Knox Co TN / 10-0 unanimous (Durrett recused, Xfinity) / EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY / runs through Jun 30 2027 / Commissioner Andy Fox / Mayor Kincannon aligned / TVA territory / charter-county single-vote authority

Plain-English version. Knox County is the eastern Tennessee county containing Knoxville (population ~480,000 in the metro). On June 23, the County Commission voted 10-0 — with Commissioner Courtney Durrett recusing because she works at Xfinity (a Comcast subsidiary that operates data center adjacent infrastructure) — to enact a one-year moratorium on all new data center development. Unlike the Spartanburg SC pause covered yesterday, which used the 'pending ordinance doctrine' to bridge the gap between first and final readings, the Knox County pause is FULLY effective immediately and runs through June 30, 2027. Procedural mechanics. Knox County is a Charter county under Tennessee state law, which means the County Commission has direct ordinance-making authority without the three-reading requirement that bound Spartanburg. So Knox could pass a fully-binding moratorium in a single meeting, with no procedural fragility for a developer to challenge — the Knox County pause is one of the most legally robust moratoriums in the corpus. The political setup. The moratorium was proposed by Commissioner Andy Fox, who specifically cited three categories of impact: (a) infrastructure load (water and power transmission), (b) utility cost-allocation concern, and (c) neighborhood / community impact (noise, visual scale). This is the same three-pronged structure that has shown up at every NC and FL moratorium hearing in the last two weeks — and notably it precedes any specific Knox County data center proposal, meaning the pause is preemptive rather than reactive. The political setup was reinforced by Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon, who had separately called for a moratorium earlier and asked the Knoxville-Knox County Planning Commission to use the year to update local zoning regulations to accommodate the impact concerns Fox cited. The larger Tennessee picture. Knox County is the biggest single Tennessee county-level moratorium move, but it joins: Nashville (Metro Council 26-1 first reading June 10, through November 1 2026), plus 'multiple smaller Tennessee counties' (per Tom's Hardware coverage) that have passed similar pauses in the last 30 days. Tennessee is the third state — after NC and SC — where the moratorium movement is hitting more than two jurisdictions in non-RTO utility territory.

Primary source · WATE 6 Knoxville — Knox County puts new data center projects on hold for 1 year (Jun 23 2026) ↗