The data center fight,
tracked daily.
News, analysis and the numbers behind them: a moratorium tracker covering 858 local and state actions, project dossiers, health evidence, and free tools for communities facing a data center. Every claim links to its source.
Today's top stories Start here — the 5-step wizard
Subscribe: Blog · News · Tracker changes · Expiring pauses (RSS) · What changed this week
Top stories
All news →Ranked from the last seven days by freshness, stakes (lawsuits, moratoriums, rate cases) and outlet quality. Refreshed with every build. Heuristic, not editorial.
- 1Memphis residents sue SpaceXAI over noise pollution coming from MS
- 2Protecting Ratepayers from Data Centers Is Only a Start. We Need to Upgrade Our Energy Infrastructure to Lower Costs
- 3Question remains–how to protect ratepayers and still create an AI future
- 4Rhode Island Energy Rates and AI Data Centers: The Record
- 5Southwest Michigan town gets reprieve from data center noise — for now
Analysis
All posts →Three posts a week on what moved: votes, filings, rate cases and the fine print behind them. Every number links to the document it came from.
Week in Review: New Jersey's Record Data Center Fine, Prince William County Ends By-Right Approval, and Palm Beach County Passes a Moratorium — Then Cuts Its Own Resident Task Force
This week New Jersey hit a Vineland data center with its largest-ever civil penalty over 62 unpermitted gas generators, Prince William County, Virginia ended by-right approval for new data centers countywide, and Texas's attorney general opened an investigation into hundreds of data centers that never answered a mandatory water-use survey. A Republican and a Democrat in Congress each introduced NDA-transparency bills the same week, Memphis-area residents filed two separate lawsuits against an xAI data center in one week, and Palm Beach County passed a year-long moratorium — then scrapped its own resident task force in favor of paid consultants. Plus: nine more communities paused or banned data centers in the past seven days.
September 26, 2026Newsom Signed Seven Data Center Bills. None of Them Has a Threshold Yet.
On September 21, Governor Newsom signed seven data center bills into law -- the same package he blocked a year ago. The laws shift grid upgrade costs to operators, mandate water and energy disclosure, and strip a blanket environmental exemption. But every dollar figure and megawatt trigger is delegated to future CPUC rulemaking, with no filing deadline. Here is what each bill actually requires, what it leaves to regulators, and what a community can use right now.
September 25, 2026Trump Announced an AI Force. The Same Week, His Own Pollster Said Data Centers Are a Losing Issue.
On September 19, President Trump announced an 'AI Force' modeled on the Space Force and promised an AI czar. Four days earlier, his own pollster told Republican candidates that unqualified support for data centers is 'a losing position.' The same weekend, Texas froze all data center environmental permits and California signed seven data center laws. What actually happened, and what it means for communities heading into a hearing.
Moratorium tracker: what changed
Full tracker →5 status changes in the last 10 days: pauses enacted, extended, lapsed or rescinded. Each row carries its source and end date.
- STATUSWaterford Township, MIEnacted → Expired09-25
- STATUSRoswell, GAEnacted → Expired09-22
- STATUSAugusta, GAEnacted → Expired09-20
- STATUSAugusta-Richmond County, GAEnacted → Expired09-20
- ShortenedShawnee Township, OHNow runs to 2027-10-1309-20
5 rows also added to the tracker this period.
Tools for the hearing
Action pack
A personalized PDF: impact numbers, meeting strategy, CBA targets, a 2-minute speech, and ready-to-send letters.
Flyer + petition
A one-page hand-out with your community's numbers, in English and Spanish, with a sign-up sheet.
Campaign site
A complete one-page website with your numbers baked in — free to host, no coding needed.
All generated in the free GridWatch toolkit — no signup required.
Communities that organized, won
- Loudoun County, VA (Multiple) — Declined abatements and taxed data centers instead: the FY2027 adopted budget projects $1.3B in data center revenue — about 40% of the total county budget (FY2026: $1.2B, 39%). The benchmark for what a jurisdiction with market power can simply refuse to give away Source 1 · verified 2026-09-04
- Groton, CT (Multiple) — A hard size cap, not a cheque: data center buildings limited to 12,500 sq ft in the zoning adopted June 2023, after a one-year moratorium. Hyperscale campuses run 150,000–350,000 sq ft, so the cap excludes them by geometry rather than by argument Source 1 · Source 2 · verified 2026-08-05
- Los Lunas, NM (Meta) — A water agreement with terms: the March 2025 village agreement with Greater Kudu LLC (Meta's filing entity) guarantees up to 3M gallons/day but suspends supply in a declared Stage 3 water emergency. Meta also funds eight Rio Grande watershed restoration projects, ~172M gallons/year Source 1 · Source 2 · verified 2026-08-05
- Morrow County, OR (Amazon (AWS)) — Fees in lieu of taxes, negotiated in the open: ~$40M over 15 years across five new data centers in exchange for enterprise-zone abatements worth an estimated $1B (2023). Cited here as a benchmark of what a payment-in-lieu deal looks like — including how much is forgone to get it Source 1 · verified 2026-08-05
- The Dalles, OR (Google) — Infrastructure money, but no cap — the cautionary benchmark. Google paid ~$28.5M toward city water treatment and storage and donated 3.88M gallons/day of water rights, yet nothing limited its own draw, which reached ~40% of city supply by 2025. Ask for the volume limit in writing, not just the capital contribution Source 1 · Source 2 · verified 2026-08-05
Every one of these happened before final approval. Timing is the leverage.
The trajectory
U.S. data-center electricity demand, actual and projected — TWh per year, with the equivalent number of average U.S. homes powered and the share of all U.S. electricity.
At the high end, that is the electricity of roughly 40% of all U.S. households (~132 million) going to data centers by 2030.
Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024 U.S. Data Center Energy Usage Report (Dec 2024). 2028–2030 range reflects low/high AI-adoption scenarios; electricity shares are the report’s own figures. Homes equivalence uses the EIA average U.S. household consumption of 10,500 kWh/year; household count per U.S. Census.