Chewelah WA emergency data center moratorium (2026)

City of Chewelah, Wash. (Stevens County) — SIX-MONTH data center moratorium approved by the City Council on JULY 1, 2026 AS AN EMERGENCY MEASURE, temporarily blocking the city from accepting APPLICATIONS, LICENSES, PERMITS OR APPROVALS for new data centers, scheduled to remain in effect THROUGH DECEMBER 2026. PUBLIC HEARING held AUGUST 19, 2026 at Chewelah City Hall \u2014 the hearing follows adoption, which is the standard Washington sequence for an interim or emergency ordinance adopted without prior hearing. PURPOSE: to give city officials time to study the potential impacts of data centers and develop regulations governing their siting and operation. THE DISTINGUISHING PROVISION: under the ordinance, APPLICATIONS FOR DATA CENTER FACILITIES MUST BE REJECTED AND RETURNED TO APPLICANTS during the moratorium. Nearly every other instrument in this dataset merely SUSPENDS PROCESSING, leaving the application pending \u2014 which preserves the applicant's filing date and, in many jurisdictions, a colourable claim to be reviewed under the standards in force when it was submitted. AFFIRMATIVE REJECTION AND RETURN DESTROYS THAT CLAIM. Its significance is visible in the cases this dataset already records: Raeden v. Gibraltar MI data center moratorium challenge (2026) is a federal suit pressing exactly the vested-application theory, and Salem OR 120-day data center moratorium (Res. 2026-40) records a Verrus application filed days before the council vote which reporting held the moratorium may not reach. A jurisdiction drafting now should consider whether its pause holds applications or returns them. SCALE CAVEAT: Chewelah is a small city, and the provision's durability against a well-resourced challenge has not been tested in any located source.