Athens County OH township and county data center moratoria (2026)

Athens County, Ohio — THREE OVERLAPPING MORATORIA adopted by separate governments within days: (1) ATHENS TOWNSHIP TRUSTEES passed a ONE-YEAR moratorium on data center development on AUGUST 1, 2026; (2) ATHENS CITY COUNCIL passed a similar resolution on AUGUST 3, 2026 \u2014 indexed separately as Athens OH data center moratorium Ord. 70-26 (2026); (3) the ATHENS COUNTY COMMISSIONERS declared a moratorium later in August 2026. WHY THE TOWNSHIP AND COUNTY MEASURES MATTER SEPARATELY FROM THE CITY ONE: Athens OH data center moratorium Ord. 70-26 (2026) records that the city moratorium DOES NOT REACH the site that inspired it \u2014 a New York developer's interest in land across the highway from Athens High School \u2014 BECAUSE THAT SITE LIES OUTSIDE THE CITY LIMITS. Municipal authority stops at the corporate boundary. A TOWNSHIP moratorium and a COUNTY moratorium are the instruments that reach unincorporated land, and their existence changes the coverage answer for any parcel in the county. A practitioner checking whether a site is restricted must consult all three. NOTE THE OHIO STRUCTURE: Ohio townships have limited zoning authority and counties zone only unincorporated territory that has adopted county zoning, so the three instruments are not simply nested \u2014 their combined coverage should be confirmed parcel by parcel rather than assumed complete. THE STATE-LEVEL LEAD IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ITEM IN THIS RECORD: CONSERVE OHIO, a grassroots organisation, is GATHERING PETITION SIGNATURES FOR A PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE OHIO STATE CONSTITUTION THAT WOULD BAN CONSTRUCTION OF HYPERSCALE DATA CENTERS IN THE STATE. NO OTHER MEASURE IN THIS DATASET \u2014 municipal, county, state statutory or executive \u2014 attempts a constitutional prohibition. A constitutional ban would sit above every Ohio instrument indexed here and would be materially harder to repeal than legislation. IT IS RECORDED AS A LEAD AND NOT AS A MEASURE: signature gathering is not ballot qualification, and qualification is not adoption. Ohio's other indexed local measures include Canton OH data center zoning chapter (2026), Clayton OH 365-day data center moratorium (2026), Miamisburg OH nine-month data center moratorium (2026), Clearcreek Township OH one-year data center permit moratorium (2026) and Amherst OH Nordson campus data center variance denial (2026); the state separately became the first to require AI policies in public schools (Ohio statewide school AI policy mandate (2026)).