Data center expansion is impacting communities nationwide, but residents are seeking a chance to play a role in the decision-making process. Data center builds can lead to higher electricity costs for residents, and a lack of transparency common in these projects calls into question whether communities or private companies reap their benefits.
As such, the proposal to establish a temporary, one-year moratorium on data centers and telecommunications centers — specifically, those with a floor area greater than 10,000 square feet — passed with a unanimous council vote.
“The reason for 12 months for this is to help us use this moratorium as a planning tool so that the city can develop and adopt those long-term regulations,” Madison Planning Division Director Meagan Tuttle said during the Common Council meeting Tuesday, underlining concerns about land, energy and water use and potential goals for community benefits.
It is the intent of city leadership to provide more clarity to developers and others about zoning requirements for these projects, she emphasized, through clear standards about how future developments can be permitted.
The city is not prohibiting data centers within or supporting an existing business, those powering and within a laboratory space, or those in office buildings that are smaller than 10,000 square feet, Tuttle said.
Community members voiced their opinions about the proposal at the council meeting.
One public commenter who works as a power engineer said that while water usage is a common debate around data centers, he believes the greater issue is the need for upgrades to the power grid — referring to the electricity distribution cost that will impact city taxpayers. He cited the projected 25 percent increase to their electric bills by 2030 that residents in Virginia can expect to pay, arguing that the moratorium is a way to defend taxpayers against such an increase.
An energy consultant in the community argued during public comment that the temporary moratorium is important to address data center impacts that may not yet be comprehensively understood.
Not all public comments were in favor of the moratorium. David Aguayo, public policy manager for the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, spoke representing the organization and warned a yearlong moratorium would be too long and would impact the city’s technology environment.
Common Council Alder Tag Evers of District 13 was emphatic the moratorium is not permanent and is not meant to be obstructive. Instead, he said, it is intended to be instructive for city staff to learn and position the city for future success.
“So, with all due respect to the Chamber of Commerce, this is not an attempt to shut out this industry, but it’s to make sure that we have the necessary knowledge to be able to give sound advice,” Evers said.
Over the course of the moratorium, Tuttle said city leadership will engage with stakeholders to address various aspects of data center impacts, which she said are likely to include utility company representatives, people with environmental and economic development expertise, and policymakers.
“We’re going to have data centers,” Common Council Alder John Guequierre said of their inevitability. Even so, he said, this moratorium is “essential” to help the city determine which data centers can be built in Madison, while addressing questions about power and water usage and air quality.
As Madison Common Council Alder Joann Pritchett of District 9 said during the meeting, “delay sometimes is preferrable to error.”
DATA CENTER MORATORIUMS BEYOND MADISON
Madison is not the only government jurisdiction that has decided to temporarily pause and assess the infrastructure’s impacts before allowing their unregulated expansion.
In May, Coweta County, Ga., enacted a 180-day moratorium to evaluate data center policies and zoning codes, following nearby Douglas County, Ga.’s 90-day moratorium passed in March. Georgia has been attracting significant growth in the data center market, in part due to tax incentives it offers.
In June, Clarke County, Iowa, enacted a temporary moratorium on the construction of data centers. Instead of having an established one-year timeline, like Madison, the county’s Board of Supervisors established a moratorium that “will remain in place until such time as the Board passes a resolution placing a permanent moratorium on the construction of said structures, passed an ordinance for the regulation of said structures, or rescinds this temporary moratorium.”
In Michigan, the Springfield Township Board of Trustees recently approved a 180-day moratorium to prohibit data center plans from being considered or approved, with flexibility to extend its duration if needed.
St. Charles, Mo., moved in August to ban data center projects for one year.
At the state level, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a proposal to protect consumers from AI data center costs, though a moratorium was not specifically mentioned.
Even at the federal level, some policymakers have proposed a nationwide temporary moratorium on data center development. This contrasts with the Trump administration’s December executive order attempting to limit state-level AI regulation, although that order indicates that “lawful” policy related to data centers would not be pre-empted by a federal policy framework.
