Overview
- On Tuesday Monterey Park voters approved Measure NDC by a wide margin to permanently ban data centers inside city limits, a response to a proposed conversion of a vacant office complex into a 250,000-square-foot facility.
- New York lawmakers have bundled an omnibus bill that would impose a one-year statewide moratorium on new large data centers while ordering an environmental review, public hearings and new rules on renewables and host-community benefits.
- Major building trades and construction unions publicly oppose New York’s one-year freeze even as they support labor standards in the bill, and business and tech groups warn the pause will harm jobs and investment.
- North Carolina’s House approved broad new restrictions this week that would limit incentives, require greater attention to noise and utility impacts, and give regulators tools to require closed-loop cooling or different rate treatment for large users.
- The wave of local bans, moratoria and state bills follows polling and studies showing strong public opposition and concerns that large data centers can consume millions of gallons of water per day, raise wholesale power costs and produce continuous cooling noise, which could reshape where these facilities are sited.