Elkhart IN data center and battery storage moratorium (2026)

Elkhart, Ind. (Elkhart County) — MORATORIUM ON DATA CENTERS AND BATTERY STORAGE FACILITIES passed UNANIMOUSLY by the City Council at a SPECIAL HEARING on a Thursday in August 2026. PAIRED SCOPE: data centers AND battery storage. This is the fourth instance recorded in this dataset of a jurisdiction extending a data center pause to associated energy infrastructure, and the cohort is now coherent enough to name: Zeeland Township MI data center and energy facility moratorium (2026) (data centers and energy facilities, this wave), West Mahanoy Township PA curative amendment, data centers and solar (2026) (data centers, solar farms, ON-SITE POWER GENERATION and accessory uses, via curative amendment), Leominster MA (one-year moratorium combining battery energy storage systems and data centers, in the unwritten queue), and ELKHART. THE COMMON DIAGNOSIS: hyperscale computing load arrives with substation capacity, on-site generation and increasingly grid-scale storage, and a use-specific pause reaching only the computing use leaves the accompanying energy build governed by whatever the existing code says about utility and industrial uses — frequently nothing. Irwindale CA data center ban ordinance (2026)'s ordinance findings recite 'continuous electrical demand, often supported by diesel or gas-powered' backup, and Latah County ID data center regulations (2026) imposes an ANNUAL electrical consumption and peak demand reporting duty, both aimed at the same underlying fact. PROCEDURAL POSTURE — A SPECIAL HEARING IS A SIGNAL. Councils convene specially where waiting for the next regular meeting carries risk, which in the land-use context ordinarily means an application that could be filed in the interval and vest. The closest analogue indexed here is McDonald OH one-year data center moratorium (2026), where a village council passed an EMERGENCY ordinance in under five minutes at a special meeting the day after the developer met residents in the high school gymnasium. WHETHER ELKHART FACED A PENDING OR IMMINENT APPLICATION IS NOT ESTABLISHED and is not asserted. INDIANA CONTEXT: 'nearly one-third of Indiana counties have adopted restrictions, moratoriums, ordinances, or bans'; the Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission moratorium runs through 2027 (Indianapolis data center moratorium (Council 23-1 Aug 10; MDC 6-0 Aug 19; effective), Indianapolis temporary data center moratorium (committee advanced July 13, 2026)); Portage IN Technology Campus district data center rules (2026) and Steuben County IN six-month data center moratorium (2026) are also indexed; and Indiana data center local revenue share, IC 6-2.5-15-15.5 (2026) records the state's local revenue share obligation. NOT ESTABLISHED: THE TERM LENGTH (no duration is reported and expires_date is left NULL rather than guessed), the exact date (only 'Thursday' in August), the ordinance number, the operative scope, and any threshold. THREE SEPARATE LEDGER ROWS reported this same Elkhart action, which is why the entry is confident the action occurred even though its terms are thin.