New York, Texas join pushback as data-center bans top 500
TL;DR
- The Information counts 500-plus US jurisdictions now blocking or restricting new data centers, with more than 150 local bans passed in July alone.
- Governor Hochul's Executive Order 62 makes New York the first state to freeze permits for any data center of 50 megawatts or more for a year.
- Texas Governor Abbott has halted data center approvals pending audits, though Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is pressing for legislation instead of a directive.
The tally of US jurisdictions moving to block or restrict new data centers has crossed 500, according to The Information, with more than 150 towns and counties passing temporary or permanent bans in July alone. A parallel count from Heatmap News puts the number of restrictive local laws at over 530 across 42 states, with nearly 190 adopted since June 1.
What turns this from a local zoning story into a hyperscaler siting problem is the state-level pickup this summer. On July 14, Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order 62, imposing a one-year moratorium on discretionary environmental permits for any New York data center of 50 megawatts or more. In early August, Governor Greg Abbott directed Texas agencies to halt data center approvals until audits are completed. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller welcomed the pause but called the directive 'all hat and no cattle' and pressed for a special legislative session to write it into law.
The picture underneath the numbers is not that compute demand cooled. It is that the political price of the grid load, water draw, and land use has caught up. Heatmap counts more than 50 canceled data centers so far this year, more than twice the 2025 pace, with contested-proposal cancellation rates hitting roughly 71% in Michigan and 56% in Indiana. Verrus's $5.1B Salem project is one we covered this week.
Two things to keep in mind before treating this as one uniform crackdown. New York's move is a hard permit moratorium tied to a 50 MW threshold. Texas's is an audit pause with no fixed end date and no legislation behind it yet. And neither tally cleanly separates outright bans from softer setback, noise, or water rules that projects can engineer around.
For hyperscalers and neocloud operators writing site plans this quarter, the near-term shift is toward jurisdictions where power interconnection queues and community sentiment still align, and away from New York and Texas, where the state now has its own choke point above local restrictions.
Originally reported by theinformation.com
Read the original article →Original headline: The Information: US Data-Center Bans Top 500 as New York and Texas Join Local Pushback