Eureka CA data center moratorium and 20,000 sq ft cap direction (2026)

Eureka, Calif. (Humboldt County) — TWO LINKED ACTIONS. (1) 45-DAY MORATORIUM ON DATA CENTER SITING passed by the City Council approximately two weeks before the September 15, 2026 meeting, TAKING EFFECT IMMEDIATELY, to prevent development of such facilities while staff develop a long-term ordinance. The 45-day term and immediate effect identify this as a CAL. GOV. CODE § 65858 interim urgency ordinance (four-fifths vote; 45 days; extendable once by 10 months 15 days and once by 1 year). Cohort: Gilroy CA interim urgency data center moratorium (2026), Richmond CA 45-day data center moratorium (2026), Palm Springs Data Center Moratorium (2026). (2) POLICY DIRECTION, 2026-09-15: after weighing THREE REGULATORY OPTIONS the council DIRECTED STAFF to develop zoning regulations that would allow SMALL DATA CENTERS — 20,000 SQUARE FEET OR SMALLER — to be built IN INDUSTRIAL AREAS of the city, requiring a CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT RATHER THAN BEING PERMITTED OUTRIGHT, 'allowing for robust public review.' THE DIRECTION IS NOT ITSELF AN ADOPTED ORDINANCE — status `effective` on this entry attaches to THE MORATORIUM, not to the 20,000 sq ft cap, which remains staff direction. THE STAFF RECORD IS THE MOST SUBSTANTIVE GRID ANALYSIS INDEXED HERE. Planning staffer KENYON, quoted: 'New data centers in 2026 commonly seek 50 to 100 megawatts, and the largest AI campuses can require hundreds or even more than 1,000 megawatts.' 'To put those numbers in perspective, PG&E uses roughly one to two kilowatts per housing unit as a general planning estimate. So, a one-megawatt data center is roughly equivalent to the electrical demand associated with 500 to 1,000 homes.' 'PG&E has told us that ONE SUBSTATION SERVING EUREKA IS ALREADY AT CAPACITY, and one has about 10 MEGAWATTS OF REMAINING CAPACITY, with a planned upgrade to add more capacity.' Kenyon also distinguished facility types — basic data storage versus larger facilities hosting thousands of servers for AI and cryptocurrency mining — and noted that 'as they become larger in scale, data centers demand large continuous electrical loads and potentially large amounts of water for cooling.' THE POLICY FOLLOWS ARITHMETICALLY FROM THE CONSTRAINT: available headroom of roughly 10 MW against a typical ask of 50-100 MW makes a hyperscale facility physically unservable, and the 20,000 sq ft cap encodes that. THIS IS THE CAPACITY-DRIVEN COUNTERPART to the demand-driven caps elsewhere in this dataset, and it is a materially stronger evidentiary posture for defending a size limit than a bare policy preference. CONTRAST WITH THE FLAT-BAN COHORT (Irwindale CA data center ban ordinance (2026), Poway CA AI data center ban ordinance, first reading (2026), Monterey Park Data Center Ban (Measure NDC)): Eureka is calibrating to a measured constraint rather than excluding the use. expires_date 2026-10-17 IS COMPUTED from an ESTIMATED 2026-09-02 adoption ('two weeks' before September 15) and is UNRELIABLE — see notes.