Madison County AR three-year data center moratorium (2026)

Madison County, Ark. — Quorum Court ordinance adopted unanimously August 17, 2026 imposing a three-year moratorium on data centers, effective immediately by EMERGENCY CLAUSE and running through August 31, 2029. THE EMERGENCY CLAUSE IS OPERATIVELY SIGNIFICANT: Arkansas county ordinances ordinarily take effect after a delay; the emergency clause eliminates the filing window a developer could otherwise exploit between adoption and effectiveness. COVERED USES — deliberately broad: data centers, DIGITAL ASSET MINING BUSINESSES, and other large-scale computer or server operations. Moratoriums drafted around 'data centers' alone have repeatedly been argued not to reach cryptocurrency mining; this ordinance forecloses that reading. STATED PURPOSE: time for county officials to study data centers and develop regulations addressing potential costs and benefits. DURATION IN CONTEXT: three years is at the long end of the local-moratorium distribution in this dataset, where six months to one year is typical. Madison County is one of five Arkansas counties adopting three-year moratoriums, and its is the SECOND-LONGEST in Arkansas — only Independence County's exceeds it. NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH Madison County IN Six-Month Data Center Moratorium (Madison County, INDIANA) or with the separate report of a Madison County one-year moratorium on data processing facilities, which concerns a different Madison County.