Sacramento: Call for temporary moratorium on data centers
An opinion piece advocates for Sacramento County and its incorporated cities to implement a temporary moratorium on data centers, similar to Seattle's 12-month pause. This would allow time for local agencies to develop best management practices and for state and federal agencies to establish regulatory guardrails against the adverse impacts of hyper-scale data centers.
An opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee argues that Sacramento County and its cities should enact a temporary moratorium on data center development. The author suggests this pause would allow local entities, including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, to establish best management practices for these facilities.
The article references Seattle's existing 12-month moratorium on data centers exceeding 20 megawatts as a precedent. The author contends that such a measure is necessary to address the adverse impacts of large-scale data centers, particularly those driven by "Big Tech" for AI capabilities, while state and federal agencies work on broader regulatory frameworks.