On July 28, the Montgomery County Council in Maryland — one of the wealthiest and most populous counties bordering Washington, D.C. — voted to freeze new data center permits for 18 months, splitting the difference between council members who wanted a six-month pause and others pushing for a full two years.
The compromise, announced in a county news release, came after what officials described as robust public support for a moratorium.
Montgomery County is not an outlier. It is the latest entry in a wave of local government action that has swept the country in 2026, as communities from Seattle to rural Mississippi push back against the data centers being built to power the artificial intelligence boom.
A Trend With National Numbers
According to a count by the technology publication The Information, cited in a July report by Time magazine, more than 300 cities, towns and counties nationwide — including Monterey Park, California; DeKalb County, Georgia; and Jefferson County, Pennsylvania — have now enacted bans or moratoriums on large-scale data center construction. A June Reuters poll found that only about a third of Americans approve of the current pace of data center construction, and just 14% said they’d be comfortable with a data center built near their own home, Time reported.
The frustration has moved from council chambers into the streets. On July 18, what organizers called a coast-to-coast “National Day of Protest” against AI data centers drew roughly 142 demonstrations across 42 states, according to Reuters figures cited by Time. In Columbus, Georgia, about 100 people rallied downtown that weekend, calling for a moratorium after the city council approved a zoning overlay opposed by residents; organizer Corie Wilson told Georgia Public Broadcasting that after months of packed meetings, “the answer we got back was still ‘yes.'”
The financial stakes are real for developers, too. The research group Data Center Watch found that in the first quarter of 2026 alone, at least 75 U.S. data center projects worth a combined $130 billion were delayed or canceled at least in part because of organized local opposition, according to reporting by E&E News/POLITICO.
What Councils Are Actually Doing
The specific actions vary widely by jurisdiction, but a pattern has emerged of communities using every tool available — moratoriums, zoning denials, ballot measures and outright bans — to slow projects while they study the impacts:
- Seattle — The City Council unanimously adopted an emergency moratorium on new data center siting on June 9, freezing new projects while the city studies effects on infrastructure, utility rates, land use and public health, according to a Seattle City Council announcement.
- Jackson, Mississippi — The City Council approved a 183-day moratorium on July 14 by a 5–2 vote, according to WLBT.
- Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota — After a contentious, early-morning session, the City Council passed a moratorium 3–2 in late June despite the developer’s attorney warning of a possible lawsuit, FOX 9 reported.
- St. Charles — The City Council unanimously approved a one-year moratorium after the developer behind a proposed 440-acre project withdrew it amid public opposition, according to a report picked up by Yahoo News.
- Lexington, Kentucky — After hours of public comment, including testimony that data centers extract community resources without creating meaningful jobs, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Planning Commission tightened a zoning amendment on July 31 alongside an existing construction moratorium, according to WEKU.
- Henry County, Virginia — After residents said proposed zoning language wasn’t strict enough, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in late July to scrap the draft rules entirely and start over, Cardinal News reported.
- Monterey Park, California — The City Council placed a permanent, citywide data center ban on the June 2 ballot and extended its existing moratorium, according to a city news release.
- Baltimore — The City Council passed a one-year moratorium on data centers drawing 10 megawatts or more of power, ordering a nine-month study of energy, ratepayer and public health impacts, according to tracking by the advocacy site Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting.
- Hill County, Texas — County commissioners voted 3–2 in May for a one-year moratorium, the first such pause by a Texas county, following resident concerns over a proposed 300-acre project’s noise, water and electricity impacts, per the same tracker.
Not every fight ends in a pause — some end in outright rejection. The Tyler, Texas Planning and Zoning Commission denied a permit for a proposed downtown data center in early July; Douglas County, Georgia commissioners voted down a rezoning for a 4.4-million-square-foot campus; Fauquier County, Virginia’s planning commission recommended denying a six-facility project for the second time in 13 months; and Palm Beach County, Florida commissioners rejected a proposed 1-million-square-foot facility after a marathon 12-hour hearing, according to the Brockovich tracker.
The Concerns Driving the Backlash
Across dozens of meetings this year, residents have raised a consistent set of concerns:
Noise. Cooling systems, backup diesel generators and HVAC equipment can run 24 hours a day, and residents near several facilities say the sound has become unbearable. In Dowagiac, Michigan, neighbors of a data center owned by a Hyperscale Data subsidiary filed suit in July, alleging a high-pitched whine audible more than a mile beyond the property line has disrupted sleep for two years, according to Newsweek and Tom’s Hardware. Similar nuisance suits have been filed against a Microsoft facility in Wisconsin and against operators in New Jersey, where residents’ own decibel readings allegedly exceeded local noise limits, according to a client alert from the law firm Crowell & Moring.
Water. Large facilities can use millions of gallons of water daily for cooling, and residents worry about strain on local supplies and wells. At a June meeting in Falls Township, Pennsylvania, resident Jennifer Metzger reminded supervisors that less than half a percent of the planet’s water is drinkable, according to LevittownNow. In Oregon, a data center subsidiary agreed to a $20.5 million settlement over nitrate contamination of a local groundwater basin without admitting responsibility, while a Georgia family’s complaints about a private well have drawn regulatory attention, according to a client alert from the law firm WilmerHale.
Electricity costs. Officials in Seattle warned that unregulated growth in data centers has been driving up utility bills for ordinary households and small businesses, according to the City Council’s own announcement of its moratorium legislation.
Transparency and trust. Many of the loudest complaints aren’t about engineering at all, but about process — residents in Georgia, Kentucky and elsewhere say they’ve packed meeting after meeting only to watch projects get approved anyway. In North Carolina, a Southern Coalition for Social Justice attorney challenged a developer’s promised tax-revenue figures as unsupported, calling the numbers unreliable, per E&E News/POLITICO reporting.
The Legal Front Widens in Both Directions
The fight has increasingly moved into courtrooms — and not just with residents suing operators. Developers have also begun suing cities. In Cave City, Kentucky, a company challenging the city’s moratorium in court continued to face resident protests over a proposed 381-acre project near Mammoth Cave National Park in July, according to Spectrum News 1. And in Wisconsin, residents near Microsoft’s Fairwater campus filed a proposed class action, Ostergaard et al. v. Microsoft Corporation, alleging excessive noise, Newsweek reported.
An Unusual Political Coalition
Perhaps the most striking feature of the 2026 backlash is its bipartisan flavor. Opposition to data centers has traditionally been strongest among environmentally minded, left-leaning communities worried about water and energy consumption. But conservative-leaning areas — including rural Virginia counties — have increasingly joined the opposition too, despite the jobs and tax revenue at stake, a shift Cardinal News described as a political realignment capable of straining the usual pro-business, anti-regulation conservative coalition.
That realignment reached the Virginia statehouse this spring, when state senators voted to repeal the commonwealth’s data center sales-tax exemption — worth an estimated $1.6 billion a year — over industry objections, according to the newsletter Data Center Watch. Gov. Abigail Spanberger has signaled caution about reversing the state’s prior commitments to the industry.
The Industry Pushes Back
The data center industry has mounted its own defense in statehouses and county chambers alike. Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the trade group Data Center Coalition, has told lawmakers in Texas and Georgia that facilities support thousands of jobs and provide a stable property-tax base, while acknowledging in Texas testimony that the industry needs to improve community outreach, according to reporting by the Texas Signal and Stateline. Supporters, including a Georgia State University real-estate researcher, note that in rural counties, a single data center’s property-tax payments can equal roughly a third of the local government’s entire budget, per Bloomberg Tax.
What’s Coming Next
The debate shows no sign of slowing as August begins. In Nevada, the Nye County Commission is scheduled to vote August 4 on banning data center development in any unincorporated community, including Pahrump, that lacks its own elected town board — a vote preceded by a public forum and a demonstration organized in part by the conservative group Humans First, according to the Pahrump Valley Times. In Wisconsin, St. Croix County’s Community Development Committee will hold a public hearing August 13 on a proposed moratorium and zoning changes, the Hudson Star-Observer reported. And in Iowa, Woodbury County’s Zoning Commission has scheduled a string of community meetings beginning August 31 in Sloan, Moville and Salix to gather input before drafting its own data center ordinance, according to KTIV.
With hundreds of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure investment still being planned across the country, and with local resistance showing every sign of hardening rather than fading, the fight over where — and whether — the next generation of data centers gets built looks likely to remain one of the most contested local political issues in America through the rest of 2026.
