Rio Grande County CO hyperscale data center prohibition (2026)

Rio Grande County, Colo. (San Luis Valley) — RESOLUTION PROHIBITING ANY LARGE-SCALE OR HYPERSCALE DATA CENTERS adopted by the Board of County Commissioners, reported 2026-08-08. INSTRUMENT CLASS: this is a PROHIBITION, not a moratorium — the county resolved the question rather than pausing it. Cohort: Irwindale CA data center ban ordinance (2026), Monterey Park Data Center Ban (Measure NDC), Cumberland RI data center zoning prohibition, Ordinance 26-22 (2026), Edgewater FL AI data center ban (2026), Jersey City NJ data center ban in industrial zones (Ord. 26-057), Los Angeles County prohibition on data centers in unincorporated areas (2026). THE DEFINITIONAL STRUCTURE IS THE ANALYTICALLY USEFUL FEATURE AND IT IS SIZE-BASED, WHICH IS UNUSUAL AMONG THE PROHIBITIONS. The three approaches recorded in this dataset and their failure modes: (1) USE-BASED ('data centers') — over-inclusive absent an exclusion, which is why Marysville KS 12-month data center moratorium (2026) needed express language that the definition 'does not include ordinary server rooms or information-technology equipment incidental to the main use of a property'; (2) WORKLOAD-BASED ('AI data centers', Poway CA AI data center ban ordinance, first reading (2026)) — under-inclusive and defeasible, since an operator may characterise a facility as general-purpose colocation, and that entry flags the ordinance's own definition as unobtained and administrability as the critical open question; (3) SIZE-BASED (here) — resistant to both, because scale is observable and not susceptible to relabelling. THE SIZE-BASED APPROACH'S OWN WEAKNESS IS THAT 'LARGE-SCALE' AND 'HYPERSCALE' ARE INDUSTRY TERMS OF ART, NOT LEGAL DEFINITIONS. Unless the resolution fixes a measurable threshold — square footage, megawatts of peak demand, or acreage — the county has relocated the definitional problem rather than resolved it, and enforcement would turn on characterisation at the permitting stage. WHETHER THE RESOLUTION FIXES A THRESHOLD IS NOT ESTABLISHED BY THE SOURCE and is the most important open question on this entry. Compare Port Angeles WA six-month data center moratorium (2026), where Councilmember Drew Schwab argued for abandoning the definitional exercise entirely in favour of regulating the IMPACTS of large resource users — an approach that would express the same intent in megawatts and gallons rather than in a label. INSTRUMENT CAUTION: the measure is a RESOLUTION of the board of county commissioners, not reported as a zoning ordinance amendment. In Colorado, county land-use regulation runs through the county zoning resolution adopted under C.R.S. Title 30, Article 28, and a bare policy resolution not incorporated into that framework would be weaker than a zoning amendment. THE SOURCE DOES NOT SAY WHICH THIS IS. GEOGRAPHIC CONTEXT: the San Luis Valley is a high-desert closed basin with acute water-rights pressure and long-standing groundwater sustainability litigation and administration, which is material background to a hyperscale prohibition though the source does not state water as the rationale. Alamosa, in the same valley, adopted a unanimous one-year moratorium with councillors reportedly eager to ban data centers permanently (also in the unwritten queue). NOT ESTABLISHED: the vote, the exact date, the resolution number, any threshold, the stated rationale, and whether unincorporated areas only are covered.