Ypsilanti Township MI electric utility infrastructure moratorium (2026)

Charter Township of Ypsilanti, Mich. (Washtenaw County) — LAND-USE MORATORIUM approved UNANIMOUSLY by the Board of Trustees at its meeting of AUGUST 18, 2026, placing a SIX-MONTH PAUSE on land use for the ESTABLISHMENT OR SUBSTANTIAL EXPANSION OF A MAJOR ELECTRIC UTILITY FACILITY. THE INSTRUMENT IS THE POINT AND IT IS NOVEL IN THIS DATASET: every other local measure indexed here regulates the DATA CENTER \u2014 by prohibiting it, pausing its applications, confining it to a district, or conditioning it on a permit \u2014 and each therefore depends on defining the use, a definitional problem that has repeatedly defeated municipalities (see Clayton OH 365-day data center moratorium (2026), where the code had no definition and a data center could be admitted as a WAREHOUSE). Ypsilanti Township instead regulates THE POWER INFRASTRUCTURE the facility cannot operate without. A hyperscale or research computing campus requires dedicated high-capacity supply, which in practice requires a new substation; a moratorium on major electric utility facilities reaches the project through an unambiguous, long-established land-use category, WITHOUT requiring the township to define 'data center' at all. For any jurisdiction whose code is silent on data centers, this is the fastest available route to jurisdiction. TARGET PROJECT: the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN announced in the preceding week a preferred location for what it describes as a COMPUTING RESEARCH FACILITY, on the TEXTILE ROAD plot the university confirmed purchasing in March 2026, having previously also considered a site shared with the American Center for Mobility near Willow Run Airport. THE PROJECT COMPRISES a U-M academic research facility, A CLASSIFIED RESEARCH FACILITY FOR LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY's work, AND AN ELECTRICAL SUBSTATION \u2014 U-M stated it would partner with DTE ENERGY to build a dedicated on-site substation to support the project. STATED PURPOSE (Township Supervisor BRENDA STUMBO): time for the township to evaluate and adopt appropriate ordinances regulating the infrastructure required to power projects such as the U-M and LANL facility. JURISDICTIONAL QUESTION WORTH WATCHING, recorded but NOT resolved: the township is asserting land-use authority over the power supply to a federal national-laboratory CLASSIFIED facility sited on state university land. Michigan township zoning authority over a state university's own property, and any federal preemption attaching to LANL's classified work, are unaddressed in the located source and are live issues.