Cary NC 18-month data center moratorium (2026)

Town of Cary, N.C. (Wake County) — 18-MONTH MORATORIUM on ALL DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT, approved UNANIMOUSLY by the Town Council on a Thursday night in August 2026. STUDY SCOPE during the moratorium, per Director of Planning and Community Development HEATHER WHELEHAN and the staff report: POWER DEMAND AND GRID CAPACITY; WATER CONSUMPTION; NOISE AND VIBRATION EFFECTS; SITE DESIGN AND BUFFERING; plus community engagement and coordination with regional partners. Staff to provide PERIODIC PROGRESS UPDATES to council, with an ordinance decision expected in FEBRUARY. THE EXEMPTION IS THE TRANSFERABLE DRAFTING, and is better constructed than most in this dataset: the moratorium excepts 'enterprise, small-scale, collocated data processing equipment, such as server rooms at offices or hospitals' DRAWING LESS THAN ONE MEGAWATT of demand. It combines a FUNCTIONAL description with a HARD NUMERIC THRESHOLD (1 MW), so ordinary commercial and institutional IT infrastructure is unambiguously outside the pause while anything of scale is inside. Compare Cherry Hill NJ data center prohibited-use ordinance (2026), which distinguishes 'small server rooms used by standalone businesses' in words only, with no threshold \u2014 a formulation that invites argument at the margin. A 1 MW line is also far below the 5 MW (Knox County), 10 MW (Knoxville), 20 MW (Town of Tonawanda) and 50 MW (New York State) triggers recorded elsewhere, so Cary's moratorium is among the broadest in reach. DURATION CAUTION: 18 months sits at the outer edge of the 12-to-18-month defensibility window that Henderson, Nevada's city attorney identified on the record (Henderson NV rejects data center moratorium, pursues code changes (2026)), and North Carolina's moratorium authority should be checked against that. OPPOSITION ON THE RECORD: resident Michael Morris, an IT industry worker, argued the town 'has been about growth and development for the 20 years I've been here, and this sends the wrong message', while conceding a data center should not be sited next to a neighbourhood supermarket. REGIONAL CONTEXT: Wake County adjoins Durham County, whose nine-month moratorium is indexed as Durham County NC nine-month data center moratorium (2026) and which timed itself to the City of Durham's.