Seattle 9-0 emergency / 20 MVA threshold / Tier 1 tech city
Seattle City Council passed Council Bill 121214 (moratorium) and Resolution 32204 (policy framework) on June 9, 2026 by a 9-0 vote with immediate emergency effect — first Tier 1 US tech-employer city to enact a data center moratorium
Plain-English framing. The Seattle moratorium freezes any new data center at or above 20 MVA (which is roughly 16 MW of real load using typical 0.8 power factor). The roughly 30 existing co-location facilities in the city are grandfathered and each can expand by up to 20 MVA without triggering the freeze. Carved out entirely: 911 call centers, municipal facilities, hospitals, universities, cancer research. The moratorium can be extended once for six months; the permanent zoning legislation it pauses for is expected by early 2027.
What triggered it. In April 2026, four separate companies proposed five large-scale data centers in Seattle totaling 369 MW of new load. The city had no zoning framework for any of them.
What makes the template different. Most moratoriums are categorical (no data centers, full stop). Seattle's is continuous-variable — every existing operator gets a measurable expansion budget, and every new project below 20 MVA is unaffected. That converts the moratorium from a binary ban into a planning constraint a developer can engineer around (split a 50 MW project into three 16 MW sites, for instance).
Who passed it. CM Eddie Lin (D2), Council President Joy Hollingsworth (D3), and CM Debora Juarez (D5) co-sponsored. The 9-0 unanimous vote in a major US tech city is the political signal — there is no longer a 'pro-data-center' wing on this council.
Seattle City Council official blog ↗
Why it matters
Seattle is symbolically the biggest moratorium yet — the first Tier 1 tech-employer city to enact one, with full city-council unanimity. The 20 MVA expansion-headroom design is a new template variant worth adding to the knowledge graph as 'continuous-cap moratorium,' distinct from categorical bans (Surry NC, Newberry SC). Other code cities under home rule authority (Bellevue, Portland, Austin, Denver, Boston) now have a template they can copy without inventing legal scaffolding. Cliff's siting tool should treat 'continuous-cap states' as a separate routing category — a developer who can split a load below the cap can still build, where in a categorical state they cannot.
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Lexington-Fayette KY / stealth land sale trigger / all-zone scope
Lexington-Fayette Urban County (KY) passed an emergency moratorium June 9, 2026 through October 31, 2026 — triggered by the undisclosed sale of a former Lexmark property to a data center developer that was not revealed to Council until after closing
Plain-English framing. Lexington and Fayette County are merged into a single 'urban-county government' under Kentucky law (KRS 67A), which gives the combined entity broader regulatory authority than a typical Kentucky county. Most KY counties are Dillon's Rule (can only act under powers state law explicitly grants) — Lexington-Fayette is closer to home rule, which is what makes a sweeping all-zone moratorium possible here.
The trigger is unusual and worth flagging. The Council and the Mayor's office only learned about the data center sale of a former Lexmark facility on New Circle Road after the closing — through a public records review of the land transaction, not through a permit application or rezoning request. There was no developer announcement, no zoning notice, no traffic study filed. Just a quiet land assemblage.
The moratorium scope is the most aggressive in the country so far: it covers 'any permits, approvals, and authorizations necessary to the operation of data centers, in any zone.' That language reaches building permits and even utility connection authorizations, not just zoning approvals.
Mayor Linda Gorton publicly backed 'very tight controls' on data centers, saying they 'do not produce many jobs, and have the potential to increase utility costs on local residents.'
CivicLex (primary local government coverage) ↗
Why it matters
This is a brand-new trigger category — 'retroactive disclosure failure' — that should be its own column in the moratorium ledger. It means any jurisdiction can pause development on the strength of an off-market land sale alone, with no application yet filed. Developers doing quiet pre-permit land assembly (the standard playbook in most metros) now carry a new political risk: discovery of the assemblage can be the moratorium trigger. For Cliff's pre-development diligence product, this changes the recommended sequencing — early voluntary disclosure may now be lower-risk than the traditional stealth approach in jurisdictions with newly engaged councils.
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Edmond OK / preemptive / cost-recovery scope
Edmond, OK passed a 5-0 preemptive moratorium June 8, 2026 through December 31, 2026 — with zero current data center proposals in the city — citing reputational contagion from adjacent Yukon, Piedmont, and Luther
Plain-English framing. Edmond is a Oklahoma City suburb operating under Article XVIII home rule. The city has no pending data center applications and no announced projects. The council voted to pause anyway, expressly to give staff time to 'fully research data centers' impact on Edmond water and electricity, update zoning code, and understand the cost recovery for water, electricity and other infrastructure needed to serve data centers.'
The political quote from Ward 2 Councilman Barry Moore is the analytical signal: he 'didn't want the division and anger he'd seen what it's done in other communities.' That is moratorium-by-contagion — passing a freeze not because something is happening locally, but because the council doesn't want the political experience of the freeze fights happening elsewhere.
The explicit naming of utility cost recovery as a study item is unusual. Most county moratoriums list water and traffic and noise; very few list 'cost recovery' as a research scope. That language signals Edmond is paying attention to the AEP Ohio and Oregon tariff debates and intends to write a local ordinance that interacts with whatever Oklahoma's PUC eventually does.
Edmond city government / NonDoc ↗
Why it matters
Preemptive moratoriums (no proposed project) are now measurable as a distinct category — they signal that the moratorium map is no longer reactive (each freeze responding to a local project) but contagious (each freeze responding to other freezes elsewhere). For outreach and product positioning, the implication is that the de-rate / interruptible-load / disclosure-checklist pitch now lands in places that have never seen a single data center proposal. Cliff's GTM has to widen the prospect list to include cities/counties acting on reputation rather than on real applications.
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DeKalb GA / extension / grandfathered project
DeKalb County, GA extended its existing data center moratorium 100 days through September 30, 2026 by a 5-2 vote June 10, 2026 — one previously-submitted ~2 million sq ft South DeKalb project remains grandfathered through the review pipeline
Plain-English framing. DeKalb County (inner-ring Atlanta metro, GA) had an existing moratorium expiring June 23. The 5-2 extension pushes it to September 30 while staff drafts 'strict new guidelines on noise and environmental damage.' Georgia is a home rule state for counties (GA Const. Article IX § II), so DeKalb has broad land-use authority — but state preemption on utility rates and air emissions still limits how far the new ordinance can reach into the things data center developers actually care about.
Resident testimony at the hearing was dominated by water and sewer infrastructure capacity rather than electricity — a useful signal that water (not power) is the binding political constraint in the Atlanta metro. The grandfathered 2M sq ft South DeKalb project is also instructive: a project filed before the moratorium took effect remains active even through this extension, which is exactly why developers race to file before suspected moratorium dates.
Extension itself is the news. The original moratorium was supposed to be enough time to draft enforceable ordinance text. It wasn't. That maps to the same pattern in other counties — initial six-month moratoriums almost always get rolled into extensions because writing real ordinance text takes longer than councils expect.
CBS Atlanta ↗
Why it matters
Track 'extension count' as a distinct field per jurisdiction. First-time moratoriums signal political appetite; extensions signal that the staff capacity to actually write replacement ordinance text doesn't exist locally. That capacity gap is a direct opportunity surface for the Cliff regulatory knowledge graph — an LLM-built reference ordinance, structured against state framework constraints, is exactly the artifact county staff are missing and would buy if Cliff packaged it correctly.
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