The Backlash Gets a Budget

SALEM, Ore., Oct. 13 — Oregon,Oregon, a center of data-center building for decades, has ordered a halt to the permits needed to build more. In an Oct. 9 letter that came to light this week, Gov. Tina Kotek directed the state’s environmental regulator to stop issuing air and water permits for new or expanding data centers until July 1, 2027.

In Memphis, the council put off a vote on a proposed moratorium until Oct. 20, and a fistfight in the City Hall lobby followed. From July to early October, political advertisers spent $86.5 million on ads mentioning data centers, almost always unfavorably, according to AdImpact data reported by Bisnow on Oct. 12.

Local resistance is hardening into state policy and campaign money. For companies building artificial intelligence, local permission is becoming another constraint on where the next campus goes. Heatmap News counts at least $260 billion of U.S. data-center investment canceled this year after sustained local opposition, about half of it in the third quarter alone.The CountHeatmap Pro, Heatmap’s market-intelligence service, tracks cancellations through a continuous survey of public officials, regulatory filings and local media. Most of the canceled projects died for want of a local permit or by hostile local government action, Heatmap said. The cancellations put prospective business at risk for developers, landlords and equipment suppliers, and may favor jurisdictions still willing to approve projects.

Heatmap says its figure is likely an undercount: only about 60 percent of projects disclose the dollar value of their planned investment, and some stalled by state moratoriums in Texas and New York are left out. It finds about $1 trillion of investment now facing “sustained or meaningful” local opposition. In an August poll of 2,045 registered voters by Heatmap Pro and Embold Research, 75 percent said they would oppose a data center near where they live; a year earlier, opinion was roughly split.

Salem

The letter asks the director of the Department of Environmental Quality, Leah Feldon, to use her “existing administrative authority and discretion” to pause the main state air and water permits, along with cities’ requests to change wastewater permits to take data-center discharge. It widens a September order on state-owned land. Without the permits, OPB reported, most large data centers could not be built in Oregon, on public land or private.

Ms. Kotek calls it a “time limited pause”; OPB’s headline called it an expanded moratorium. She wrote that it would “provide space for policy and/or regulatory reforms that may be considered in the upcoming 2027 session of the Legislature with my support.” She has backed a statewide moratorium since September, but as something for the Legislature to enact. “This is what I can do right now under Oregon law,” she told a rally outside the Capitol that month.

Amazon, which runs more than a dozen hyperscale data centers in Morrow and Umatilla counties, said it was disappointed.Oregon’s StakeA report by ECOnorthwest and the University of Virginia counted 111 operating data centers in Oregon and estimated that they accounted for about 23 percent of the state’s retail electricity sales in 2025. “This directive was issued abruptly, without meaningful stakeholder engagement of the workers, businesses, and municipalities it will affect,” Shannon Kellogg, Amazon Web Services’ vice president of public policy for the Americas, said in a statement. Kaleb Lay of Oregon Rural Action, which circulated the letter, said a pause was not enough: “we need new laws to protect all of Oregon from these massive corporations.”

Memphis

The city took up its restrictions after Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI, now branded SpaceXSI, built two hyperscale data centers in the Boxtown and Whitehaven neighborhoods, The Commercial Appeal reported.SpaceXAIMr. Musk founded the company as xAI. SpaceX acquired it in February, and it took the SpaceXAI name in July, Business Insider reported. Its terms of service, updated Oct. 12, use the name SpaceXSI, with SpaceXAI LLC as the contracting company. The ordinance, led by Councilman J.B. Smiley Jr., would pause approvals while the city develops permanent rules, Action News 5 reported. It was first proposed as a 12-month ban; as drafted in September, existing centers that do not expand would be exempt.

On Oct. 6, the council voted 7 to 5 to put it off, with five related measures, until Oct. 20, The Commercial Appeal reported. Audience members booed and a fight broke out in the lobby.

“We deserve justice and a moratorium now,” KeShaun Pearson of Memphis Community Against Pollution said outside City Hall, The Commercial Appeal reported. Councilman Jeff Warren, who voted for the delay, warned that companies “get the same benefit from going to Desoto County, Crittenden County, Fayette County, Tipton County,” neighboring counties in Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, WREG reported, according to Newsweek.

On the Air

At the end of August, data centers ranked 43rd of 73 topics in campaign ads; by October they were 17th, on screens in 38 states, AdImpact told Bisnow.The TallyAdImpact ranks energy fifth among ad topics, at $226 million, and artificial intelligence 20th, at $74 million. In Ohio’s Senate race, between Jon Husted, the Republican incumbent, and Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, the campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $8.3 million on such ads. In Michigan, backers of both candidates for governor spent nearly $4 million in September.

Democrats invoke the issue more often, but more than 80 Republican ad campaigns have used it. “This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle,” the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned tech and AI companies in an August memo, Bisnow reported. “Red or blue, if you vote against data centers, we vote for you,” Cheryl Shadden, a longtime Republican who opposes data-center development in Hood County, Tex., told Bisnow.

Red or blue, if you vote against data centers, we vote for you.

Consent is getting dearer. Amazon this month pledged $1 billion for communities with its data centers and said it would stop asking officials to sign nondisclosure agreements, OPB reported.

The Memphis council takes up the moratorium again on Oct. 20; voters choose governors in Oregon and Michigan and a senator in Ohio on Nov. 3; and Oregon’s Legislature convenes in January, with Ms. Kotek’s pause due to end on July 1, 2027.