the "Data Center Bill of Rights for Citizens," in the 2026 session, and the law EXPRESSLY BARS THE STATE FROM PREEMPTING LOCAL DATA CENTER ORDINANCES; state law does not replace local zoning. It applies to facilities with peak electrical demand of at least 10 megawatts, requires data center companies to cover the electricity costs their facilities cause, and directs water providers to determine whether projected consumption is compatible with local supply. Operators must report average water use twice a year, the state Board of Water Management must publish those figures, and the board may LIMIT consumption after accounting for residential needs and essential public services. That combination -- protected local authority, cost causation, published water data, and a cap the state can actually impose -- is the most complete statutory package found on this map so far. Yankton County paused new permits for six months in parallel while it writes its own rules.

PAUSED FOR A YEAR, UNANIMOUSLY, WITH NOTHING YET PROPOSED. Oshkosh's Common Council adopted a 12-month moratorium on data centers on Sep 8, 2026, following the Plan Commission's Aug 25 recommendation. No data-center application was pending. The ordinance holds the status quo while city staff draft zoning and regulatory standards; it writes no permanent rules itself. Council member Alec Lefeber cited growing scrutiny of these projects and pressed for regional coordination; Deputy Mayor Karl Buelow tied it to shared water. It is the second pause in the same county in a month -- Winnebago County covered four townships on Aug 18 -- and follows Port Washington, about 100 miles away, where a hyperscale campus is under construction. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the county and city will write joint standards.

Winnebago County adopted a 12-month moratorium on data centers covering four townships, passed in a voice vote at the Aug 18, 2026 county board meeting with little resistance. District 24 Supervisor Andy Buck appeared to be the lone dissenter; he had said in June he would not support it, then returned with a failed amendment to cut the pause from twelve months to six. The county sits beside Oshkosh, whose Plan Commission recommended its own one-year moratorium a week later, and roughly 100 miles from Port Washington, where Vantage is building an AI campus for OpenAI and Oracle -- the proximity is the point, and it is why several Wisconsin governments moved within weeks of each other.

BELLEVUE'S VILLAGE BOARD VOTED 5-0 ON AUG 12, 2026 FOR A 12-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM, to Aug 12, 2027, extendable by six months. No project is proposed. Trustee Tom Murphy's argument was timing: write the rules before a developer is at the door, not after. Residents asked whether electric and water bills would rise and raised noise and grid demand, pointing to fights in Port Washington and across northeast Wisconsin. It joins Winnebago County's four-township pause in the same region. NOT ESTABLISHED: what regulations the board intends to draft, or whether any land in the village has been marketed for data-center use.

An 18-month moratorium on new data centers while the county develops standards.

A measure under consideration would require voter approval for data center projects exceeding 450 million dollars.

Port Washington voters approved, by about 66 percent, an ordinance requiring large tax-incremental districts of 10 million dollars or more to first win voter approval, after a grassroots petition. Supporters call it local control; developers warn it adds uncertainty for investment. The vote was 2,710 to 1,371 (66 to 34 percent) in April 2026, by Ballotpedia's count. Janesville is weighing a similar citizen initiative that would require a public vote on data-centre projects above $450 million; no election date has been set in any source read. NOT ESTABLISHED: the official canvass and the ordinance text.

In the Village of Caledonia, Wisconsin, organized resident opposition led Microsoft to cancel a planned data center. Retired tech executive Prescott Balch dug into the project's finances and rallied neighbors; after the win drew national attention, he went on to advise resident groups in at least ten other states and was elected to the Caledonia Village Board in April 2026. The case became a template cited by communities facing similar projects.

Opponents of the 15 billion dollar OpenAI and Oracle Stargate data center in Port Washington filed to recall Mayor Ted Neitzke and a community group sued the city, though construction broke ground despite the legal challenges.

Midwest Environmental Advocates sued Wisconsin regulators in December 2025 to force disclosure of the electricity and water demand of Meta's planned Beaver Dam data center in Dodge County, arguing residents cannot judge the rate and resource impacts while the figures stay secret.

Fort Payne's moratorium on data centers is six months, adopted about three months before September and running to Dec 15, 2026 -- not 'at least one year', as a tracker reported. On Sep 1, 2026 the council unanimously added a permanent layer: data centers and battery storage systems are now conditional uses in manufacturing and warehouse zones, so any project needs Board of Zoning Adjustment approval, a council decision and public hearings. No data center has been proposed; the city has had one battery-storage inquiry. Mayor Brian Baine said the point is to have rules before anyone calls.

ANNISTON'S COUNCIL ADOPTED A 12-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM ON AUG 18, 2026, 5-0, by Resolution 26-R-97, effective at once. It bars permits, approvals and licences for building, expanding or operating a data center anywhere in the city's regulatory jurisdiction, and gives the Planning Commission six months to recommend standards on power, water and wastewater, traffic, noise and distance from homes. The council said current zoning simply does not address what large facilities bring, and called the pause planning rather than a position for or against. No proposal is publicly known. The same night, Westover in Shelby County paused over a 450-acre proposal -- so the two Aug 18 votes are one proactive and one reactive. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the pause reaches Anniston's police jurisdiction beyond city limits; 'regulatory jurisdiction' may be broader than the city itself.

WESTOVER'S COUNCIL VOTED UNANIMOUSLY ON AUG 18, 2026 FOR A SIX-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM -- with a live 450-acre proposal on Highway 280 in front of it. The city attorney warned the vote might drive the developer away; the council passed it anyway, after trouble over a memorandum of understanding with the company. Neighbours raised health and environmental fears. Mayor Bobby Pardue called it time to research zoning and impacts, and the city held a town hall two days later with the developers, Shelby County Water Services and Alabama Power. Nearby Harpersville, Wilsonville and Childersburg have also drawn proposals. NOT ESTABLISHED: the developer's name, whether the MOU was signed, and whether the company has stayed.

HARPERSVILLE ADOPTED A SIX-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM ON AUG 3, 2026 WITH NOTHING PROPOSED. Mayor Theoangelo Perkins said no one has approached the town; the reason is next door -- Wilsonville, Westover and Childersburg have all drawn proposals. The council, planning and zoning board and water board are holding monthly public information sessions on economic and infrastructure effects, followed by a 30-day comment period, before writing rules. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count.

A Jefferson County judge ruled July 10, 2026 that Oxmoor Valley residents' consolidated lawsuit against the Nebius data center rising off Lakeshore Parkway in Birmingham can proceed -- rejecting the city's and builders' argument that neighbors had to go through the zoning board first, and holding that how the city approved the project is a question for a court. The timeline residents are litigating: Nebius bought the land in September 2025, permits issued and construction began by February, and in March the city passed a data-center moratorium that exempted Nebius itself. The Humane Society filed its own suit the same week.

Somerville EXTENDED its data-center pause to 18 months after community pushback against a proposed VoltCore Bitcoin-mining facility -- the most recent of at least six Alabama municipal moratoriums. The developer's tactics are on the record: VoltCore offered nearby homeowners cash, a year of free internet, a natural gas line and land restoration for the easements its power infrastructure needed; every homeowner refused. Morgan County's commission passed its own moratorium Jun 23, 2026 pausing the project -- notable because Alabama's limited home rule generally bars county commissions from ordinances or zoning without legislative approval, so its durability is untested. Statewide context: Birmingham lifted its March pause in favor of a strict ordinance (500-ft residential buffer, tighter utility disclosure); Cullman, Leeds, Homewood and Fort Payne have paused.

Moratorium adopted while Cullman County was blocked from doing the same by Alabama's limited home rule -- county governments cannot pass ordinances, zone property or raise taxes without lobbying the legislature. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

Residents fought a Nebius data center in Birmingham through neighborhood associations and council meetings, but a lawsuit alleges the developer outran the city's moratorium with a post-denial permit cascade as construction proceeded.

At least a one-year moratorium on data centers and other high-impact projects. Alabama's limited home rule means county commissions generally cannot follow suit without legislative approval, so municipal action is the whole game. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

At least a one-year moratorium on data centers and other high-impact projects. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

NORTH LITTLE ROCK ADOPTED DATA-CENTER ZONING WITH AN EMERGENCY CLAUSE IN SEPTEMBER 2026. Data-center campuses are now allowed only as conditional uses in the heaviest industrial zone, must meet noise and distance-from-homes rules, and may not put added strain on the city electric utility or Central Arkansas Water at existing customers' expense -- the water utility would have to confirm capacity in writing. It is rules, not a pause, and it sits directly across the river from Little Rock and Pulaski County, which have repeatedly failed to pass moratoriums. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote date and count, and how the 'no added stress' test would be measured.

A three-year moratorium passed unanimously in mid-August 2026, the second-longest in Arkansas after Independence County's five years, and like it adopted with NO KNOWN PROJECT in development. The Arkansas Advocate's framing is worth keeping because it inverts the usual assumption about where pushback comes from: the number of Arkansas communities limiting data centres is growing FASTER than the list of places publicly considering projects. Communities here are acting on what they have seen happen elsewhere rather than on a proposal in front of them. First reported by the Madison County Record.

A FIVE-YEAR pause, unanimous, with no project proposed -- the longest in Arkansas. The Independence County Quorum Court passed the ordinance on Aug 10, 2026, running to Aug 31, 2031. WHY A COUNTY WITH NOTHING PENDING ACTED, and it is a mechanism this map should carry: Justice of the Peace Brad Covington, a Republican, said a wind-turbine development 'absolutely' contributed. The county had passed a three-year turbine ban in October 2025 and then learned about two months before this vote that a company already held dozens of turbine contracts predating the ban. What alarmed the court was not the technology but discovering that nothing required companies to come before local authorities at all. County Judge Kevin Jeffery framed it as buying breathing room while the questions outrun the answers. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin's Opinion No. 2025-041 (Sep 23, 2025) held that counties and cities may pause WIND TURBINE construction under the 2025 wind energy act; it does not address data centres, so these pauses borrow its reasoning rather than rest on it. THE CONTRAST INSIDE THE STATE IS THE STORY: rural, Republican-leaning counties have passed pause after pause, while Little Rock and Pulaski County -- the two places actually facing large proposed projects -- have repeatedly FAILED to pass one since May.

City Director Kathy Webb proposed an 18-month halt on hyperscale permits, aimed at a planned Google data center, expected before the board in early August. Little Rock adopted a hyperscale definition in June: over 250,000 square feet or more than 75 megawatts. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

THE MORATORIUM LOST. After months of debate, two competing drafts, and a June passage that was voided when the clerk found the emergency-ordinance vote had been miscounted, the Pulaski County Quorum Court voted down the 12-month data-center moratorium 10-3 (one voting present) on Jul 28, 2026. Before the final vote, justices rejected 8-6 an amendment that would have exempted Phase I of AVAIO Digital's roughly $6 billion Wrightsville project -- critics had called the carve-out a free pass, and when the amendment failed the gallery applauded, prompting Judge Barry Hyde to have a man ejected. The Little Rock Regional Chamber had urged rejection as detrimental to economic development. The practical result: no moratorium of any kind is in place, AVAIO proceeds unregulated, and county leaders are drafting permanent rules with nothing paused while they do. Kept as `contesting` for one reason only: justices said plainly after the vote that a new moratorium ordinance would be brought back. The campaign is alive; this round was lost, and the record says so.

Russellville passed a six-month pause on approving data centres in July 2026, one of the Arkansas cluster alongside Union and Carroll counties in June and the longer Independence and Madison County pauses in August. Russellville is also among the Arkansas locations where a project has been announced, which separates it from the counties that paused with nothing pending.

Union County's Quorum Court voted unanimously at an emergency meeting on Jun 30, 2026 to adopt Ordinance 1795, a one-year moratorium on new data-center development AND expansions, running Jul 10, 2026 through Jul 9, 2027, while the county studies the effects. The trigger was not a greenfield proposal. Paradox Data LLC already operates an 8-megawatt cryptocurrency-mining facility at 713 Industrial Road in the El Dorado-Union County Industrial Park, and had entered a binding letter of intent with Florida-based Z Squared Inc. that could expand it -- which is why the ordinance reaches expansions and not just new builds, and why the pause halts approvals tied to that site specifically. Residents packed the meeting, several saying they had learned of the deal from a newspaper rather than from their own officials, and raised infrastructure, utility and public-safety concerns. The other side is on the record and belongs here: El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Steven Jones asked the court to hold off, warning that a moratorium on new data centers and expansions could be read by prospective industries and site selection consultants as an anti-growth position, and noted afterwards that the ordinance can be amended or repealed if circumstances change. The Chamber said it had not been told about the potential acquisition either. The court voted for the pause anyway.

Emergency Ordinance 2026-17, adopted unanimously: a 12-month pause on high-impact industrial and high-intensity digital infrastructure. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

On the final day of the 2026 session, Delaware's legislature passed a trio of large-load energy bills aimed at data centers: one requires them to bring their own power generation within ten years, one (SB 326) caps the infrastructure costs Delmarva Power can pass to customers, and one makes data centers first to be cut off during a blackout. Backers warn new data-center demand could double the state's electricity use. The bills head to Governor Meyer and mostly take effect on signature.

Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act (S.4214) on March 25, 2026, with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filing the House companion (H.R.9442) on June 24. The bill would impose a nationwide halt on constructing or upgrading data centers that draw 20 megawatts or more until Congress enacts strong national safeguards on energy costs, the environment, job displacement, and civil rights. It was referred to the Senate Commerce Committee and faces long odds, but reflects a fast-growing moratorium movement across states and localities.

WAKULLA COUNTY MADE ITS DATA-CENTER BAN LAW ON SEP 21, 2026, UNANIMOUSLY. Commissioners had voted in June, also unanimously and to applause from a full room, to pursue a permanent ban rather than a pause; the September ordinance amends the land development code's definitions and adds a new section prohibiting data centers in unincorporated Wakulla. Residents who spoke in June focused on water contamination and pollution, and one said he was not anti-technology but wanted to be sure nothing new harmed the county's natural resources. Commissioner Russell said the board was of one mind about keeping data centers out of a small county while their effects are unclear. No project was pending, so this is prevention, not a response to an application. It is the permanent version of what neighbouring Leon County is still debating as an 18-month pause. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the ordinance exempts small or accessory server rooms, since the text was not read.

LEON COUNTY IS ONE VOTE FROM AN 18-MONTH DATA-CENTER PAUSE. Commissioners voted unanimously on July 14, 2026 to pursue it -- Bill Proctor stretched it from one year to 18 months -- and unanimously advanced the ordinance on Sep 15. The final public hearing is Oct 13. It covers 'large-load customer facilities', data centers included, while the county writes its first rules on compatibility, water and power. Nick Maddox framed his vote as about siting near homes, not an absolute objection. The county surrounds Tallahassee, whose own commission rejected a moratorium 3-2 in June on the ground that city land rules already exclude data centers -- so the pause now being written covers the land outside the city. Neighbouring Wakulla, Jackson and Franklin counties already restrict them. NOT ESTABLISHED: the outcome on Oct 13.

ORANGE COUNTY'S COMMISSION SAID YES IN PRINCIPLE ON SEP 15, 2026, AND NOT YET IN LAW. Commissioners backed a temporary moratorium on large AI data centers but sent it to staff to study zoning, power, water and noise, and will revisit it in early December. The push came from residents -- more than 800 emails and nearly 2,000 petition signatures -- before any developer had applied. Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad argued a pause lets the county choose its rules first. NOT ESTABLISHED: a vote count, the length of any pause, and whether an application lands before December.

THE CITY OF ALACHUA VOTED ON SEP 14, 2026 TO DRAFT A 12-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM -- a step taken over the mayor's resistance. Vice Mayor Jennifer Ringersen moved to have staff write a pause on accepting, processing and reviewing data-center applications while the city writes rules; Mayor Walter Welch tried to cut off Commissioner Jacob Fletcher's push to discuss it further, and the motion went through anyway. The prompt was a May listing that marketed a 104-acre parcel east of San Felasco Tech City as a high-megawatt data-center site -- land that is actually in unincorporated Alachua County, outside the city, whose officials have said current county codes do not allow data centers. A resident called 12 months too short but accepted it after a period in which the city had been, in her words, wide open. It is a draft, not a pause: the commission reviews it on Sep 28. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count, and whether the planning board also voted, as one TV headline says. A CONFLICTING ACCOUNT of Sep 14: the Independent Florida Alligator reports the mayor declared a motion to delay dead, that no moratorium vote was formally taken, and that residents walked out -- so whether the commission actually directed a draft is disputed. Sep 28 is confirmed as the next discussion.

PAUSED FOR A YEAR, UNANIMOUSLY -- AND THE COUNTY GOT THERE IN TWO STEPS. Putnam County, Florida first adopted a disclosure rule on Jul 14, 2026: every staff conversation about a potential data center must go to the county administrator and be posted publicly within 72 hours. Residents wanted a moratorium; commissioners said not yet. By Aug 25 they approved one at a first hearing, and on Sep 8 adopted it unanimously on second reading. It bars county staff from accepting, processing or reviewing applications for medium- and large-scale data centers until at least Aug 30, 2027 while standards are written on land use, water, cooling, noise and lighting. No application was pending, so this is preemptive. NOT ESTABLISHED: the size thresholds in the ordinance.

LEVY COUNTY ADOPTED A ONE-YEAR MORATORIUM ON SEP 8, 2026, Ordinance 2026-05, running Oct 1, 2026 to Sep 30, 2027. It is drawn by electricity, not floor space: it covers any 'large load customer facility' expected to peak at 50 megawatts or more, so ordinary server rooms, broadband and public-safety facilities are untouched, as is anything already approved. Commissioners pointed to the Floridan Aquifer, roads, utilities and emergency services, and to noise, lighting and heat. Staff must bring proposed rules, or explain why not, by Aug 30, 2027. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count. Tracker reports of a THREE-year moratorium conflict with both local reports, which say one year.

INDIANTOWN'S COUNCIL VOTED 4-1 ON SEP 1, 2026 NOT TO PAUSE DATA CENTERS -- after the developer's lawyer said in the room that a lawsuit would follow if it did. SilverFox 606 wants to build on farmland in the village's heavy-industrial district; its attorney, Ethan Loeb, offered a voluntary 'cool down period' in place of a moratorium. The council, three of whose members had just been elected, said it wants language that can survive a suit and will get outside legal advice first. The same night it fired the village manager 3-2; the village attorney had already resigned. This is the litigation threat working as designed: not a defeat on the merits, but a delay that keeps the application alive. NOT ESTABLISHED: how each member voted, and whether a moratorium returns once the new legal advice arrives.

MANATEE COUNTY PAUSED DATA-CENTER APPLICATIONS FOR 12 MONTHS IN SEPTEMBER 2026, UNANIMOUSLY and, according to WMNF, without public discussion. Commissioners Amanda Ballard, Tal Siddique and Bob McCann led it. The trigger was next door: DeSoto County's approval of a data center, which this map records as a pause that exempted the very project that caused it. Manatee acted before any proposal of its own surfaced. NOT ESTABLISHED: the meeting date and ordinance number.

MARTIN COUNTY COMMISSIONERS VOTED 4-1 ON AUG 25, 2026 TO START WRITING A ONE-YEAR DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM. Commissioner Edward Ciampi moved to have the county's lawyers bring back an ordinance giving the county a year to take expert and public input; Stacey Hetherington voted no. It is a direction to staff, not a pause in force: adoption needs two public hearings, and none had been dated in the coverage read. The concerns raised were energy use, water supply and industrial-scale building near homes; former gubernatorial candidate James Fishback pressed the board on higher power bills. The county context matters: a week later, the Village of Indiantown -- inside Martin County but with its own zoning -- declined its own pause 4-1 after a developer's lawyer threatened to sue. NOT ESTABLISHED: the hearing dates, the final vote, and whether a county moratorium would have any effect on the Indiantown site.

WASHINGTON COUNTY, FLORIDA PAUSED DATA-CENTER APPLICATIONS FOR ONE YEAR, UNANIMOUSLY, ON AUG 20, 2026. The moratorium stops the county accepting, processing, reviewing or approving applications for data centers and large-scale data processing facilities anywhere in the unincorporated county. It carves out ordinary server rooms: computer equipment that is incidental to another use, takes no more than 5 percent of floor area and draws no more than 250 kW. The county attorney described the year as time to measure what such facilities would demand of electricity, water, telecommunications and roads, and to write standing rules into the land development code before the pause expires. No application was pending; it is preventive, one of a run of Panhandle counties -- Jackson, Franklin, Wakulla, Escambia -- that acted this summer. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether this was the final adoption hearing, and how each commissioner voted.

ESCAMBIA COUNTY BANNED LARGE DATA CENTERS 4-1 ON AUG 6, 2026 -- then, by local headlines, declined to go further. On Jul 23 commissioners voted 5-0 on a resolution declaring that data centers are not a permitted use in unincorporated Escambia; the county attorney said the code already allowed none as a principal use, and Commissioner Lumon May put it as not permitted meaning banned. On Aug 6 the board wrote the prohibition into an ordinance aimed at large-scale facilities, which the state defines at 50 MW; May voted no, backing the ban but objecting to the wording. Residents had asked for a ban on all sizes. In September the board weighed a 12-month moratorium on mid-sized 10-50 MW facilities, with hearings pencilled for Oct 1 and Oct 15; local headlines report it took no action and dropped the item. No project was pending. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether any vote was taken on the moratorium in September, the stated reason for dropping it, and whether facilities under 50 MW now face any county rule beyond the code's existing silence.

PASSED 4-3 on Aug 3, 2026, effective immediately -- applause in the chamber when the vote was announced. Ordinance 26-018 imposes a 12-month moratorium on new data centers of ANY size and on other large-load users with projected peak demand of 50 megawatts or more, halting acceptance and review of applications while staff amends the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code and Lakeland Electric drafts a large-load policy. Three reaches worth naming. Existing data centers may keep operating but may NOT expand. The pause applies to projects OUTSIDE city limits that seek Lakeland utility service -- the annexation-adjacent gap most moratoriums leave open. And Florida's new SB 484 data-center siting law does not cover Lakeland Electric at all, because it is municipally owned -- the city has to build its own protections, which is the argument commissioners gave for the pause. The three no votes objected that the language was too broad and would catch small operators' expansions; Commissioner Guy LaLonde Jr., who first called for the moratorium at the Jun 12 agenda study, answered that too many unknowns remain. Mayor Sara Roberts McCarley stressed it is temporary and can end early once the studies land. Grew from three months of pushback on Ryan Companies' Project Swan (600,000 sq ft, ~100 MW) -- Lakeland Electric's largest current customer of any kind, Publix, draws about 18 MW. A resident cited a Georgia Tech study finding data-center economic benefits smaller and more uneven than promised. Lakeland is the fifth Tampa Bay-area government with a pause, after Citrus, Hernando and Pasco counties and Zephyrhills.

DeSoto County commissioners voted unanimously (4-0, one recused) on Jul 28, 2026 for a one-year moratorium on new data-center applications -- and READ THE EXEMPTION, because it is the story: the pause does not touch the rezoning applications of DCIP Group, the project that provoked it. The county had fast-tracked DCIP through a special economic program; 34 acres at a decommissioned power plant were rezoned in March, the company has since applied for 800+ more, and its stated ambition is more than a dozen data centers across roughly 1,300 acres, with its CEO telling residents daily water use could run anywhere from zero to 3 million gallons. The county's own Planning Commission recommended a two-year moratorium COVERING those applications; commissioners took the county attorney's advice to shorten it and carve the project out to limit legal risk. Months of packed meetings produced a pause that stops only hypothetical future applicants while the 1,300-acre buildout advances. Commissioner Deriso lamented the lost trust; resident Ed Johnson urged the two-year version. Recorded as a moratorium because it is one -- with its perimeter drawn around the thing residents organised against.

SANTA ROSA COUNTY PAUSED DATA CENTRES FOR 12 MONTHS ON JUL 23, 2026, at a special meeting held the same day neighbouring Escambia declared them banned. Commissioners said they would write permanent restrictions before the moratorium expires. Residents had pressed for an outright ban instead; the county's own notice describes the pause as covering large-scale facilities, which in Florida law means 50 megawatts and up. With Pensacola the week before and Walton County in June, the western Panhandle closed almost entirely to large data centres in six weeks. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count, whether this was final adoption of the ordinance or a vote to proceed, and whether facilities below 50 MW are covered.

PENSACOLA PAUSED LARGE DATA CENTRES FOR A YEAR ON JUL 17, 2026. The City Council approved a temporary one-year prohibition on large-scale data centres -- 50 megawatts and up, the threshold Florida law uses -- a week before Escambia County wrote its own ban. Council member Charles Bare said a moratorium was the right step; resident Brandy Johnson organised residents to ask for a say. Some residents wanted smaller facilities covered too, and the 50 MW line leaves them out. The city, the county around it and neighbouring Santa Rosa all acted inside eight days, which is what a regional wave looks like. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count, whether this was the final reading, and what permanent rule the city intends to write before the year runs out.

Palm Beach County commissioners approved a zoning moratorium on new AI data-center applications to rewrite the rules governing the facilities. The county's most controversial proposal, the 3.6M-square-foot Project Tango near Wellington and Saddle View Elementary, is exempt because it was already in review; the binding commission vote on it is set for July 15, 2026.

After a hearing that ran twelve hours, Palm Beach County commissioners voted 5-1 on July 22, 2026 to deny Project Tango, a proposed 600-acre AI data-center campus west of Boca Raton -- one of the largest single-project denials on this map. Commissioners cited water demand, grid load, and the county's own pending rules for the industry; residents packed overflow rooms for the third consecutive meeting.

Hyperscale data center pause. One of five Tampa Bay-area governments to act, alongside Citrus, Hernando and Pasco counties and Zephyrhills. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

FRANKLIN COUNTY ADOPTED A ONE-YEAR PAUSE ON LARGE DATA CENTERS IN JULY 2026, UNANIMOUSLY, and told residents a ban is where it wants to end up. The ordinance stops development applications for large-scale data centers and other large-load facilities in unincorporated Franklin County for a year. Commissioners said the goal is a complete prohibition and that they may act before the year is out; residents in the room asked why the county could not simply ban them now, as neighbouring Panhandle counties had done. No project was named as the trigger. The county's own notice does not define large-scale, so the threshold that decides which facilities are caught is not established here. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact date of adoption (a Wednesday reported Jul 16, so probably Jul 15), how each commissioner voted, and whether the promised ban arrives before the pause expires.

TALLAHASSEE'S COMMISSION REJECTED A DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM 3-2 ON JUNE 10, 2026. Commissioner Jeremy Matlow proposed a one-year pause on large-scale data centers, a land-code definition, and a bar on the city-owned utility signing purchase agreements with them. Mayor John Dailey and Commissioners Curtis Richardson and Dianne Williams-Cox voted no. Their case was not that data centers are welcome: City Manager Reese Goad said the comprehensive plan and land-use rules already do not allow them, and that serving one would mean roughly tripling the city's generating capacity. Richardson called the push close to fear-mongering. Leon County, which surrounds the city, moved the same week toward a pause of its own. NOT ESTABLISHED: the second yes vote, and whether the city's existing rules would actually survive a rezoning request -- which is what a moratorium would have guarded against.

WALTON COUNTY BANNED DATA CENTRES OUTRIGHT, 5-0, ON JUN 10, 2026 -- in every land-use category and zoning district, not just some. County Attorney Clay Adkinson said the ordinance was drafted to stand up after Florida's new large-load law took effect Jul 1, and it is hard to undo: reversing it takes five affirmative votes, three public workshops and two hearings. No application was pending; this was preventive. It became the model others cited -- a Pensacola council member said he hoped to mirror it. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact megawatt threshold in the ordinance text (local reporting implies Florida's 50 MW definition), and whether it also bars county funding support, as one secondary summary says.

JACKSON COUNTY REPLACED A ONE-YEAR DATA-CENTER PAUSE WITH A PERMANENT BAN IN JUNE 2026, unanimously. Commissioners had adopted the moratorium the month before to study the question; at their Jun 9 meeting they voted instead to prohibit data centers, their accessory structures and affiliated businesses outright, with the ban taking effect Jun 23 according to WFSU. A resident explained his opposition in terms of cooling: the cheapest way to cool a hyperscale facility is evaporative water cooling, and the county's water is what would be spent. Not everyone in the room agreed on the method -- some residents said the board had jumped from a study period to a permanent ban without doing the study. No project was pending. NOT ESTABLISHED: the date of final adoption. WJHG called Jun 9 the first of two hearings and a local paper's headline refers to a third hearing, so the ban may have been finalised later in June.

Governor Ron DeSantis signed CS/CS/SB 484 on May 7, 2026 in Lakeland; most provisions took effect July 1. Sponsored by Senators Avila, Yarborough and Gaetz. The Public Service Commission must impose large-load tariff and service requirements ensuring those customers pay their own cost of service, and the risk of nonpayment may not be borne by the general body of ratepayers -- every public utility had to file a tariff for PSC approval by October 1, 2026. Two provisions carry more weight than the headlines suggested: customers MAY NOT DIVIDE LOADS at a single location to dodge the large-load tariff, and tariffs, contracts or utility policies MAY NOT prevent or hinder curtailment or interruption of service where needed for grid stability, to limit broader outages, or to protect public safety. Utilities are barred from knowingly serving large-load facilities owned or controlled by foreign countries of concern. On local control -- effective on becoming law, not July 1 -- the act preserves local comprehensive planning and land-development authority over large-load customers and, critically, bars treating them as an electric substation under s. 163.3208 F.S., which is the mechanism that would otherwise have curtailed local say. Water: distinct consumptive-use-permit requirements for large-scale data centers, authority for water management districts or DEP to require partial reclaimed-water use, and CUP modifications must be treated as NEW initial applications rather than amendments. OPPAGA must commission an independent interdisciplinary study of economic, tax, land, water, energy, rate, and public-health impacts, with siting and mitigation recommendations. ON TRANSPARENCY, READ THE ACTUAL TEXT: this is not an NDA ban, as some coverage claimed. It narrows an existing public-records exemption -- economic development agencies keep 12 months of confidentiality on written request, and SB 484 removes only the further 12-month extension, and only for data centers. The secrecy window shrinks from up to 24 months to 12; it does not close. Votes on the enacted version: Senate 31-6, House 92-16 (an earlier Senate passage was 37-0, before House amendment). The 50-megawatt peak-load threshold widely reported is not stated in the Senate summary and rests on secondary reporting.

Citrus County imposed a one-year moratorium on data-center rezoning in May 2026 after packed commission meetings, and the Deltona Corporation withdrew its roughly 800-acre Holder Industrial Park proposal near U.S. 41 once the county's planning board recommended denial. Florida separately enacted a law that bars utilities from shifting data-center costs onto residents.

BULLOCH COUNTY REJECTED A PERMANENT DATA-CENTER BAN 4-3 ON SEP 1, 2026, WITH THE CHAIRMAN BREAKING THE TIE. Chairman David Bennett joined Timmy Rushing, Ray Davis and Ray Mosley to deny the zoning text amendment; Nick Newkirk, Toby Conner and Anthony Simmons wanted the ban. Bennett's stated reason was legal risk: an outright ban could expose the county to suit. What survives is the pause -- the moratorium on unincorporated Bulloch County still runs to Dec 31, 2026 -- and a new 21-member citizens' working group, three picked by each commissioner, to study rules and mitigation. The ban had already stalled on Aug 4. The practical question is Dec 31: the pause expires unless extended, and the working group is the body that will shape what replaces it. NOT ESTABLISHED: who sits on the working group and when it reports.

DOUGHERTY COUNTY EXTENDED ITS DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM BY 180 DAYS ON AUG 31, 2026, UNANIMOUSLY, while it drafts an ordinance. Residents credited commissioners with listening and planned to press at the Sep 3 planning and zoning meeting for limits on noise, setbacks from homes and water use. NOT ESTABLISHED: when the original pause began, the new end date, and whether any project prompted it.

FLOYD COUNTY ADOPTED ONE OF THE MOST DETAILED DATA-CENTER ORDINANCES ON THIS MAP ON AUG 25, 2026. Data centers are confined to heavy-industrial zones and must sit at least 600 feet from existing homes, with a 300-foot landscaped buffer next to residential or farm land and generators held to the same setbacks. Developers must file impact studies on power, water and broadband, get utilities to confirm capacity in writing, and sign binding agreements to pay for upgrades. Water-cooled equipment must reclaim water; private wells and septic are banned. Night-time noise near homes is capped at 55 decibels. Operators must post a decommissioning plan with a financial guarantee, and violations can cost $1,000 a day. It is regulation rather than a pause. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count and whether any project prompted it. SOURCING: a regional radio summary (WEIS, Centre AL); the ordinance text and Rome News-Tribune coverage have not been read.

APPROVED 5-2 OVER RESIDENT OPPOSITION, AND OUTSIDE THE MORATORIUM PASSED FOR EXACTLY THIS FIGHT. On Aug 12, 2026 Marietta City Council approved Prime Storage's request to turn part of a storage building on Powers Ferry Place, beside I-75, into an 18 MW data center. Cheryl Richardson (Ward 1) and Daniel Gaddis (Ward 3) voted no. The council had tabled the same request on Jul 8 and then adopted a six-month moratorium that did not cover it, because the application was already filed. Conditions attached: continuous monitoring, an independent sound study, noise-limit compliance, silenced coolers and generators, and a bar on data centers at the company's other Marietta sites. The lesson for other towns: a moratorium that exempts pending applications does not stop the project already in the room. NOT ESTABLISHED: construction timeline, and who will enforce the noise conditions.

Marietta residents turned out in force against a data center the City Council had already approved, arguing the hearings had been under-advertised, and the council responded by postponing a further rezoning decision and ADOPTING a temporary moratorium on new data-center projects through December 31, 2026 -- buying time to write rules before the next application arrives. TWO PROJECTS, NOT ONE MISREPORTED. The 31-acre Bells Ferry Road data center near I-75 was approved in June 2025; the under-advertised hearings on that one are what brought residents out. The second, an 18 MW conversion of a storage building at 1155 Powers Ferry Place, was tabled on Jul 8, 2026, the night the council unanimously adopted the six-month moratorium -- and then approved 5-2 on Aug 12, because the pause did not cover applications already filed (separate record). The pause runs out Dec 31, 2026.

Moratorium extended through early 2027 after commissioners rejected proposed zoning regulations in June, with additional county departments directed to study industry impacts. Commissioner Ted Terry warned residential power bills could rise roughly $20 a month if data centers expand unchecked. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

After Coweta County commissioners approved the roughly seventeen-billion-dollar Project Sail data center campus in a three-to-two vote in April 2026, residents sued in May to void the rezoning, and a local group began targeting the commissioners who voted yes.

The county pushed off new data center developments through June 2026.

Twiggs County commissioners approved Eagle Rock Partners' roughly 300-acre data center at a contentious September 2025 meeting -- during a months-long window when Georgia had paused its developments-of-regional-impact review, meaning no state-level look at the project's square footage or water needs, which the developer never disclosed. Residents sued, alleging among other things that the rezoning public notice was posted at the wrong location. The case is rural Georgia's version of the pattern this map keeps recording: approval first, details never.

A BURGIN COUNCIL MEMBER WALKED OUT ON SEP 8, 2026 AND STOPPED THE DATA-CENTER ANNEXATION FROM RESTARTING. Panattoni Data Centers wants a hyperscale campus on more than 1,000 acres north of the small Mercer County city; Burgin's first annexation of the land was declared void, and the council met at the fire hall to begin again. It first voted to rejoin a joint planning and zoning commission with Mercer County and Harrodsburg -- the mayor broke a tie -- which means planning rules must come before any annexation. Then Melinda Wofford left the room. With one member recused and another absent, the council lost its quorum and could not vote to have its attorney draft a new annexation ordinance. More than 100 residents came, many from the group We Are Mercer County; Panattoni's representative promised tens of millions in tax revenue. The same day Mercer County Fiscal Court gave first reading to its own data-center rules. NOT ESTABLISHED: the campus's power demand, why the first annexation failed, and when the annexation comes back.

WINCHESTER'S CITY COMMISSION VOTED UNANIMOUSLY ON SEP 1, 2026 FOR A ONE-YEAR DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM -- and acknowledged in the same meeting that it may not reach where one would go. Most land suitable for a data center lies outside the city, in unincorporated Clark County, which has not paused. Planning Director Rob Jeffries framed the year as time to learn what effects such facilities have on neighbouring property and to hear residents, who raised water and energy use. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether Clark County Fiscal Court will act.

ROWAN COUNTY'S FISCAL COURT APPROVED A TWO-YEAR PAUSE ON LARGE DATA CENTERS, reported Sep 1, 2026, WITH NO PROPOSAL IN SIGHT. The reason is structural: the county has no zoning at all, so without a moratorium a developer could build before anyone reviewed it. Judge-Executive Harry Clark said no company has asked. The two years are for writing zoning and a conditional-use permit process from scratch. Officials were open about the other side of the ledger -- potential tax revenue in the millions a year. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote date and count.

MERCER COUNTY PAUSED DATA CENTRES FOR A YEAR, UNANIMOUSLY, IN AUGUST 2026 -- AND LEFT A HOLE THE SIZE OF A CITY. The Fiscal Court's moratorium covers only unincorporated county land. Burgin, the small city inside the county, is trying to annex the farmland where Panattoni Data Centers wants its 'Project Bluegrass' hyperscale campus, which would take the site out of county zoning altogether. Panattoni promises 1,500 construction jobs, about 100 permanent jobs and $25-30 million a year in tax revenue. On Sep 8 the Fiscal Court gave first reading to permanent data-centre rules. The county pause is only as strong as Burgin's council is divided -- see the Burgin walkout. NOT ESTABLISHED: the final adoption date of the moratorium, and what the permanent rules require.

Nelson County's Fiscal Court passed a one-year moratorium on accepting, processing or approving all applications tied to establishing, developing or EXPANDING data centers of any size -- adopted in early July 2026 while officials and residents were still trying to learn whether a specific project was quietly in discussion. District 1 Magistrate Keith Metcalfe said he could not tell what the rumored project even was, and that what he had heard sounded good mainly for its owners. The vote came one day after London KY's city council drafted a two-year pause. Kentucky wave: Lexington-Fayette (through October, unanimous, aimed at a former Lexmark site), Daviess County (12 months, May 28), Allen County (24 months), Madison and Jessamine counties moving, Georgetown seeking zoning rules -- while Louisville tabled its own six-month proposal in June.

The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government passed a moratorium running through October 2026 on new data-center development, voting unanimously after residents raised concerns about a project proposed for a former Lexmark property. A pause measured in months rather than years is a different instrument from an 18- or 24-month study window: it forces the zoning work onto a short clock, and the October expiry is the date to watch. Madison County's fiscal court has backed a moratorium, Georgetown's council did the same and asked the Georgetown-Scott County Planning Commission to recommend data-center zoning rules, and Jessamine County's fiscal court has voted on one.

A LOSS in Kentucky's largest city. A Louisville planning and zoning committee voted on Jun 2, 2026 to TABLE a six-month data-center moratorium proposed by council member Jenniffer Chappell, while smaller Kentucky jurisdictions around it -- Daviess, Allen, Nelson counties, Lexington-Fayette, Georgetown, London -- were adopting pauses. The inversion is the record's value: in Kentucky the rural counties moved first and the metro stalled, the opposite of the assumption that cities lead on surveillance and infrastructure limits.

Allen County, a community of about 21,000 along the Tennessee border, passed a 24-month data-center moratorium in 2026 -- among the longest recorded on this map. Republican Judge-Executive Dennis Harper said the county acted after watching the difficulties neighbouring Simpson County had with a hyperscale proposal, framing it as protection until officials work out where such a facility should go if one wants to locate there, and citing noise and lifestyle impacts in plain terms. Learning from the county next door, before any application arrives, is the dominant pattern in Kentucky's 2026 wave.

The Daviess County Fiscal Court approved a 12-month data-center moratorium on May 28, 2026, after residents mobilized over a hyperscale project planned next door at an idled aluminium mill in Hancock County. Judge-Executive Charlie Castlen told reporters he had not heard the term hyperscale before that news broke, and that there is much to learn -- an admission worth recording because it is the ordinary condition of the county officials making these decisions, not an outlier. Local speculation about land deals connected to a company investing in energy and data-center infrastructure, raised by residents and a county commissioner, fed the pressure.

The fight over who pays for data centers has produced a fight over WHO IS ALLOWED TO ARGUE. The Louisiana Public Service Commission is considering a "transparency" rule, framed as identifying potential foreign interference and advancing the state's energy dominance, that advocacy groups and at least one sitting commissioner warn would chill participation and limit which organisations can intervene in utility dockets -- the proceedings that decide how much ratepayers are charged and whether a utility may build a new power plant. The context is not abstract: the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Affordable Energy, two of the groups named in a Pelican Institute report, had both intervened in the commission's docket on Meta's Richland Parish data center. Commissioner Davante Lewis, who had earlier proposed opening a public stakeholder proceeding on data-center grid additions instead of fast-tracking them, called the rule "a solution in search of a problem." Worth tracking as its own record because standing to intervene is upstream of every ratepayer argument: an intervenor rule decides the outcome of dockets it never mentions.

The largest data center on this map is being fought through UTILITY REGULATION rather than zoning, which is why it looked like Louisiana had no opposition at all. Meta is building its Hyperion campus at Holly Ridge in Richland Parish -- $27 billion, eventually 4 million square feet, with a planned peak load about TWICE that of the entire city of New Orleans. In August 2025 the Louisiana Public Service Commission approved Entergy Louisiana's application for three new billion-dollar gas plants and transmission to serve it, over objections from Earthjustice and residents, and the approval rested on a parental guarantee from Meta that ratepayers would be shielded. ON THE SAME DAY THE COMMISSION APPROVED IT, Meta restructured: it moved 80% of the data center into a new joint venture with Blue Owl Capital called Beignet for roughly $3 billion, and Beignet then borrowed $27 billion -- an arrangement the Wall Street Journal called "Frankenstein financing" that lets Meta walk away after a four-year lease. Earthjustice moved on Jan 14, 2026, for the Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists, asking the commission to investigate whether the new structure gutted the ratepayer protection its own approval depended on. On Feb 25, 2026 the commission REFUSED to investigate. Entergy will build 10 plants in total -- six in Richland Parish, three in Pointe Coupee, one in St. Charles -- plus the largest transmission substation it has ever built, with output equivalent to serving over a million homes. Entergy says Meta covers construction. Logan Burke of the Alliance for Affordable Energy put the risk plainly: either they are overpaying for speed and everyone is on the hook long term, or the deadlines slip after the commission has already locked ratepayers into the risk. A UCS analysis projects Louisiana electricity system costs rising $26 billion over 15 years from data center growth, plus up to $90 billion in public health and climate damages. Amazon is separately building three data centers in the Shreveport-Bossier area.

BALTIMORE COUNTY EXTENDED ITS DATA-CENTER PAUSE UNANIMOUSLY -- NOW TO DEC 31, 2027. On Sep 22 the County Council passed Bill 079-26, from Councilman David Marks, pushing the moratorium's end from January 2027 to the end of 2027; every member had co-signed it before the vote. Members said it buys time to review a county Planning Board study due Oct 1 and to see what the state legislature does. The Maryland Tech Council's Kelly Schulz argued the county would lose tech growth. Marks dropped an amendment to add battery-storage facilities, saying he would file it separately. This is Baltimore COUNTY, distinct from Baltimore City's own one-year pause. What to watch: the Oct 1 Planning Board study and Marks' battery-storage bill.

The County Executive first signed an executive order in June 2026 pausing data-center permit applications until Maryland completes a statewide impact assessment and the county sets rules. THE COUNCIL THEN MADE IT LAW. On Jul 28, 2026 the Montgomery County Council unanimously passed Expedited Bill 19-26, an 18-month moratorium, and ZTA 26-01, which defines data centers (25 MW and up, per The Banner) and bars hyperscale facilities during the pause. Unlike the executive order, the county says it reaches applications already filed and projects approved without a building permit -- which covers Atmosphere's Dickerson campus in the Agricultural Reserve. Council President Natali Fani-Gonzalez said the legislative route cannot be challenged the way an executive order could. Atmosphere told WTOP it did not look able to proceed for now, and its Sep 10-11 zoning hearing (OZAH case CU 24-13(a)(A)) was continued on Sep 1 with no new date. Existing data centers are untouched. NOT ESTABLISHED: the enactment date that starts the 18-month clock.

The Prince George's County Council passed a two-year moratorium on hyperscale data-center development, extending earlier pauses to give members time to write permanent rules. The chair said passing comprehensive legislation would lift the moratorium; the county is separately trying to stop a project proposed for the old Landover Mall site.

WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND PAUSED DATA-CENTRE APPLICATIONS FOR A YEAR, 4-1, ON JUN 30, 2026. The moratorium took effect immediately and stops the county accepting, processing, reviewing or approving any data-centre application while it writes zoning standards. The board listed its reasons: water and environmental resources, power and road capacity, hazardous materials and electronic waste, noise from cooling systems and backup generators, and whether such buildings fit next to farms and homes. The county says the pause is not a permanent ban. Local reporting indicates the board lengthened a shorter draft to a full year. NOT ESTABLISHED: which commissioner voted no and why, and whether any developer had an application in hand.

The Baltimore City Council passed a one-year moratorium on data centers drawing 10 MW or more, ordering a study of energy infrastructure, ratepayer impact, and public health. Supporters of development say the city risks losing investment to nearby Virginia.

The City Council sent a one-year data center pause to the mayor in May 2026 amid concerns over grid and water demands.

Organizers gathered enough signatures for a referendum to overturn a 2024 ordinance that approved 2,600 acres for data centers; the council must decide on timing.

Maryland's Next Generation Energy Act, enacted in 2025, made the state the first in the nation to require large data centers to pay a special electricity rate designed to finance statewide electric-grid improvements, aiming to keep the cost of grid upgrades driven by data-center demand off other ratepayers' bills. Maryland lawmakers also overrode a veto to require a state study of data centers' environmental, energy, and economic impacts, due in fall 2026.

The Jackson City Council introduced a six-month data-center moratorium on July 6, 2026 amid swift community pushback against a proposed rezoning in northwest Jackson, with residents citing strain on the city's water system. Some called for a permanent ban. The measure is set for a vote July 14, 2026.

RALEIGH'S LEADERS AGREED ON SEP 15, 2026 TO DRAFT A SIX-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM, with a public hearing set for Oct 6. The city attorney is writing it. Mayor Janet Cowell described it as a freeze to study land, water and power demands and to lower the temperature of an argument that has been running across the Triangle -- Durham city and county both paused in August. It would make the state capital one of the largest cities on this map to pause. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether a vote was taken on Sep 15, and the outcome on Oct 6.

STATESVILLE PAUSED NEW DATA CENTERS FOR 180 DAYS, UNANIMOUSLY, ON SEP 14, 2026 -- and the pause does not touch the project that started the argument. The council's final vote came on the consent agenda after a unanimous first reading in August, when a packed hearing heard more than a dozen speakers; council member James Pressly moved it and the length was stretched from 150 days to 180. It stops the city accepting, processing or approving data-center applications while staff write rules the Unified Development Code does not have. Previously approved projects are exempt, so the Compass data-center project on Stamey Farm Road, approved in 2025, goes ahead; several speakers asked for it to be included and were not answered in the motion. One speaker called regulation a Trojan horse, on the argument that writing rules concedes the projects will come. The pause runs to about Mar 13, 2027. NOT ESTABLISHED: what rules staff will propose, and whether the council extends the pause if they are not ready.

DAVIDSON COUNTY'S SIX-MONTH PAUSE FAILED 3-3 ON AUG 24, 2026 -- not voted down by a majority, but lost on a tie with one commissioner absent. Chair Karen Watford, Todd Yates and Steve Shell voted no; Chris Elliott, Tripp Kester and Matt Mizell voted yes; Fred McClure was absent. The board itself had told planning staff in July to draft the pause, which would have stopped the county accepting, processing or approving data-center applications while it studied water, power, health and environmental effects. Residents at the hearing argued growth should not come at the expense of the county's people and resources. Because the failure was a tie, the absent commissioner is the deciding voice if it returns. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether anyone has moved to reconsider.

DURHAM COUNTY VOTED 4-1 JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON AUG 24, 2026 for a nine-month pause, to May 2027, on data centers over 100,000 square feet -- matching the City of Durham's. The design is unusual: smaller facilities can still proceed, but only if they use closed-loop cooling and no diesel backup generators, and every applicant must state its expected electrical load and cooling fluids in writing. The lone no vote, Commissioner Nida Allam, objected that the carve-out went too far; residents had asked for a moratorium with no qualifications. Commissioner Larissa Williamson raised the gap underneath it: the county has no clear way to check that a facility actually uses the power it certifies. Staff may have draft rules by December. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the county has any enforcement tool for the cooling and generator conditions once a small facility is built.

THE CITY'S OWN LAWYER TOLD THE COUNCIL WHAT WOULD WORK, AND THE COUNCIL DID SOMETHING ELSE. On Apr 27, 2026, Fayetteville city attorney Lachelle Pulliam advised the City Council that a moratorium was the only way to pause data-centre development. Two weeks earlier the council had voted 5-4 to stop work on a staff-drafted data-centre ordinance and look at a moratorium instead. After the advice it did not pass one -- it voted to spend four more months gathering research, including the possibility of members visiting data-centre sites and talking to the county. THEN THE DRAFT CAME BACK. On Jun 8 the council voted 8-2 to schedule a public hearing on the same ordinance many residents believed had been sent back to the drawing board, setting it for Aug 10. The chamber was packed and volatile: applause, boos and shouting through the debate, one resident escorted out by police, Mayor Mitch Colvin repeatedly calling for order and Police Chief Roberto Bryan asking the room to be respectful while people expressed themselves. Councilmember Shaun McMillan had joined the residents' rally outside. THE CITY'S POSITION, stated: the ordinance amendment approves no project, and it exists because Fayetteville's Unified Development Ordinance does not currently identify data centres as a distinct land use at all -- which is the same silence-versus-definition question raised in New Jersey, arriving here from the opposite direction. AND THE COUNTY AROUND IT DID THE OTHER THING. Cumberland County, which surrounds Fayetteville, moved to a six-month moratorium running to Dec 15, halting site-plan review and zoning and building permits, with commissioners intending to have regulations in place when it lapsed. The lone no vote, Commissioner Marshall Faircloth, said six months was too long to interfere with private business and preferred three. So a resident inside the city and a resident just outside it got opposite answers in the same month. THE MORATORIUM CAME TO A VOTE AND FAILED ON A TIE. At the Aug 10 hearing Shaun McMillan moved to consider a moratorium; it failed 5-5 (McMillan, Hondros, Greene, Ferguson and Jones for; McNair, Haire, Colvin, Davis and Thompson against). The council then voted 7-3 to postpone the ordinance and bring back revised regulations by late October (Colvin, Greene, Hondros, Davis, McNair, Haire and Thompson yes; McMillan, Ferguson and Jones no). The draft would allow data centers in industrial zones, some commercial sites with council approval, and none in residential areas. So the tool the city's own attorney called the only way to pause development was put to a vote and lost. NOT ESTABLISHED: the October meeting date.

At least 11 North Carolina counties and 17 towns have enacted data-center moratoriums, typically one year, according to a North State Journal review of public records, resolutions and official meetings published Aug 6, 2026. Several jurisdictions chose regulation instead of a pause: Lee County and Sanford added data-center rules to their Unified Development Ordinances in April, and Weaverville adopted zoning classifying data centers and crypto mining as restricted uses. THE ORGANISING IS NOT WHO YOU MIGHT ASSUME -- alongside environmental advocacy and citizen-led groups, the Party for Socialism and Liberation has run moratorium campaigns in the state. AND THE PUSHBACK LOSES TOO, which this map has been slow to show: Stokes County approved a project amid opposition and a lawsuit; Vance and Edgecombe counties considered proposals and did not enact them; Davidson County voted down a six-month pause. North Carolina law also limits what a moratorium can reach -- Rowan County's explicitly cannot cover the Long Ferry Road project because site preparation was already underway, so a pause passed after ground is broken may not touch the thing residents objected to. Charlotte, Durham, Harnett County, Cumberland County and Fayetteville were listed as pending rather than enacted as of late April.

Charlotte approved a 150-day moratorium on new data centers to update planning rules, after grassroots opposition to two east-side projects.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners voted 6-0 for a one-year pause on large data centers, including AI and crypto, to revise land-use rules before applications arrive. Backers of the pause frame it as planning ahead rather than a ban.

After Stokes County narrowly approved a roughly ten-billion-dollar data center near Walnut Cove, environmental groups sued over alleged procedural violations in the rezoning, part of a wave of opposition spreading across North Carolina.

The proposed New Hill Digital Campus near Apex was withdrawn in 2026 after community pushback, and the town of Apex moved toward a one-year moratorium on new data centers to buy time for zoning rules.

Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. banned hyperscale data-center development on all Cherokee Nation trust and tribally owned land in early August 2026. The Nation, based in Tahlequah, has the most enrolled citizens of any tribe in the United States. The ban follows a report by the Principal Chief's Task Force on Data Centers, which surveyed nearly 1,600 citizens: 64 percent opposed hyperscale development within the reservation and 14 percent supported it, the rest undecided. The Nation also said it will not support projects on NON-tribal land inside the reservation without robust consultation addressing water use, electrical demand, environmental impact and protection of cultural resources. It is a shift: in July, Hoskin told the New York Times the Nation did not want to be a bystander but was moving more slowly than some governments while the task force worked. THE BAN'S OWN LIMIT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS RECORD, and the tribe's report says it plainly: the Nation has full authority on trust land and LIMITED INFLUENCE over development on non-tribal land, and EVERY ACTIVE HYPERSCALE PROJECT INSIDE THE RESERVATION SITS ON NON-TRIBAL LAND -- including Project Mustang in Claremore. The ban therefore covers the land the Nation controls and not the projects already underway. WHY CONSULTATION IS NOT AUTOMATIC: tribal consultation is triggered by federal permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act, and most data-center projects are deliberately structured to avoid federal permits, so developers can bypass tribal governments entirely. That is a general mechanism, not an Oklahoma quirk. THE TASK FORCE ALSO COULD NOT ESTABLISH HOW MANY DATA CENTERS OKLAHOMA HAS. For the same June 2026 date it cites Cleanview counting 12 operating and 17 planned, DataCenterMap listing 46 operational, and ConstructConnect showing 33 in pre-construction. A government studying the question could not get a straight count, which is worth remembering when reading any facility total, including the ones on this map.

After the Claremore, Oklahoma city council approved Beale Infrastructure's multi-phase Project Mustang data center in the city's industrial park in May 2026, residents who had packed standing-room hearings fought on: organizers filed referendum petitions to put the three enabling ordinances to a public vote and nine recall petitions targeting the entire city council. The campaign, organized partly through groups like Oklahoma Data Center Accountability, drew national attention after a resident was arrested for speaking past a three-minute limit. Residents cited water use, noise, pollution, and rising power costs, while the city defended the project's revenue benefits.

Governor Kevin Stitt signed HB 2992, the Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act of 2026, on May 11 (effective July 1). It requires large-load customers -- new facilities adding 75 megawatts or more, including data centers, AI, and crypto operations -- to cover their own electricity and infrastructure costs through separate utility tariffs with credit requirements, so households and small businesses are not left subsidizing them. It also adds transparency: developers must give 60 days' notice before buying land, notifying the Corporation Commission, county commissioners, and property owners within five miles, plus a published public meeting. It passed both chambers unanimously.

The Tulsa City Council voted unanimously for a nine-month moratorium on new data centers, with residents citing siting in underserved neighborhoods and grid impacts. Industry groups argue such pauses chiefly delay projects and forgo investment.

The Tulsa City Council voted unanimously for a nine-month halt on new data centers; some members cited siting in underserved neighborhoods, while development supporters warned about lost investment.

THE MORATORIUM PASSED 5-1 -- WITH A SIZE LINE THE INDUSTRIAL-PARK OWNERS ASKED FOR. Spartanburg County Council adopted a one-year data-center moratorium on third and final reading on Sep 21, 2026, effective immediately, with Councilwoman Jessica Coker the lone no by FOX Carolina's count. Amendments from Chairman Mo Abusaft confine the pause to data centers above 65 MW of IT load. Smaller ones may proceed if they sit in an established industrial park or former industrial site, generate no power of their own beyond emergency backup, stay a mile from other data centers and sign development agreements on noise, light, glare and landscaping. Already-approved projects, including the Valara data center under construction, and cryptocurrency mining are exempt. Council member Grant DeShields said 65 MW was too high; Coker said no public-safety evidence had been presented. Executives of Pacolet Milliken and Lockhart Power had lobbied against a blanket pause, and got the carve-out. The third reading had been delayed from Aug 17 after residents filled the chambers. This is the same council that pulled support for the $3 billion TigerDC campus in February. NOT ESTABLISHED: how the seventh member voted.

JASPER COUNTY COUNCIL PASSED SECOND READING OF A ONE-YEAR PAUSE UNANIMOUSLY ON SEP 21, 2026, with the final vote due Oct 5. The moratorium covers data centers, data processing facilities and cryptocurrency mining in unincorporated Jasper County and can be extended in six-month steps. Council Chair Joey Rowell said the pending ordinance doctrine means the pause is already in effect while the county finishes adopting it, and tied the council's caution to the Savannah River, which supplies the county's water. The Coastal Conservation League spoke in support. No project is named as the trigger; residents raised noise, traffic, power use and environmental effects, and the county sits beside places that have already approved large builds. What to watch: the third reading on Oct 5 at 6 p.m. NOT ESTABLISHED: the outcome of that vote, and what standards the county intends to write during the year.

CLARENDON COUNTY ADOPTED A DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM ON THIRD READING ON SEP 14, 2026, UNANIMOUSLY -- and said in the same breath that it does not touch the project most likely to come. 'Project 59', a proposed data center at the county industrial park, is outside its reach; Santee Electric Cooperative, which owns land that could host a facility, has not finalised plans or asked for tax breaks. Council described the pause as closing zoning loopholes for anything new, and said an outright ban was off the table because it would be discriminatory. NOT ESTABLISHED: the moratorium's length, and who is behind Project 59.

MOUNT PLEASANT IS MOVING TO CLOSE A GAP IT FOUND IN ITS OWN CODE. The town has no rule against data centers, and its light-industrial and economic-development districts can take certain facilities without public input or council approval. The council's Planning Committee recommended a 120-day moratorium at the end of August 2026 while the zoning is rewritten, and the full council took up first reading on Sep 8. Mayor Will Haynie said flatly that hyperscale data centers will not come to Mount Pleasant, while promising that a business's own server closet would not be caught. No project is known to be pending. NOT ESTABLISHED: the outcome of the Sep 8 first reading, the second-reading date, and the committee's vote count.

YORK COUNTY ADOPTED A NINE-MONTH DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM 6-0 ON JUL 13, 2026. Council's third reading pauses new site plans and special exceptions for data centers, crypto mining included, across unincorporated York County; pending applications go into abeyance. District 4's Bump Roddey was absent. The pause does not touch what is already vested -- the county names QTS's nine buildings as exempt -- so it governs the next wave, not the one under construction. Staff are to study groundwater, noise, waste heat, utility rates and effects on neighbours, and council can extend the pause by resolution without a new ordinance. It runs to about mid-April 2027. What to ask: what draft rules staff bring back, and whether council extends quietly by resolution.

One-year moratorium approved 4-3, paired with rules barring data centers from industrial districts -- adopted despite the county having NO pending applications. A split vote plus a zoning exclusion, with nothing on the table, is unusual and worth confirming. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a complaint over a Colleton County zoning ordinance that would allow a roughly thousand-megawatt data center on hundreds of acres in the rural ACE Basin, one of the Southeast's most important conservation areas, citing threats to wetlands and wildlife.

South Carolina's H.5286, introduced in the 2025-2026 session, would bar the state and all counties and municipalities from granting final approval -- rezonings, permits, incentives, or fee-in-lieu deals -- for any new data center until January 1, 2028, and would set a legal definition for data centers. Backed by a group of Grand Strand and Pee Dee lawmakers amid local opposition such as a contested Marion County project, the resolution remained in the House Ways and Means committee as of spring 2026.

Spartanburg County Council pulled support for a 3 billion dollar TigerDC data center in the Tyger River Industrial Park after community pushback, the developer withdrew, and the council passed a first reading of a moratorium on new data centers. The moratorium itself passed on Sep 21, 2026 with a 65 MW threshold -- see the separate record.

BRADLEY COUNTY'S DATA-CENTRE RULES ARE BEING TESTED IN COURT. On Apr 20, 2026 the commission, declining residents' calls for an outright ban, confined data centres to its special-impact industrial district and required 3,000 feet from any home, school or church -- rules local reporting called nearly impossible to meet. On Sep 17 SDCL Tennessee Propco, which paid about $19.9 million in 2025 for 306 acres in the Hiwassee River Industrial Park for 'Project MidSpan', sued in Bradley County Chancery Court. It says the rules amount to a countywide ban, were passed in breach of the Open Meetings Act, and single it out. Its nearest building would sit about 1,700 feet from Walker Valley High School. NOT ESTABLISHED: the April vote, the county's answer, and how the second large proposal, 'Project River', fits the rules.

GALLATIN, WHICH ALREADY HOSTS A META DATA CENTER, IS MOVING TO PAUSE NEW ONES FOR 12 MONTHS. Its council work session unanimously sent the moratorium to a formal vote on Sep 8, 2026, after the Planning Commission recommended it 5-2. The reason is definitions: Mayor Paige Brown said the city's rules treat a server closet, an edge facility, a co-location site and a hyperscale campus the same way, with identical 200- and 500-foot distance requirements, and it wants tiered standards before approving more. A town that has lived with a hyperscaler asking for time is a different signal from one that has never seen one. NOT ESTABLISHED: the formal council vote, expected the week of Sep 14.

NOW LAW. The third and final reading of Ordinance 26-0286 passed on the Aug 11, 2026 consent agenda without discussion, reported as unanimous, and took effect immediately for 24 months. Existing facilities that do not expand and applications vested under state law are exempt -- so the bitcoin mine that started this is not touched. The history: Crossville City Council passed the first reading of a 24-month data-center moratorium on Jul 14, 2026 and the second on Jul 28. Because the ordinance affects property rights it required three readings. The ordinance would add Title 14 Chapter 12, suspending acceptance, processing and approval of land use, zoning, building, site plan and conditional use permits for data centers and high-density computing facilities pending a study of infrastructure, environmental, acoustic and utility impacts, and it deliberately mirrors language Cumberland County adopted in June so city and county rules line up. The trigger was concrete rather than anticipatory: an existing bitcoin-mining facility has drawn persistent noise complaints from the neighbouring business, Crossville Metal Fabricators. WHY A MORATORIUM AND NOT A BAN, in the officials' own framing: Mayor R.J. Crawford said the city chose a temporary pause specifically to avoid legal liability and multi-million-dollar developer lawsuits, and City Attorney Randall York told council that data centers are challenging moratoriums around the country. Residents pushed the other way -- one speaker argued temporary moratoriums are insufficient and the city should pursue the most permanent bans its legal authority allows. Both positions are on the record because the gap between them is where this ordinance will be tested.

Knoxville's council passed an EMERGENCY ordinance on Jul 7, 2026 imposing a one-year moratorium on permitting or construction of large data centers inside city limits, running until Jul 7, 2027 or until zoning amendments regulating them take effect -- whichever comes first. The pause reaches city permits, building approvals, utility extensions, text amendments and development agreements, which is broader than a permit freeze alone and closes the utility-extension route projects use to arrive sideways. The resolution's stated reasons are unusually explicit for the genre: the sheer size of some facilities, neighbourhood impacts, demand on energy and water, the city's own greenhouse-gas reduction goals, and that data centers often bring few jobs. Mayor Indya Kincannon had written to Knoxville-Knox County Planning executive director Amy Brooks in June asking staff to research placement, function and guardrails. East Tennessee already hosts three data centers in Knoxville and about ten more across the region.

The Paris City Commission voted on second and final reading to place a temporary moratorium on data-processing centers within city limits. SOURCING CAVEAT, NARROWED: verification found only that the Paris Municipal Regional Planning Commission voted Jun 11, 2026 to RECOMMEND a moratorium, which then went to the City Commission. This record's claim that the City Commission passed it on second and final reading is NOT confirmed by any primary found. Treat the recommendation as established and the adoption as unverified until the Paris Post-Intelligencer or city minutes confirm it.

The Hamblen County Planning Commission voted on July 6, 2026 to enact a one-year moratorium on new data-center construction in the county while it develops permanent rules.

Six-month moratorium, days before Knoxville's emergency ordinance. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

The McMinnville Board of Mayor and Aldermen unanimously passed an 18-month moratorium on data-center permitting on Jun 9, 2026, in Warren County. City Administrator Nolan Ming framed it publicly after the vote as a responsible time-out rather than a permanent ban -- time to study electrical grid capacity, water and stormwater impacts, environmental and public-health concerns, noise and community fit, and to update zoning and land-use rules so future decisions rest on information rather than rushed approvals. That framing is worth recording because it is the argument most Tennessee jurisdictions adopted afterward, and because 18 months is at the long end of what municipalities have been willing to defend.

The Nashville Zoo launched a petition that topped 400,000 signatures, backed by country star Brad Paisley, against a 69,000 square foot DC BLOX data center proposed about 50 yards from the zoo, while a Metro councilmember filed legislation to regulate large data centers.

LUBBOCK'S COUNCIL VOTED 5-2 ON SEP 22, 2026 TO START A 90-DAY DATA-CENTER MORATORIUM -- after residents petitioned for 18 months and got a non-binding promise first. Save Lubbock submitted a petition on Aug 3 that HPPR reports carried more than 3,900 verified signatures against 2,410 needed. At the Sep 8 hearing the council passed, unanimously, a non-binding resolution from Tim Collins that large-scale data centers would not be developed until the city adopts rules, and did not adopt the moratorium. On Sep 22 it went further, starting the process for a 90-day pause while staff draft standards on water, power, zoning, noise and light; Collins and Tim Green voted no. Save Lubbock called it a meaningful step and said an 18-month pause was not workable under Texas law. The fight began with a July annexation and industrial rezoning near I-27 that residents suspected was for a data center; the economic development agency said it did not expect one there. NOT ESTABLISHED: when the moratorium itself is adopted, and when it takes effect.

JEFFERSON'S COUNCIL UNANIMOUSLY PASSED A NON-BINDING RESOLUTION OPPOSING DATA CENTERS INSIDE CITY LIMITS, reported Aug 31, 2026. It binds no one: it is a statement of intent and a call to study effects on utilities, roads, public safety, the tax base and the character of a small historic town. No project is proposed. Councillors pointed to grid geography -- Jefferson sits on the Southwest Power Pool rather than ERCOT, which the Marshall News Messenger reports left members unsure the protections tied to state action on data centers would reach them -- and noted that zoning, the stronger tool, remains available. Recorded as contesting because a resolution is a position, not a restriction. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote date (article date used), and whether zoning changes will follow.

Fort Worth City Council voted unanimously on Aug 11, 2026 to take the first step toward a 90-day moratorium on data-center construction, one of three data-center votes that evening, with residents packing the chamber and most speaking for a pause. The moratorium halts decisions on rezoning applications and permits for data centers and would take effect by early next year, giving the city time to weigh development rules and effects on natural resources. Council member Elizabeth Beck told attendees the city wanted to work with them rather than against them. NOTE THE SHAPE, because it is easy to over-read: this is a first move, not a moratorium in force, and 90 days is short beside the 12-to-24-month pauses elsewhere on this map.

More than 200 residents packed Leon County's Annex 2 building on Jul 13, 2026 as commissioners took up a tax-abatement agreement with Crusoe Technologies for a $34 billion data center targeted to be operational in 2028. Commissioners REJECTED THE APPLICATION AS INCOMPLETE -- a procedural bounce, not a decision on the merits, and Crusoe is expected to file a new one. Treat this as live, not won. Residents objected on three distinct grounds worth keeping separate: Kat Wall on fairness, that a company "95% funded" was seeking a special deal no ordinary citizen could get, and separately that a large facility should have to post a bond in case it goes out of business; Donna Hull that the consensus opposed the data center, the reinvestment zone on prime farmland, and any abatement at all, and that commissioners should press on how much more land a future expansion would take; Rachel Streater on the property-rights line -- no objection to what they do on their own land, but that what stays behind the fence line is the operator's business, and what crosses it becomes an infringement on residents' rights. A local group scheduled a separate public hearing in Marquez for Jul 27 and invited Commissioners Court and Crusoe representatives. In June 2026 commissioners had also TABLED a temporary county moratorium, per KXXV; residents say three data-center projects are seeking approval in the county. The outcome of the Jul 27 resident hearing and any refiled Crusoe application are not reported as of Sep 22. THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO NAMED PROJECTS, AND THE COUNTY SAYS IT CANNOT STOP THEM. Besides Crusoe's $34 billion campus, Belltown Power's 'Kahla' project would put a 1,500 MW data centre on private land near Marquez; more than 200 residents met in Jewett in January to oppose it, and Belltown declined the county's invitations to public meetings. County Judge Byron Ryder told KBTX the county could make things difficult but could not keep a developer out -- Texas counties have no general zoning power. Residents count three data-centre projects seeking approval; the third is not named in any report found. The temporary moratorium residents asked for was TABLED in late May or early June 2026 (reports differ on the meeting); no mover or vote was reported.

Fort Worth's zoning commission voted 7-4 on July 8, 2026 to deny the city's first-of-its-kind data-center zoning ordinance, siding with residents who argued its setbacks and noise limits were too weak, and returning it toward the City Council with a recommendation to tighten. Residents packed the meeting demanding a moratorium over noise, water and power. Note what this fight is: not one campus, but the rulebook every future campus in the city would be judged by -- which is why a commission rejecting rules as too WEAK counts as pushback rather than approval.

Tyler's council denied a special-use permit for a combined bitcoin-mining and AI data center 5-2 in July 2026 after neighbors organized over noise -- the constant fan roar documented at existing crypto sites across Texas made the case for them.

San Marcos became the first Texas city to prohibit data centers citywide, and the fight over whether it is allowed to has already started. On Jun 16, 2026 the council voted 4-3, on the second reading of Ordinance 2026-08, to amend the city's Land Use Matrix so that data centers are ineligible in every zoning district -- part of a broader development-code overhaul that also touched permitting, parkland dedication and tree mitigation. Mayor Jane Hughson was among the three votes against. A nearly identical amendment had FAILED 3-4 in March, so this passed on a second attempt by one vote. The city says the code went through public hearings, meetings with developers and an open house after council authorised the update in Aug 2025. READ THE LIMITS. First, there are currently no pending data-center proposals inside San Marcos city limits -- the projects are in the unincorporated land around it, and nearly half of the 248 data centers planned for Texas are slated for unincorporated areas no city can zone. Second, the ban is expected to be challenged: state Sen. Paul Bettencourt says the city lacks the authority, pointing to 2025's HB 2559, which limits municipal moratoriums on certain property developments, and the 2023 law restricting local rules that conflict with state law. Council member Amanda Rodriguez says the city is prepared for the fight and that other Texas cities are holding their own ordinances ready depending on how this one lands. The industry's position, from Data Center Coalition state policy vice president Dan Diorio, is that the ban tells investors the city is closed for business. The counter-examples are in the same state: Hill County rescinded its moratorium after a developer sued for $100 million, and Hood County pulled its own after Bettencourt sought an attorney general opinion. Cities have stronger land-use authority than counties, which is why San Marcos is the test case rather than they are.

An effort to cancel tax incentives for a Meta data center failed on a 5-3 vote after nearly 180 residents spoke over eight hours; supporters cited jobs and investment.

Hays County approved an emergency pause on high-water-use industrial development in unincorporated areas through Dec 31, 2026. The framing is the point: the county did not write a data-center ordinance, it wrote a WATER ordinance that data centers fall inside. In a state where roughly half the 248 planned data centers are slated for unincorporated land no city can zone, and where counties that pass explicit data-center moratoriums have been sued or pressured into retreat (Hill and Hood counties both), regulating the resource rather than the land use is an attempt to stand on firmer legal ground. Hays County adjoins San Marcos, which banned data centers outright on Jun 16.

Hill County commissioners voted for a one-year moratorium on data center construction in unincorporated areas, the first such pause by a Texas county, after residents raised noise, water, and electricity concerns about a proposed 300-acre project near Hillsboro.

On May 11, 2026 the Somervell County Commissioners Court -- home of Glen Rose and Dinosaur Valley State Park -- unanimously passed a resolution opposing any new data-center development until the Texas legislature addresses water and energy regulation, and sent state officials a letter demanding stricter oversight. A rural county putting the burden back on the statehouse: not in our county until you write the rules.

A LOSS, and the most instructive one in Texas. Hill County commissioners passed a data-center moratorium 3-2 on May 12, 2026 -- the first county-level pause in Texas -- and then RESCINDED it after a developer sued for $100 million. The reversal is the reason San Marcos, not Hill County, became the test case for whether Texas local governments may restrict data centers: cities hold stronger land-use authority than counties, and counties that move get sued. Hood County pulled its own moratorium the same season after a state senator sought an attorney general opinion. Recording the retreat matters as much as recording the passage -- a map that shows only the wins tells communities the fight is easier than it is.

A seventy-megawatt data center proposed for Hutto in Williamson County was pulled in April 2026 when the developer withdrew its rezoning request ahead of a planning hearing, after formal resident protests triggered a supermajority approval requirement under Texas law.

Commissioners rejected a proposed six-month moratorium after a state senator warned the county lacked authority and urged the attorney general to intervene. Update, July 20, 2026: District Judge Bryan Bufkin dismissed the developers' lawsuit claiming their concept plans won automatic approval when the county missed a 30-day statutory shot clock -- ruling the filings were not 'development plans' under the statute and the claim cannot be refiled in its current form. National CRE Holdings and MARA-affiliated Greenland Capital appealed. Protect the Paluxy Valley called it a win in a war over groundwater: wells in the valley are already chasing the water table down. The county's formal question to the Attorney General -- whether it may declare a moratorium on industrial development (RQ-0633-KP, from the Hood County Attorney, received Feb 23, 2026) -- was still pending as of Sep 23, 2026.

Residents around the 1,677-acre Matrix data center campus in Hopkins County have packed council meetings, filed multiple lawsuits, and won a key motion keeping their legal challenge alive in 2026, the largest opposition cluster in one Texas tracker.

Texas enacted SB 6 in June 2025 to govern large-load customers -- those with 75 megawatts or more of demand -- in the ERCOT grid region. The law requires such data centers to pay for interconnection studies and infrastructure upgrades, demonstrate financial assurance and site control, and disclose duplicate interconnection requests, and it establishes protocols allowing utilities to disconnect large loads during grid-stress events along with new rules for co-location arrangements.

A 750 million dollar Rock Creek East data center in Fort Worth, Texas gained rezoning approval but faces legal challenges over city water regulations.

NEW DATA CENTRES NOW NEED A PUBLIC VOTE ACROSS MOST OF THE COUNTY. On 22 Sep 2026 Prince William's supervisors reduced the 2016 Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District from about 9,700 acres to roughly 3,650 and closed it to future expansion, so new data centres outside it require a special use permit and a public board vote rather than by-right approval. Patch, relaying the Prince William Times, reports the vote as unanimous. A 90-day transition protects some land already in the overlay; the Planning Commission had recommended 120 days on a 5-3 vote on 10 Sep, and a motion to scrap the grace period entirely failed. This is a restriction, not a ban: projects inside the remaining 3,650 acres, and those that file inside the 90 days, are unaffected. Virginia's Dillon's Rule is why the county acted by zoning rather than a moratorium. NOT ESTABLISHED: the roll call by name and how many applications the transition lets through.

CHRISTIANSBURG'S COUNCIL VOTED 6-0 ON SEP 8, 2026 TO END BY-RIGHT DATA CENTERS. Any data center in the town's general industrial zones now needs a conditional use permit -- a public hearing and a council vote -- where before it needed neither. Planning Director Retta Jackson laid out the case: heavy energy demand, few lasting jobs, poor fit next to homes. Mayor Mike Barber said the change would slow applications, if not bring them to a halt. Virginia's Dillon Rule limits what localities may adopt, which makes removing by-right status -- the Loudoun route -- the main tool at hand. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether any application was pending.

REGULATION INSTEAD OF A PAUSE, and the strictest framework this map has recorded. On Aug 25, 2026 the Henry County Board of Supervisors amended the zoning ordinance to create a new Data Center (D-C) District. THE STRUCTURAL POINT COMES FIRST: no property in the county is zoned D-C, and the ordinance rezones nothing. A developer would have to acquire or control land, win a rezoning to D-C, AND THEN obtain a special use permit from the Board of Zoning Appeals -- two separate approvals, each with a public hearing, before anything is built. A moratorium expires; this does not. WHAT THE CONDITIONS ACTUALLY SAY. Setbacks of 1,000 feet from any property not zoned industrial and 500 feet from adjoining industrial land. Operational noise capped at 50 dBA at the exterior property line, plus a separate ban on mechanical equipment producing a clearly audible pure tone at or beyond a residentially zoned boundary -- which addresses the complaint residents actually make, since a transformer hum can sit under a decibel cap and still be intolerable. Applicants must file an acoustical analysis by a third-party engineer modelling worst-case conditions including peak cooling demand and routine generator testing. THE PROVISION WORTH COPYING: post-construction noise testing within 90 days AND ANNUAL TESTING FOR THE LIFE OF THE FACILITY. Most conditions on this map are one-time approvals that become unenforceable the day a plant opens; this one keeps a measurable obligation attached forever. On cooling, only closed-loop systems are permitted -- evaporative cooling and cooling towers are prohibited outright, which is a water decision made at the design stage rather than argued about later. Applicants must also file third-party studies on water supply, groundwater, wastewater, drought and cumulative effects; document electrical capacity; evaluate lower-impact emergency power; and post financial assurance for decommissioning. THE RULES GOT STRICTER BECAUSE OF THE HEARING, which is worth recording precisely because this map more often documents the opposite: after a Jul 28 public hearing the board increased setbacks, tightened noise controls, restricted cooling technology and expanded the water analysis relative to the original recommendation.

Virginia -- home to the world's largest concentration of data centers -- enacted a package of data-center bills in its 2026 session. HB 153, with companion SB 94, was chaptered in April and creates a High Energy Use Facility permit for projects drawing 100 megawatts or more, requiring applicants to submit a site assessment of the facility's noise profile on homes and schools within 500 feet and letting localities also weigh impacts on water, agriculture, parks, and historic sites. A companion measure, HB 1393, requires large loads of 25 megawatts or more to pay for the new generating capacity they trigger rather than shifting those costs to other customers. The state's roughly $1.6 billion data-center tax exemption remained unresolved.

The Virginia House of Delegates rejected bills (SB 619 / HB 155) that would have created a state-level certification process for data centers and other very large electricity users. Sponsor Sen. Kannan Srinivasan (D-Loudoun) and reform advocates argued certification is the prerequisite for understanding and controlling the statewide grid and environmental impact of proposed facilities -- precisely the assessment that Dillon's Rule prevents counties from making for themselves. Related history worth carrying: outgoing Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill requiring localities to conduct site assessments before approving new data centers, despite bipartisan support; Abigail Spanberger took office Jan 17, 2026, and the measure is expected to return. The General Assembly did advance legislation in January 2026 to restrict future construction to industrially zoned land.

The Prince William Digital Gateway rezoning is being fought in court rather than at the ballot box. Oral arguments were heard Feb 24, 2026 in the Virginia Court of Appeals in Arlington; an amicus brief argued that approval would lead to the irreversible desecration of hallowed ground and the despoiling of natural and cultural resources. The county is spending public money defending the project: it approved $400,000 in additional litigation funding, bringing its total defense spending to about $1.7 million, and Supervisor George Stewart moved to have that transfer reconsidered. The Coalition to Protect Prince William County, formed in 2014 and hardened during the Haymarket Dominion transmission-line case -- where a 230kV double-circuit line to serve an AWS campus was routed through Gainesville land held by African American families since the 1800s -- is the through-line of two decades of this fight. WATER IS THE ARGUMENT MOST LIKELY TO TRAVEL: a single large data center can draw up to 5 million gallons a day, and Prince William holds the headwaters of the Occoquan watershed, the reservoir supplying roughly 40% of Northern Virginia's drinking water. A separate win landed in mid-April 2026, when Northern Virginia landowners and preservationists prevailed at the state appeals court against a developer consortium -- on the ground that the county failed to follow state rules on posting public notice.

Hanover County officials voted against rezoning agricultural land for a 430-acre data center, one of several Virginia localities tightening approvals even as the state leads the nation in data centers. Supporters cited tax revenue; opponents cited farmland and infrastructure.

READ THIS BEFORE READING VIRGINIA'S NUMBERS. Loudoun County -- which alone hosts more than 586 operational data centers, with Prince William adding roughly 90 -- states that its Board of Supervisors DOES NOT HAVE THE LEGAL AUTHORITY to impose a moratorium on new data center applications, because Virginia law requires it to consider each rezoning or special exception application on its own merits. Virginia is a Dillon's Rule state: counties may act only where state law explicitly permits. In Home Rule states such as Indiana and Georgia, counties can legislate independently, which is why moratoriums appear there and not here. So the sparse pushback count in the world's largest data center market is not evidence of consent -- it is a measure of what the localities are allowed to do. In Virginia the fight necessarily moves to the General Assembly, the State Corporation Commission and the courts, and every Virginia record on this map should be read in that light.

The State Corporation Commission approved a new electricity rate class for the largest power users, data centers among them, in November 2025 -- designed so the cost of the grid upgrades these facilities require is borne by the facilities rather than spread across all ratepayers. It takes effect JAN 1, 2027, and Virginia is one of about a dozen states that have now turned to special data-center rate classes. This is the state-level instrument that survives a change of county board, and in a Dillon's Rule state it is most of what is available. Related: regulators set aside Dominion Energy's initial rate-hike request, which would have raised rates by nearly 25% in 2026 and about 50% in 2027. Virginia lawmakers separately avoided a government shutdown with a compromise that put the country's first data center energy consumption tax on the table. Del. Michelle Maldonado Roem has pressed further -- eliminating the sales tax exemption, a statewide moratorium, barring by-right development, restricting construction to industrially zoned land, and a bill requiring data centers to pay 100% of the energy costs they contract for.

The Loudoun County board ended by-right data center zoning, so new projects in the nation's densest market now require a public hearing and planning review rather than staff-level approval. The county still credits data center revenue with cutting residential taxes, so officials frame it as added scrutiny, not a ban. LOUDOUN VOTED 7-1-1 TO DRAFT A ONE-YEAR PAUSE -- IN DATA CENTER ALLEY. On Sep 16, 2026 Loudoun's Board of Supervisors directed staff to write a resolution pausing new data-center applications for up to 12 months, with a final vote due in October. Kristen Umstattd voted no and Caleb Kershner abstained. Chair Phyllis Randall insisted it is not a moratorium, just time to rewrite the rules; the county attorney said an open-ended moratorium would invite lawsuits where a 12-month pause would hold. Projects already in the pipeline are untouched -- which is why the separate proposal to strip by-right status from pre-March-2025 applications matters. Nothing is paused yet. What to watch: the October vote date and whether substations are included.

Citizens for Fauquier County sued over an Amazon data center campus, winning a court order that stalled the project for at least a year, while town council members who backed the project lost re-election.

Balico's 300 megawatt data center project in Mill Creek, Virginia was canceled amid local opposition.

A 3 billion dollar, 300 megawatt Province Group data center in Midlothian, Virginia won approval but faces strong community opposition.

Amazon's Ashton data center proposal in Manassas, Virginia faces community pushback over building near homes and schools, with noise and wildlife concerns blocking progress.

Headwaters Site Development withdrew its $400 million Catlett Station data center in Fauquier County in July 2024, halting a 67-acre rezoning just before a scheduled Planning Commission hearing.

Culpeper County's Planning Commission unanimously denied a $12 billion, 426-acre data center rezoning at Brandy Station in June 2024 amid concerns over rural preservation and the adjacent Civil War battlefield park.

The $24.7 billion PW Digital Gateway, a 2,100-acre rezoning led by QTS and Compass next to the Manassas National Battlefield, became the largest and most contested data center fight in the country. After the county approved the rezoning, activist groups filed at least three lawsuits over the project's environmental impact, grid strain, and threat to historic land; a dismissal was appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals, leaving it unresolved.

Amazon's 6 billion dollar King George data center, approved in 2023, hit resistance after a newly elected Board of Supervisors moved to renegotiate the deal and voted to reconsider rezoning over 500 acres back to agricultural use.

REJECTED 4-1 AFTER THE DEVELOPER CUT THE PROJECT BY FOUR-FIFTHS. Pinal County's Board of Supervisors voted down Vermaland's data-centre campus on 3,300 acres south of Eloy in early September 2026. The concessions were large: the plan shrank from 59 buildings and two gas-fired power plants to 11 buildings and one plant, moved several miles from homes, promised lower water use and came with a commissioned study of tax revenue. It was not enough. Supervisor Jeff Serdy said that with 90 per cent of people against it he would vote their will; Supervisor Rich Vitiello said too many questions about water and power were unanswered. THE SAME COUNTY SAID NO TWICE IN SIX WEEKS -- its sheriff dropped Flock plate readers the same month, already on this map's surveillance layer. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote date, the one yes vote, the power the campus would have drawn, and whether Vermaland will reapply or go to court. WHAT TO ASK: the board's minutes and the case number of the land-use item.

MARANA'S REFERENDUM ON TWO DATA-CENTRE REZONINGS NEVER REACHED THE BALLOT. Residents filed two petitions on Feb 4, 2026 with about 2,800 signatures each against the rezonings for Beale Infrastructure's sites on Luckett Road. On Feb 18 the Town Clerk rejected both: they did not include the legal descriptions of the properties that Arizona law requires. The organisers had already asked to withdraw them to refile; the town said it could not allow that. A Pima County judge upheld the clerk in early May and also refused Beale's subsidiary's attempt to force the withdrawal. The January rezoning stands and the project can proceed. A technical defect in the paperwork, not the number of signatures, decided it. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether residents appealed.

The Chandler City Council unanimously rejected a 422,000-square-foot data center proposed by Active Infrastructure, despite lobbying that included former Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Supporters cited tax revenue, while residents and council members cited limited jobs and strain on power and water.

A 422,000-square-foot data center by Active Infrastructure drew local debate in Chandler; a former US senator lobbied locally in favor while residents raised concerns over resources.

After heavy public opposition over water and power, the Tucson City Council voted against annexing land for the large Project Blue data center. Pima County later approved a version with conditions requiring air cooling and approved water sources, so backers say the project advances while critics count the city vote as a win for local control.

Tract's $14 billion data center park west of Phoenix -- reported as the largest blocked project in the country -- was withdrawn in May 2024 after residents pressed local officials to reject the rezoning over building heights, noise and strain on local resources. The same withdrawal was reported both as "west of Phoenix" and as "near Buckeye," which describe the same West Valley area; a second record duplicating it has been merged in. ONE LOOSE END, LEFT VISIBLE RATHER THAN DROPPED: sourcing also says Tract LATER proposed a similar campus nearby in Buckeye. A later proposal cannot also be the thing withdrawn in May 2024, so either a subsequent Buckeye project exists and is currently UNRECORDED on this map, or that detail is mistaken. Worth one search before Arizona is treated as settled.

SIGNED, ALL SEVEN, ON SEP 21, 2026. Governor Newsom signed SB 886 (a separate rate class for transmission-connected data centres of 25 MW or more), SB 1168 (a PUC review of rate structures so data centres carry their share of grid costs), AB 2383 (separate generation and transmission tariffs for new large loads from Jan 1, 2027), SB 887 (CEQA applies to data centres -- KPBS reports it removes the ministerial route, and streamlined review is available only to projects committing to 100 percent renewable power within five years, water-efficient cooling and local community benefit agreements), and three disclosure and water bills: AB 1577, AB 2469 and AB 2619. His office called it the most comprehensive data-centre package in the country. KPBS ties SB 887 partly to the Imperial County fight, where a judge had just set aside a county approval for skipping environmental review. It makes California the largest state with a data-centre rate class. NOT ESTABLISHED: chapter numbers and any signing message.

BANNED OUTRIGHT, 3-0. Calexico's City Council on 16 Sep 2026 approved a zoning amendment expressly prohibiting data centres anywhere in the city, with two members absent. Data centres were already not a permitted use -- the city manager said so -- but the council, which chose on 1 Jul to pursue a permanent ban instead of a moratorium at Council Member Diana Nuricumbo's urging, wanted the prohibition in writing where a future developer's lawyers would have to face it. Calexico sits a few miles from the Imperial County project a judge set aside this month (see pb-ca-imperial); Imperial, Calipatria and the county itself have all paused or moved to ban. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the 16 Sep vote was the ordinance's final reading or its introduction.

The roughly 330 MW Imperial Data Center drew a multi-front fight. The City of Imperial filed a CEQA complaint over the missing environmental review; residents began gathering signatures for a November 2026 'Imperial County Data Center Prohibition Act' ballot measure; and in June 2026 county supervisors reversed course, declaring a 45-day moratorium and forming an advisory commission. Developer Sebastian Rucci responded by seeking a court restraining order against the moratorium. A JUDGE SET ASIDE THE APPROVAL. On 9 Sep 2026 KPBS reported that Imperial County Superior Court Judge L. Brooks Anderholt ruled the county illegally shielded the nearly one-million-square-foot complex from environmental review, finding it abused its discretion by approving an April 2026 lot merger without the review CEQA requires. The City of Imperial and the Sierra Club brought the case. The county must now complete full CEQA review before anything proceeds. Developer Sebastian Rucci said he will move for a new trial and appeal if that fails. The county and the City of Imperial have both extended moratoriums to May 2027. And on 21 Sep Governor Newsom signed SB 887, which writes the ruling's principle into law: data centres are not ministerial projects exempt from review. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether a new trial is granted or an appeal filed.

The Coachella City Council voted unanimously on July 8, 2026 to extend its 45-day data-center moratorium by another 10 months and 15 days while it drafts a permanent ban. A draft ban goes to the planning commission July 15, with council adoption votes set for August 12 and 26.

BRAWLEY VOTED DOWN A MORATORIUM, 3-2, AND CHOSE RULES. On 22 Jun 2026 the City Council dropped a proposed pause on large data centers by 3-2, then voted unanimously for zoning amendments to govern their water and power use, cooling systems and grid impact, with the technical wording still to be drafted. Council Member John Grass said a freeze would send exactly the wrong message to developers. The city's code did not define large data centers, which officials said left gaps a company could use. The vote came as Imperial County fights over a separate AI campus. NOT ESTABLISHED: who voted which way, and the final text of the rules.

Monterey Park became the first U.S. city to permanently ban data centers by ballot: voters approved Measure NDC on June 2, 2026 by 88% (10,321-1,362), amending the General Plan to prohibit data centers citywide. The vote followed the withdrawn HMC StratCap / DigiCo project at 1977 Saturn Avenue.

San Jose -- home to at least 40 data centers, second in California only to Santa Clara -- directed its city manager to draft data-center guidelines in 2026, though critics are skeptical given a 2025 PG&E partnership to ease development.

For months developer Sebastian Rucci said his Imperial Valley AI complex would not touch Colorado River water. In June 2026 his company, Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing, sued the Imperial Irrigation District for about 880 acre-feet a year -- roughly 260 million gallons, the annual water of some 7,300 residents -- after the district rejected its application in May and recycled-water talks with Imperial and El Centro collapsed. A cooling load of about 750,000 gallons a day, litigated out of the most water-strained river system in the country, in a valley where the river is the only fresh water there is. The county that approved it is now fighting it on every track: the City of Imperial sued challenging the project's CEQA environmental review, and local voters are gathering referendum signatures to ban data centers countywide -- weeks after Monterey Park became the first US city to ban them outright.

Calipatria's city council voted in May 2026 to draft a moratorium that could block data-center projects in city limits for up to five years, amid the Imperial County fight; the mayor was blunt in his opposition. On 14 Jul 2026 the council voted 3-2 to pursue a permanent ban instead, with Council Members Chavez and Amezcua opposed; a hearing on the ordinance text was to follow. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the ban was adopted.

Alhambra banned data centers as part of a zoning code update, part of a San Gabriel Valley backlash in which several neighboring cities also moved against the facilities.

Montebello enacted a temporary moratorium on data centers amid the San Gabriel Valley opposition wave that also reached El Monte, Baldwin Park, and Alhambra.

El Monte enacted a temporary moratorium on data centers as San Gabriel Valley cities moved to slow or block the facilities.

Baldwin Park enacted a temporary moratorium on data centers during the 2026 San Gabriel Valley backlash.

A 79 million dollar four-story GI Partners data center in Santa Clara, California was approved but local opposition delayed construction by six months.

EXTENDED, UNANIMOUSLY. The Phillips County, Colorado commissioners -- Garold Roberts, Terry Hofmeister and Tom Timm -- voted 3-0 on Aug 20, 2026 to extend the county's moratoriums on wind farms, utility-scale solar and battery storage, and data-centre facilities. NOT established: when the pauses were first adopted, how long the extension runs, and whether any project prompted them. Ask the county for the resolution and the new expiry date.

LARIMER COUNTY HAS NOW EXTENDED ITS PAUSE TWICE, TO 25 FEB 2027. County commissioners adopted a moratorium on data-center facilities on 27 Jan 2026, extended it on 9 Feb to 25 Aug, and on 13 Jul extended it again to 25 Feb 2027. The county's land-use code has no definition of a data center and no review standards; staff are writing rules on water use, power demand and nuisances, with research help from CU Denver. In a county survey reported by the Estes Park Trail-Gazette, 94 percent of respondents opposed data-center construction. Commissioners raised electricity rates, viewsheds, wildlife and water sources. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote counts, and when the draft rules will be public.

Broomfield City Council voted 9-0 on July 7, 2026 to pass Ordinance 2313, an 18-month moratorium halting land-use applications, site plans and building permits for data centers with a projected load of 10 MW or more. It takes effect immediately and runs through December 2, 2027 or until permanent rules are adopted; residents cited drought-state water use and rising electricity demand.

PAUSED UNTIL 6 JAN 2027. Delta County's commissioners on 7 Jul 2026 stopped accepting data-centre applications in unincorporated parts of the county for six months, because the land-use code has no definition of a data centre and no standards for one. The county and its Planning Commission will use the pause to write them through a public process, and the moratorium can be extended if they are not done. No project has been filed; Commissioner Wendell Koontz said only that prospectors have been looking at the area's power, land and water. This is one of a run of Colorado local moratoriums in summer 2026 (see Broomfield, Denver). NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count, and the draft rules. Not to be confused with Delta County, Michigan (pb-mi-delta-county-moratorium).

Denver approved a one-year pause on new data centers in May 2026 to study energy, water, and land-use rules.

A plan to retrofit industrial space in Colorado Springs into a data center drew overwhelming opposition at a standing-room-only public meeting in April 2026, with residents citing noise, power, and water concerns.

Denied twice and still not over. Lex Developments sought a conditional use permit for a $2.6 billion AI data center on roughly 59 acres of the former Hoku Materials polysilicon site at 1800 River Park Way. The May 14, 2026 public hearing filled Pocatello's council chambers with hundreds of residents standing along the walls and into the foyer; more than 100 testified across more than four hours. On May 19 Hearing Examiner Kathleen Lewis denied the permit, finding the application inadequate on three of seven required criteria -- public facilities, environmental impact, and public health and welfare. Lex appealed on Jun 1, one day before the deadline. On Jul 16 the City Council voted 4-1 to uphold the denial, restricted to the existing record and barred from considering new evidence; Council Member Dakota Bates cast the lone dissent, citing the risk that a denial lands the city in district court. Mayor Mark Dahlquist pressed the developer on who would actually use the facility, and the answer -- multiple potential users and a signed letter of intent, none of them present -- drew applause. STILL LIVE: on Jul 29 Lex filed a request for reconsideration arguing the Jul 16 hearing was itself procedurally defective on five independent grounds; the city had not yet issued its written decision, and no reconsideration date has been set. The developer has also signalled a district-court appeal. Context: the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes formally opposed the project, agreeing the developer failed to provide enough information for meaningful review and warning of electricity-rate increases for tribal members. Idaho House Bill 895, effective Jul 1, 2026, restricts data-center water rights and requires closed-loop systems for projects breaking ground after that date. Idaho Power told the hearing the applicant would bear all substation, transmission and generation upgrade costs, not ratepayers.

Residents mounted sustained opposition to a proposed data center at the Bonner Mill site across from the district's only school, citing water use, noise, air quality and Montana's constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment. County staff repeatedly deemed the developer's special-exception applications incomplete through the first half of 2026.

Broadview, a Montana town of about a hundred people roughly 30 miles north of Billings, organized against Quantica Infrastructure's proposed 5,000-acre Big Sky Digital Infrastructure data center campus. Resident Cari Olson founded the group Just One Montanan to press state legislators for guardrails before such projects are approved, warning about water in a tank town that trucks in much of its supply. The group brought in an out-of-state data center opponent to share tactics as the fight continued.

Boulder City is appealing the Bureau of Land Management's approval of a data-center project on federal land outside its borders -- a rare case of a city fighting a campus it cannot zone against, on the ground that the federal review shortchanged water and viewshed impacts in the driest state in the country.

Voters in Boulder City, Nevada will decide on a fall 2026 ballot measure whether to prohibit data center construction in the city.

Reno council members voted to support a 30-day moratorium on data center projects, with a follow-up vote to consider extending it.

A GAS-FIRED DATA CENTRE THAT RESIDENTS LEARNED ABOUT FROM A LEGAL NOTICE. Site Layer 1, a Delaware company with a Manhattan address tied to Granite Renewables, plans a data centre on the Hurt Cattle Co. ranch near Hachita and Playas in southern Grant County, powered by on-site natural gas at roughly 2.3 million cubic feet an hour, around the clock, per the Santa Fe New Mexican. Opponents put its emissions at the equivalent of about 282,600 cars a year. Landowner talks began more than a year before anything was public; residents say nearly all they know is what the public notice says. A new group, No Data Centers in Grant County, has been meeting in Silver City with the Center for Biological Diversity and the Gila Resources Information Project. The County Commission is expected to consider a one-year moratorium on 24 Sep (see calendar). NOT ESTABLISHED: the facility's size in MW, which permit the public notice concerned, and who the end user is.

Sierra County commissioners adopted an 18-month data-center moratorium on Jul 21, 2026 -- passed by a surprise amendment during the meeting rather than as a noticed agenda item, while residents were there to protest a proposed development near Spaceport America. It is the fourth New Mexico jurisdiction to act in six months, after Bernalillo County's Data Center Guardrails Resolution in February, Socorro County's one-year pause in June and Santa Fe County's 18-month ordinance on Jun 30. Four counties moving independently in half a year is why state legislators announced a statewide moratorium bill for the next session.

DENIED TWICE, AND NOW THE PERMIT DOMINO. Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard rejected Energy Transfer's applications (two rights-of-way, one business lease) for a 0.6-mile stretch of the 17-mile, 24-inch Green Chile lateral across state trust land on Mar 20, 2026, and on Jul 14 denied reconsideration, citing the state trust's interest, Project Jupiter's greenhouse-gas emissions, and its draw on New Mexico's water. The pipeline is not decoration: it would carry 400 million cubic feet of gas per day to 2.5 GW of Bloom fuel cells powering the 1,400-acre Oracle/OpenAI campus under construction at Santa Teresa -- part of the $500B Stargate build, with Stack and BorderPlex investing up to $165 billion. BLM approved the federal stretch; the state segment is the chokepoint, and rerouting means new private-landowner agreements. THE DOMINO, as of Aug 5: New Energy Economy moved to DISMISS Yucca Growth Infrastructure's air-quality permit application on the strength of the pipeline denials, and NMED's hearing officer ordered a response within a week. Oracle VP Mahesh Thiagarajan told county commissioners there is no immediate contingency if the air permit fails. The NMED permit hearing, first set for October, was RESCHEDULED TO SEPTEMBER on Jul 31. Two lawsuits separately allege the county approved the $165B bond package on an incomplete application. Oracle's counter-case: 4,000 construction jobs, 440+ New Mexicans on site, 1,500 ongoing jobs, $50M for county water repairs, cooling water under nine households a year.

Santa Fe County commissioners adopted an 18-month data-center moratorium in July 2026 with no project even proposed -- pausing the industry preemptively while the county writes water, energy, and zoning rules. The purely precautionary moratorium is a new genre on this map: regulate before the application arrives, not after.

EIGHTEEN months, not twelve, and the threshold is the story. The Santa Fe County Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously on Jun 30, 2026 to adopt a moratorium on data-center development, effective immediately, while staff write regulations covering water, energy, noise and land use. Two things changed between the draft and the vote, both in response to public comment from residents, Tribal members and advocates who filled the chambers. The pause was lengthened from the proposed 12 months to 18. And the regulatory threshold was lowered from 100 megawatts to ONE megawatt -- roughly the electricity use of 1,000 homes -- for an explicit reason: at 100 MW a developer could simply propose a 99-megawatt facility and walk straight through the gap. That anti-gaming amendment is the part worth copying, and the part a one-sentence summary loses. The ordinance was sponsored by Commissioners Lisa Cacari Stone (District 2) and Hank Hughes (District 5). Hughes framed it around water supply risk; Cacari Stone, who said she had been tracking data-center trends in rural areas since Project Jupiter and then Socorro County broke into the news, called it prevention rather than prohibition forever. READ THE POSTURE: there are no data centers in Santa Fe County and none proposed. This is a county with more staff capacity than most in New Mexico deliberately building a model ordinance before a developer arrives, and commissioners said the point was partly to give smaller counties something to copy. It follows Bernalillo County's Data Center Guardrails Resolution in February and Socorro County's one-year moratorium in June, and was followed by Sierra County's own 18-month pause on Jul 21.

After a Canadian CEO proposed building what he called the largest alternative-energy data center in the world -- 10,000 acres with New Mexico Tech, possibly powered by small modular reactors -- Socorro County residents packed town halls for months, commandeering a university forum in May. On June 9, 2026 the county commission unanimously adopted a yearlong moratorium on data centers and related infrastructure, and stood up an advisory committee of residents and experts to write the rules before any application lands. The CEO had told the community: if you oppose us, we're out. They took him up on it.

A DATA CENTRE REJECTED BY READING THE EXISTING CODE, WITH NO NEW ORDINANCE AND NO PAUSE. On 8 September 2026 Eugene's Planning and Development Director, Alissa Hunter, notified land-use attorney Bill Kloos that a data centre is prohibited under the E-1 Campus Employment zoning of the former Hynix semiconductor plant at 1830 Willow Creek Circle -- a 1.2 million square foot factory on 200 acres in west Eugene that closed in 2008 and laid off 1,400 workers. Kloos had filed a zone verification request on 14 July on behalf of an unidentified client with the property under contract, asking whether a data centre, manufacturing, research and development, warehousing or office use would be allowed. THE REASONING IS THE PORTABLE PART. Eugene's code does not list data centres in E-1 but does allow Information Technology Services, and the buyer argued a data centre qualifies. The city said no on three grounds. First, that category was added to the code in 2001, before cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and the council could not have intended it to cover the large modern data centres described in the application. Second, when the council revised its zoning in 2014 and created E-1, it did not add data centres as an allowed use in any zone, even though cloud computing was widely available and data centres were already being built in Oregon. Third, the small number of employees would not meet the zone's economic diversification objectives -- an employment zone exists to site businesses that employ many people, and a data centre is close to self-operating. The city also raised noise and water impacts. THAT ARGUMENT IS AVAILABLE ANYWHERE LAND IS ZONED FOR JOBS, and it needed no vote, no moratorium and no new law. WHAT IT DOES NOT SETTLE: the decision covers E-1 only, not whether a data centre could go in an industrial zone, and it can be appealed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, which could uphold, remand or overturn it. A coalition led by Beyond Toxics, with the Cascades Raptor Center, Coast to Cascades Bird Alliance, Landwatch Lane County and the Oregon Sierra Club, had urged rejection and now says a moratorium is still needed until guardrails are adopted. The council will take up the broader question in December. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the buyer appeals. THEN THE CITY CLOSED THE SECRECY ROUTE. On Sep 16, 2026 City Manager Jenny Haruyama signed an administrative order barring city employees from signing non-disclosure agreements about data centers; the city says none had been signed. Two days earlier more than 70 residents registered to urge a moratorium. The council's broader discussion is a Dec 14 work session. The city also states its code lists data centers as an allowed use in no zone at all -- which widens the Hynix reasoning beyond E-1. NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the order binds future city managers or needs council ratification.

ADOPTED, NOT EXPLORED -- and adopted by ambush, deliberately. Hillsboro, which hosts more data centers than any other Oregon city at roughly 35, called a special council meeting on Jul 27, 2026 with a single day's public notice and unanimously enacted a 120-day land-use moratorium on new AND expanded data centers and battery energy storage systems. Council President Rob Harris said the short notice was a conscious decision: announce it early and the industry files a rush of applications the day before the vote. The trigger was May, when the city fielded 17 tax-break applications from data centers racing to beat a state moratorium on incentives. The mechanics, from the city's own announcement: until at least Nov 24, 2026 no land-use applications for data centers or BESS as a primary use will be accepted, processed or approved; accessory use is capped at under 20 percent of square footage, construction value, or electrical capacity (or 20 MW); projects filed before the moratorium proceed. The resolution rests on the state law allowing a pause where existing ordinances are inadequate to prevent irrevocable public harm -- Hillsboro appears to be the first Oregon city to use that formal land-use route, where Hood River's April vote skipped it and may be merely advisory. Council may extend six months. The rulemaking runs on a published schedule: staff drafting code amendments (siting limits, reclassification by function, height and sustainability standards), the Planning Commission opened its hearing Aug 26 and continued it to Sep 9, when it sent the Phase I rules to council; council first reading is Oct 6 and second reading Oct 20, each taking public comment. Design and development standards follow in a Phase II, Nov 2026 to Mar 2027. Mayor Beach Pace framed it as land-use planning reflecting long-term community priorities; Councilor Alcaire told residents she did not move to Hillsboro to give data centers a break on energy bills.

The La Pine City Council voted unanimously to reject an 800 million dollar Boxminer.io data center on 19.5 acres in the city's industrial park, after residents packed a meeting and spoke for hours against it.

Oregon's POWER Act, signed in August 2025, directs the state Public Utility Commission to establish a separate rate class for large energy use facilities of 20 megawatts or more, such as data centers, so the grid-infrastructure costs their demand drives are allocated to the developers rather than spread to other ratepayers. The law also requires new large energy users to sign power-purchase agreements of at least 10 years, committing them to pay for their projected energy use and any new transmission the projects require. THE FIRST NUMBER IS IN: DATA-CENTRE RATES AT PGE UP 29 PERCENT, HOUSEHOLDS DOWN 1.3. Oregon's POWER Act, signed August 2025, ordered the Public Utility Commission to put facilities of 20 MW or more in their own rate class and to require power contracts of at least 10 years, so grid costs driven by data centres land on the developers. The governor's office reported on Sep 2, 2026 that at Portland General Electric data-centre rates rose an average 29% while residential rates fell an average 1.3%. Pacific Power's review is still pending; Idaho Power is covered but has no large data centres. The figures are the governor's; the PUC order behind them is not cited in the release. Kotek has since paused state-land deals for data centres to Jul 1, 2027 and says she backs moratoriums until the Legislature adds safeguards.

In the Columbia River Gorge, residents recalled two Port of Cascade Locks officials in June 2023 over a $100 million data center, citing rising utility rates and doubts about the developer. The newly seated board canceled the project the next month, an early example of community opposition reversing a data center through the ballot box.

In Utah's June 2026 primaries, Box Elder County commissioners who advanced a massive data-center project lost their seats, and state Sen. J. Stuart Adams -- who backed the site through a state authority -- was defeated by a challenger running on opposition to it. 'Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do,' conceded Commissioner Lee Perry. In a county Trump carried by double digits, the electoral lesson crossed party lines: alongside Festus, Missouri recalling half its council and Warrenton, Virginia turning over its entire pro-project majority, voting for a data center is becoming the most dangerous vote a local official can cast.

A moratorium on new data center development while the county sets rules.

Hundreds rallied at the Utah Capitol to stop the Stratos Project on the Great Salt Lake north shore after county commissioners voted to let it proceed.

Hundreds rallied at the Utah Capitol to stop the Stratos Project, a data center proposal spanning 40,000 acres on the north shore of the Great Salt Lake, after county commissioners voted to let it proceed despite local objections.

PAUSED 6-1 WITH NOTHING ON THE TABLE. On 12 Aug 2026 Mount Vernon's City Council adopted a six-month moratorium on data centres; Andrew Vander Stoep cast the only vote against. City staff confirmed no data centre has been proposed. Council Member Melissa Beaton called it pumping the brakes while planners write code language the city does not yet have; water demand and Mount Vernon's flood risk were the reasons given. That makes the Skagit Valley a cluster: Skagit County paused data centres in unincorporated areas in June and La Conner followed in July (see pb-wa-laconner), each acting before any application arrived. Washington law requires a public hearing within 60 days of a moratorium's adoption. NOT ESTABLISHED: the hearing date, and what the permanent code will allow.

La Conner's Town Council placed a moratorium of at least six months on data-center permit applications -- having received NO applications and no inquiries. That makes this one of the few purely preemptive pauses on this map, and Planning Director Ajah Eills was explicit about the reasoning: it lets the town take a beat and decide whether any form of data center would ever be appropriate there or whether to handle them more prohibitively, noting communities across the country being impacted and the town's proximity to a large water source, which the facilities all need. Staff will draft an ordinance writing data centers into the land-use code for the first time, following Skagit County's own moratorium for unincorporated areas. Two residents had called for the pause at the previous meeting. A public hearing is expected at the Aug 25 council meeting (see calendar). Date approximate to the council's late-July session.

The Burien City Council passed Ordinance No. 905 unanimously on Jun 29, 2026 -- a one-year emergency moratorium on accepting, processing or approving building and land-development permit applications to establish OR EXPAND data centers, declared an emergency and effective immediately on passage rather than after the usual waiting period. Interim City Attorney Ann Marie Soto told the council the city has nobody on staff with data-center expertise, so Burien borrowed the definition and much of the language from Seattle's ordinance, which had passed three weeks earlier on Jun 9. That borrowing is the story worth noting: a small city with no technical capacity of its own can still act quickly by copying a larger neighbour's text, and it is how this wave is spreading through King County. The pause buys staff and councillors time to weigh resource demands against claimed job creation before permanent rules are written. The vote came at the end of a long agenda covering Comprehensive Plan and zoning updates, transportation impact fees, and public comment on local immigration arrests.

Data center moratorium adopted, two weeks after Seattle and days before Burien -- the Washington cluster moving in sequence. SOURCING: recorded from a statewide tracker rather than a local primary. The jurisdiction, duration and date are as the tracker reports them; the vote count and ordinance text have not been read directly. Treat specifics as provisional pending local confirmation.

SKAGIT COUNTY PAUSED DATA CENTRES ON ITS FARMLAND. County commissioners adopted a moratorium on 1 Jun 2026 on new data centers in rural, unincorporated Skagit County -- any facility over 2,000 square feet or expected to draw 2 MW or more. Cities and towns are not covered. Chair Ron Wesen said the aim was to keep the Skagit Valley for farming, fisheries and the environment; Commissioner Peter Browning pointed to flood and volcanic lahar risk and to summer water shortages that already hit agriculture. State law required a public hearing, set for 14 Jul. Planning staff are writing permanent siting rules, which have since been proposed. Neighbouring Mount Vernon and La Conner have their own pauses. NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote count, when the moratorium expires, and what the permanent rules say.

Washington enacted SB 5982, requiring large energy users including data centers to meet the same clean-energy deadlines as utilities under the Clean Energy Transformation Act -- carbon-neutral electricity by 2030 and 100% renewable or non-emitting by 2045 -- and directing the Utilities and Transportation Commission to set reporting requirements. A broader cost-allocation bill (HB 2515) failed, deferring the larger fight to 2027.

Seattle enacted a data center ban in mid-2025 as several cities moved to restrict new facilities.

The Cheyenne City Council rejected a proposed data center moratorium by an 8 to 1 vote, declining to pause new development despite resident concerns.

A bipartisan revolt against data centers has swept the United States. The nonpartisan group Data Center Watch counts more than 140 local campaigns that stalled or blocked over 60 billion dollars of projects in about a year, communities in at least 14 states have passed local moratoriums, and in 2026 Prince William County abandoned the Digital Gateway, once pitched as the world's largest data center campus. Voters have since ousted pro-data-center incumbents and a Los Angeles County city became the first to ban the facilities outright.