Data-Center Moratoriums Hit 34 North Carolina Jurisdictions as Local Pauses Spread to Indiana, Georgia and Texas

Local governments across at least a dozen states spent August putting new data-center applications on hold, and the pace picked up rather than slowed. Greensboro, Alamance County, Whiteville and Durham County all adopted pauses in North Carolina; Elkhart, Indiana went further and stopped accepting battery-energy-storage applications alongside data centers; Dougherty County, Georgia extended an existing pause and told residents there is no limit on how many more times it can do so; and Brownsville, Texas started down a procedural path that state law now stretches across roughly three months. None of it has dented demand — CBRE's mid-year numbers show record construction and record-low vacancy — which is precisely the problem for contractors staffing this work. The bottleneck is moving from megawatts to zoning agendas.

The state has turned into the clearest example of how quickly a hot market can close at the local level. The North State Journal counted 14 counties and 20 municipalities with data-center moratoriums in early September, up from 11 and 17 a month before. That is better than 20% growth in four weeks. An independent tracker counts differently, folding in crypto-mining and battery-storage measures, and logs 40 local instruments in North Carolina with 32 currently active across 16 counties, five cities, 15 towns and one tribal government. Different methods, same direction.

August's additions came in a cluster. Greensboro's council approved a 180-day moratorium on August 18, voting 8-0 with one recusal. It covers development applications for data centers and similar facilities drawing more than 10 megawatts. Council stretched it from the 120 days staff proposed, which pushes expiration to February 14, 2027. Projects already permitted or under construction are not affected. Alamance County commissioners went unanimous on a one-year pause on August 17, after weighing a two-year version.

Whiteville followed on August 25 with a 12-month moratorium on data centers and cryptocurrency mining, running through August 2027 or until the city writes a zoning text amendment, whichever lands first. Mayor Terry Mann put it plainly: "I think there's a lot of things that are uncertain, like how much water it takes for the cooling process, how much electricity they use, and what that might do to our resources." The city has no zoning definition for these facilities at all right now, which is a big part of why the pause happened.

The same night, Durham County commissioners voted 4-1 for a nine-month pause on new and expanded data centers, with an exemption for facilities under 100,000 square feet. It expires in May 2027, timed to line up with a matching measure from the city of Durham so the two can write compatible rules.

Those follow Charlotte's 150-day moratorium, approved unanimously in June after a hearing that drew more than 50 speakers, and Surry County's two-year pause in July. The politics have gotten hot enough that some projects do not survive to a vote. In August a developer pulled an annexation request for a southeast Raleigh data center after residents filled all 30 public comment slots and buried council inboxes.

Elkhart's city council voted 9-0 on August 27 to stop accepting applications for both data centers and battery storage facilities through December 31, 2027. The measure applies to the city, not Elkhart County. "A one-year moratorium gives us the time and ability" to determine whether these facilities fit the community, Councilman Aaron Mishler said.

Elkhart is not the first place to bundle battery energy storage into a data-center pause. Austin County, Texas commissioners passed a countywide moratorium covering both in late July, and North Carolina's tracker shows the city of Wilson with a battery-storage measure of its own. But the pairing is showing up more often, and it should get the attention of anybody running electrical crews. BESS has been the strongest growth line after data centers for a lot of shops, and plenty of them treated it as a hedge. When both land in the same ordinance, that hedge is thinner than it looked.

Dougherty County commissioners in Albany unanimously extended a 45-day data-center moratorium by another 180 days on August 31, pushing it to roughly the end of February 2027. County officials made the open-ended nature of the tool explicit, noting there is no limit to how many times they can pause a decision on whether a data center comes to the county. Residents are now pressing for permanent ordinances covering noise limits, setbacks from homes and water use.

That is the pattern worth watching. A 45-day study period is a scheduling annoyance. A 45-day period that becomes 225 days and can be renewed indefinitely is a project-killer, and it is functionally indistinguishable from a ban for any developer working against an interconnection queue.

Texas is the exception that shows how much procedure matters. House Bill 2559, effective September 1, 2025, rebuilt the state's municipal moratorium statute. Cities now have to hold two public hearings at least 30 days apart, with newspaper notice published no later than 30 days before each one. The ordinance itself needs two readings at least 28 days apart and a three-fourths supermajority of the full governing body on final passage. Moratoriums expire after 90 days unless extended, cannot run more than 180 days total, and cannot be re-imposed on the same property type in the same area for two years. The bill also dropped the language that limited the subchapter to commercial property.

Add that up and a Texas city deciding today to pause data centers is looking at about three months of process before anything takes effect. Brownsville commissioners on September 1 moved ahead with a proposed 90-day moratorium that also sweeps in private gaming clubs, automotive quick-lube shops, event centers and self-storage. They voted to restart the city's Environmental and Conservation Task Force to study power, water, noise, land-use compatibility and fiscal impact. Staff noted the development code has no data-center rules whatsoever. Under the new timeline, December is the realistic earliest date anything binds.

Counties have had it worse, since they do not have the zoning authority cities do. Hill County passed the state's first county-level data-center moratorium on May 12. Developer RCM Hill, LLC filed a $100 million federal lawsuit two weeks later, arguing the county had gone past its authority. Commissioners unanimously rescinded the pause on June 5 and replaced it with a checklist of requirements built on existing state statutes. County Judge Shane Brassell still counted it a win, saying the moratorium pushed out "some projects that were less desirable" while the county figured out what it wanted.

None of this has slowed the buildout yet. CBRE's North America Data Center Trends H1 2026 report puts primary-market vacancy at 1.4%, down from 1.6% a year ago, with 7,481.1 MW under construction. That is a 24.8% jump and a new record, past the 6,350.1 MW set in the second half of 2024. Preleasing hit 80.4%, up from 74.3%. Federal spending data says the same thing from a different angle. Census figures show data-center construction put in place running at more than a $75 billion annual pace in July, up close to 60% year over year, while overall U.S. construction spending slid toward a three-year low.

What has changed is where the risk lives. CBRE now describes community resistance, zoning disputes and entitlement delays as constraints that rank with power procurement. A project can have its power and its fiber locked up and still die at a county commission meeting.

For business owners, there is a governance angle worth acting on. HB 2559 cuts both ways in Texas. It makes moratoriums slow and procedurally expensive, but the two-hearing structure with 30-day notice also creates a formal, calendared window where contractors, IBEW and NECA chapters, and mechanical associations can testify before anything passes. The same holds for study periods elsewhere. Brownsville's task force and Whiteville's year of research are going to produce zoning language on noise, water, setbacks and generator use that contractors will be building to for the next decade. Hill County shows the other path, where a legally shaky pause got replaced with a developer checklist, which is closer to the kind of workable regulation most of the industry would rather have than an open-ended freeze. Showing up at the hearing is cheaper than losing the market.

For hiring managers and recruiters, put the entitlement calendar into your workforce planning. Moratorium end dates are public and specific. Greensboro lifts February 14, 2027. Dougherty County comes off around February 28. Durham County runs to May. They cluster, which means when several pauses expire in the same quarter and the deferred applications all move at once, the hiring surge will be sharper than a smooth demand curve would suggest. Building a bench ahead of those dates beats fighting over the same licensed journeymen the week permits clear.

For technicians and field crews, the near-term picture has not changed. With 7,481 MW under construction and vacancy at 1.4%, the work in the ground is not going anywhere. What is changing is geography. Electricians, pipefitters, controls techs and BMS specialists with data-center experience should expect the jobs to keep moving around the map, and should look hard at per-diem and travel terms rather than assume their home market stays busy. Elkhart is the specific warning. If you diversified into battery storage as a backstop, understand that regulators are starting to treat both as one thing.

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