Durham County NC nine-month data center moratorium (2026)

Durham County, N.C. — nine-month moratorium on NEW OR EXPANDED data centers, adopted 4-1 by the Board of County Commissioners on Monday, August 24, 2026 following a public hearing. TERM: to MAY 2027. INTERGOVERNMENTAL ALIGNMENT: the county set its timeline to match a moratorium already passed by the CITY OF DURHAM, expressly so the two jurisdictions can coordinate their regulatory approaches — a deliberate synchronisation that most overlapping city/county pauses in this dataset do not achieve. THE EXEMPTION IS THE SUBSTANTIVE INNOVATION: the moratorium DOES NOT APPLY to data centers that (a) are LESS THAN 100,000 SQUARE FEET, (b) use a CLOSED-LOOP COOLING SYSTEM, and (c) DO NOT USE DIESEL BACKUP GENERATORS. All three conditions must be met. This is a PERFORMANCE-BASED CARVE-OUT rather than a size threshold: a sub-100,000-square-foot facility relying on evaporative cooling or diesel backup remains fully covered. Its practical effect is to publish, during the moratorium, the exact specification a developer must meet to proceed — converting the pause from a pure stop into a conditional standard, and pre-committing the county to the two substantive terms (water-neutral cooling, no on-site diesel combustion) that its permanent regulations are most likely to turn on. SCOPE NOTE: the moratorium covers EXPANSIONS as well as new facilities, which is narrower ground than most local instruments, many of which reach only new applications and leave incumbent growth untouched. PURPOSE: time for county staff to research and draft permanent data center regulations for county land. CONTEXT: public opposition across the Triangle over land, power and water consumption; multiple North Carolina localities paused data center development in 2026.