Breaking news from Finland: A Finnish regulator ordered a Google subsidiary to stop construction on two data center projects located in Muhos and Kajaani until an Environmental Impact Assessment is completed. In case you didn’t know, Finland is a prime spot for data center investments and is often called the “Texas of Europe,” thanks to its available land and energy resources. Good on them to take the time to study environmental impacts. Source: BBC News
Here in the United States, we’re also seeing more projects fall by the wayside.
Colorado
In Colorado this week, hours of public comment at a Brighton City Council meeting resulted in the council moving forward with a one-year moratorium on data centers, doubling the 6-month pause originally proposed. Council members said resident turnout influenced the change.
Brighton Mayor Pro Tem Peter Padilla said water is a big concern for the community.
“Water is always a concern because we live in an arid climate, and in Brighton, we have a limited amount of water,” he told Denver7. “Our water is not provided by mountain springs and the Colorado River. Our water comes from aquifers underground.”
Brighton is a suburb of Denver, about 20 miles northeast of downtown with a population of about 40,000 people.
City leaders also announced at the meeting that an application connected to a proposed 155-acre, 2.5-million-square-foot, eight-building campus data center near Brighton, called “the Silo,” had been withdrawn.
Stacey Baca, a retired TV journalist who grew up in the area, started looking into potential data center development after discovering Brighton was seeking expertise related to data center noise. She then filed an Open Records request.
She discovered that in January and July 2025 the planning firm held pre-application meetings with city officials. Notes from the January meeting flagged water demand, cooling technology, and water recycling rates as concerns, and said a water resources report would be required.
Another neighbor said she first spotted the site in the background of a TikTok video.
Throughout the state other counties have paused data center development including Denver, Broomfield, Commerce City, Loveland, and Larimer, Jefferson, and Boulder.
The withdrawal in Brighton doesn’t stop the applicant or anyone else from applying for the site later. The companies behind the project haven’t said why they withdrew, but city officials confirmed no other data center applications are in the pipeline.
Ohio
Warren County, Ohio, in the southwestern part of the state and one of Ohio’s most affluent areas, has put new data center development on hold for at least six months.
The county commissioners voted unanimously last week to approve a moratorium covering areas under county control, giving officials time to review local and state zoning rules and weigh environmental and infrastructure concerns.
The pause also gives the county time to wait for a water impact study from the Ohio EPA and the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI), which is expected in November.
Ohio has the fourth-most operational data centers in the country, according to an analysis by Pew Research Center.
A 2025 report by the the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a nonpartisan nonprofit, points out that AI data centers planned for the Midwest could stress water supply in the region. The report estimates that 150 billion gallons of water must be used in the next five years in order to cool down and maintain data centers, which is equal to the annual water consumption of about 4.6 million households.
Both candidates for governor, Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, are proposing conditions on data center construction in Ohio.
California
A judge halted a massive, 1 million-square-foot data center complex, ruling that county officials violated California Environmental Quality (CEQA) when they signed off on it in April. The project received fierce criticism from a coalition of Imperial Valley community members and environmental advocates who oppose local data center development.
For months, they asked the county to study how the project could affect the rural county’s power grid, water supply, and air quality. Now, county officials have been ordered by the court to take time to analyze potential environmental impacts.
The legal challenge was brought by the city of Imperial and the Sierra Club, a national conservation organization.
Learn more about the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting here, with a local organizer from Valle Imperial Resiste.
Florida
Palm Beach County Commissioners voted unanimously (6-0) last month to stop accepting, processing, or approving new applications for large-scale data centers, defining them as those using at least 50 megawatts of power.
The moratorium runs up to a year, expiring Sept. 24, 2027, giving the county time to develop new rules governing projects that could place significant demands on local power, water, and other infrastructure.
The vote came after months of opposition to a proposed expansion of Project Tango, a planned hyperscale AI data center near Arden in western Palm Beach County.
Community members brought up a slew of transparency issues including secret meetings, messy voting procedures, an undisclosed project beneficiary, and alleged friendly texts between a commissioner and a developer’s attorney.
The vote doesn’t undo Project Tango’s earlier approval. Commissioners rejected a large expansion in July, but a 2016 approval for two 100,000-square-foot buildings still stands.
Other counties in Florida that have moved to restrict or pause large-scale data center development include Bay, Citrus, Clay, Holmes, Jackson, Leon, Nassau, Pasco, and Walton counties.
Kentucky
County officials in Mercer County, Kentucky, unanimously rejected zoning that would have allowed a hyperscale data center next to a coal-fired plant.
Mercer County Judge-Executive Sarah Steele told the 170+ people in attendance at the special meeting last week that the proposed regulations did offer some protections, including requiring a data center developer to enter into a community benefit agreement to ensure the developer pays for its own infrastructure and the requirement of environmental studies.
But the regulations needed more work and needed to align with the county’s comprehensive plan, the long-term guide for land use and development.
“I am not completely anti-data center, but we have to get this right before we approve it,” Steele said.
The vote did spark a round of applause from those at the meeting, including many wearing blue shirts to support We Are Mercer County, a community group looking to protect the county’s agricultural land, natural resources, and rural character, as well as help ensure citizens have a meaningful voice in decisions that shape their future.
Lessons Learned
Records requests expose projects early. In Colorado, a resident’s open records request revealed a 2.5-million-square-foot proposal that had been in pre-application talks with the city since January 2025. Its withdrawal came shortly after the story broke.
Turnout can influence outcomes. Brighton’s council doubled its proposed pause from six months to a year, and members said the crowd and its concerns influenced them. In Mercer County, more than 170 people attended the special meeting, and the zoning was rejected unanimously.
Pausing first gives officials time to write rules. Palm Beach County and Warren County both used pauses to review rules while waiting on outside information, such as Warren’s water impact study.
Environmental review is a lever. In Imperial County, the city of Imperial and the Sierra Club sued, and a judge halted the project for violating CEQA, ordering the county to analyze the impacts residents had asked about for months.
Strong rules matter more than yes or no. Mercer County rejected zoning that included a community benefit agreement requirement and environmental studies, because officials said it still needed work and had to align with the county’s comprehensive plan.
Terms to know
Moratorium: A temporary pause on accepting or approving applications, usually to write rules. Note: it’s different from a ban.
Hyperscale: Very large data centers that some counties define by power demand, such as Palm Beach’s 50 megawatt threshold.
Open records request: A request for government documents under state public records law.
Pre-application meeting: An early meeting between a developer and city staff before a formal application. Records of these can reveal plans.
Rezoning: A change in the allowed use of a piece of land, often the first approval a developer needs.
Comprehensive plan: A county’s long-term guide for land use. Rules that don’t align with it can be vulnerable.
Community benefit agreement: A contract in which a developer commits to paying for its own infrastructure or other community benefits. Enforcement terms are what make it meaningful.
Grandfathered (vested) approval: An earlier approval that stays valid despite later rule changes.
Unincorporated / county-controlled: Land outside city limits, governed by the county. A county moratorium may not cover cities inside it.
Eminent domain: The government’s power to take private land for public use with compensation, which comes up when utilities need land for transmission lines.
Is a data center being proposed, or has one already been approved, in your community? Tell us more in the comments.
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There is a project in Gilroy, CA. Rumor has it that it got approved in a similar way to the Imperial Valley data center.