Escambia County FL large-scale data center ban (2026)

Escambia County, Fla. — ORDINANCE BANNING LARGE-SCALE DATA CENTERS in the UNINCORPORATED AREAS of the county, approved by the Board of County Commissioners on a Thursday night in August 2026, together with the commencement of a separate MORATORIUM PROCESS. INSTRUMENT CLASS: a PROHIBITION, not a time-limited pause \u2014 no sunset is reported, placing it with Woodford County KY permanent data center ban (2026) and Nye County NV data center ban in Basin 162 (2026) rather than with the moratoriums that dominate the 2026 municipal record. TERRITORIAL SCOPE, stated expressly in the source: unincorporated Escambia County, OUTSIDE the CITY OF PENSACOLA and the TOWN OF CENTURY. Florida county land-use authority does not reach incorporated municipalities, which legislate for themselves; Pensacola's own measure is separately indexed as Pensacola FL 1-year large-scale data center moratorium (eff. July 16, 2026). SEQUENCING IS UNUSUAL AND WORTH RECORDING: the county adopted the PERMANENT BAN FIRST and then began a moratorium process. The ordinary pattern across this dataset is the inverse \u2014 a moratorium adopted as a holding action while permanent regulations are drafted (see Clearcreek Township OH one-year data center permit moratorium (2026) and the Dayton sequence recorded there). A moratorium commenced after a ban is most plausibly intended to close whatever the ban's 'large-scale' qualifier leaves open, since a size-qualified prohibition necessarily permits everything below the threshold. THE 'LARGE-SCALE' THRESHOLD IS NOT STATED in any located source and is the material gap on this entry: without it the ban's reach cannot be assessed. SUBSEQUENT ACTION: at a later meeting the commissioners STOOD FIRM ON THE EXISTING BAN AND TOOK NO FURTHER ACTION, indicating the ban survived reconsideration.