Week in Review: Virginia's Governor Cracks Down on Data Centers Statewide, a New Jersey Site Spills Diesel Into the Meadowlands, and a Judge Exempts One Developer From a North Carolina Ban

Welcome back to the GridWatch AI Week in Review — our Sunday roundup of the most important data center stories from the past seven days, what they mean for communities, and what you can learn from each one.

1. Ohio crosses 125 active local moratoriums, and voters in four cities decide bans of their own in November

What happened: Ohio Capital Journal reported this week that at least 138 Ohio municipalities and townships now have active data-center moratoriums, with the outlet's running count putting the number of currently active moratoriums above 125 — 23 of them outright bans and roughly 23 more under consideration. Separately, the outlet reported that 18 Ohio communities will have data-center measures on their November ballots, including Urbana, which will vote on a charter amendment banning any data center drawing more than 7.5 megawatts, and Hubbard, the only Ohio city voting on a full permanent ban this fall. A Bowling Green State University poll the outlet cited found 78% of Ohioans support a moratorium until more is known about the industry's effects, and 75% oppose construction in their own community specifically.

Why it matters: This is what a statewide pattern actually looks like counted up, not estimated — a state where the industry has had a genuinely difficult year is also a state where dozens of separate local governments reached the same conclusion independently, several of them now putting the question directly to voters rather than leaving it to a council vote alone.

What to learn — a ballot measure and a council moratorium are different tools with different durability: A council-passed moratorium can be reversed by the next council election or renegotiated with a developer's lawyers; a charter amendment approved directly by voters is generally much harder for a future council to undo on its own. If your community is choosing between the two paths, ask which one your state's election law actually allows at the local level, and whether your council has the votes to refer the question to the ballot instead of deciding it themselves. Ohio communities are on our moratorium tracker; see the Ohio state page for the full list.

Sources: Ohio Capital Journal, Sep 18; Ohio Capital Journal, Sep 14

2. A North Carolina judge lets a data center proceed despite Chatham County's moratorium — not because the ban is invalid, but because this one developer got there first

What happened: Superior Court Judge John Morris granted summary judgment to Eco TIP West, exempting its roughly 75-megawatt, $11 million data center project from Chatham County's year-old moratorium, according to Carolina Journal and Law360. The judge found that county planning staff had met with the developer as far back as October 2025 — months before commissioners enacted the moratorium in February 2026 — and treated that pre-moratorium engagement as equivalent to a vested right to proceed. The county was also ordered to pay the developer's attorney's fees, with a later hearing to set damages.

Why it matters: Chatham County's moratorium itself was not struck down — it remains in force, and our own tracker still lists it as Enacted. What changed is narrower and, for other communities, more instructive: a court found this specific applicant had already acquired a vested right to build before the ban existed, based on informal staff contact rather than a signed permit.

What to learn — "vested rights" can attach earlier than a permit, and a moratorium can't retroactively erase it: Most states' vested-rights doctrine protects a developer who has taken substantial, good-faith steps toward a project — which can include site-plan meetings with staff, not only an issued permit — before a new ordinance takes effect. If your county is drafting a moratorium in response to a project you already know about, ask your county attorney directly how far back the county's own staff contact with that developer goes, and whether it could support a vested-rights claim like this one. A pause written before any known applicant exists, like the ones we've covered before, is much harder to undermine this way. See Chatham County's community page.

Sources: Carolina Journal, Sep 18; Law360, Sep 18; Raleigh News & Observer, Sep 18

3. Virginia's governor rolls out the most sweeping statewide data-center rules in the country — two days after the state's largest-ever fine against one

What happened: Gov. Abigail Spanberger unveiled a Data Center Accountability Framework and signed Executive Order 22 to put its first pieces into effect immediately, according to Virginia Mercury, The Hill and Politico. The order eliminates by-right approval for any data center drawing more than 25 megawatts, requiring local government sign-off instead; bans executive-branch agencies from signing non-disclosure agreements over data center projects; directs the state to write noise regulations for the industry; and creates a new AI Task Force. It follows, by two days, Virginia DEQ's announcement that Microsoft would pay roughly $2.5 million — the largest civil penalty the agency has ever assessed a data center — after its Leesburg facility ran 62 emergency backup generators for a full week during a June 2025 substation outage and exceeded its permitted nitrogen oxide, particulate and volatile-organic-compound limits, per Virginia Business and CBS News.

Why it matters: Virginia is the country's largest data-center market, and by-right approval — meaning a project meeting existing zoning could be built without a fresh public hearing — has been the single biggest procedural complaint from residents there for years. Ending it for anything over 25 MW is a structural change to who gets a hearing, not just a new disclosure form. The Microsoft fine, arriving just before it, is also the clearest evidence yet that the backup generators this framework is aimed at are the same ones we wrote about two weeks ago in the context of the EPA's proposal to loosen federal air-permit comment rules — Virginia's fine shows a state enforcing its own permit limits without any federal comment rule doing the work.

What to learn — "by-right" is the zoning term worth knowing cold: A by-right use is one a zoning code already allows outright, with no public hearing required before a permit issues; a special-use or conditional-use permit requires one. If a data center has been proposed as by-right in your jurisdiction, that is very likely why you never got a hearing notice — ask your zoning office directly whether the parcel's current zoning classifies data centers as by-right, and if a bill like Virginia's is moving in your state, that is the specific provision to ask your legislator whether it covers your zoning district too. See our Virginia state page for the framework's full text and the reaction from both sides.

Sources: Virginia Mercury, Sep 18; The Hill, Sep 18; Politico, Sep 18; Virginia Business, Sep 16; CBS News, Sep 16

4. New Mexico's Democratic governor nominee pledges a data-center moratorium — while data-center executives are funding her campaign

What happened: Deb Haaland, the Democratic nominee for New Mexico governor, announced an eight-point plan that includes signing an executive order on her first day in office to pause new large-scale data-center projects until statewide protections are in place, according to Source New Mexico and The Hill. Searchlight New Mexico reported the same week that Haaland's campaign has received roughly $87,000 from donors tied to data-center developers — including about $75,000 traced to individuals matching leadership at Oracle and Clayco, and $12,400 from an Oracle subsidiary directly — with several of those donors connected to the contested Project Jupiter data center in Doña Ana County.

Why it matters: A moratorium pledge from a candidate whose campaign has taken money from the industry it would pause is not proof the pledge is hollow, but it is exactly the kind of fact a resident should be able to check before a vote, and it is the reason campaign-finance disclosures are public in the first place. Haaland's plan would set a statewide floor while letting counties adopt stricter rules or outright bans, meaning it does not preempt tougher local action already underway.

What to learn — a candidate's donor list is a public record you can check before the pledge, not after: Every state publishes candidate contribution data, usually searchable by employer or donor name, well before election day. Before repeating any candidate's data-center promise at a town hall, search their own state's campaign-finance database for the developer's name, its executives' names, and known shell entities tied to the specific project you're fighting — the disclosure is usually there weeks before a reporter writes the story about it. Track what's on the ballot with our officials scorecard.

Sources: Searchlight New Mexico, Sep 18; Source New Mexico, Sep 17; The Hill, Sep 17

5. A New Jersey data center spills thousands of gallons of diesel into a Hackensack River tributary — and the company blames a "computer glitch"

What happened: More than 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel discharged from a storage tank outside Equinix's NY2 data center in Secaucus on the evening of September 11, with some of it reaching Anderson Creek, a tributary of the Hackensack River, according to the Bergen Record and NJ.com. New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection said the spill resulted from two broken valves in the tank's routine filtration process; Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli told reporters he had been informed the cause was a "computer glitch." Contractors were still removing oil from the creek as of this week's coverage, and the state says the spill has been contained.

Why it matters: Diesel is stored on nearly every large data center site specifically to fuel the backup generators this whole newsletter keeps coming back to — the same equipment behind Virginia's record Microsoft fine above. A spill from the fuel tank itself, rather than from generator exhaust, is a reminder that the infrastructure risk isn't only air emissions; a bulk fuel tank near a waterway is a spill risk under normal operation, glitch or not.

What to learn — ask what's stored on site, not only what's burned: A site's air permit covers what a generator emits when it runs, but a separate set of state rules — usually administered by the same environmental agency, often called something like a "discharge prevention" or spill program — governs how much fuel can be stored on site and what containment is required around the tank. If a data center near you already has generators installed, ask your state environmental agency two separate questions: what's the air permit status, and what's the facility's spill prevention and containment plan for its fuel storage. See our breakdown of water and resource risk in The Hidden Water Cost of Your AI Prompt.

Sources: Bergen Record, Sep 14; NJ.com, Sep 15; The New York Times, Sep 17

6. Texas's attorney general opens an investigation into a data center proposed on land deeded for a park

What happened: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his office is investigating whether a 1999 deed restriction limiting a Taylor, Texas parcel to future use "as parkland" was properly modified or released before the land was sold for a data center, according to KUT and USA Today. The land passed from a family, to a nonprofit holding it in trust for parkland, to the city of Taylor in 2004, to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation in 2009, which sold it in April 2025 for $10 million to the company behind the proposed Blueprint Data Centers project. Paxton said he may seek court intervention if the deed restriction was disregarded rather than lawfully released.

Why it matters: Land that passes through several public and quasi-public owners over two decades can lose track of the restrictions attached to it — deliberately or not — well before a private buyer ever shows up. Whether this specific restriction was properly released is now a legal question for a court, not a settled fact either side can claim yet.

What to learn — pull the deed history yourself before assuming a restriction was honored: County deed and property records are public and usually searchable online by parcel number; a restriction like "for use as parkland" typically has to be formally released, amended, or litigated away — it doesn't lapse just because the land changed hands. If a data center is proposed on land that was ever public, donated, or held by an economic development authority in your community, pull the deed chain before the hearing, not after a reporter or an attorney general does it for you. See Texas's state page for the rest of this year's water-reporting and siting fights there.

Sources: KUT, Sep 17; USA Today, Sep 19; The Business Journals, Sep 18

7. Eight more communities paused or banned data centers this week

Beyond the stories above, at least eight more local governments moved on data centers in the past seven days:

What to learn — "third Bay Area city" is worth noticing on its own: When the same action spreads to a third, then a fourth city in one metro area within weeks, later councils are usually not deciding the underlying question from scratch — they're often adopting language modeled closely on the city that acted first. If a neighboring city just passed a moratorium, ask your own council whether they've seen that city's ordinance text before you draft your own from nothing.

Sources: Calexico Chronicle, Sep 18 (Calexico); TAPinto, Sep 17 (Newark); WBTV, Sep 15 (Statesville); WMTV, Sep 16 (Sauk County); NBC Bay Area, Sep 16 (Richmond); Greenfield Recorder, Sep 17 (Greenfield); Uprise RI, Sep 18 (Cumberland); Reporter-Herald, Sep 16 (Loveland)

What to watch next week

• Chatham County, NC — whether the county appeals Judge Morris's ruling, and what damages the follow-up hearing sets
• Virginia — whether the General Assembly takes up the legislative pieces of Spanberger's framework that an executive order alone can't reach, including the by-right change for existing pending applications
• New Mexico — whether Haaland's campaign returns or keeps the data-center-linked donations, and how her Republican opponent responds
• Secaucus, NJ — the final DEP assessment of how much diesel actually reached Anderson Creek, and whether Equinix faces a separate penalty beyond cleanup costs
• Taylor, TX — whether Paxton's office seeks a court order before construction on the site advances further
• Ohio — turnout and results in the 18 communities with data-center measures on the November ballot

Every Sunday we cover the week's most important data center stories, explain the underlying concepts, and point you to the tools you need. Know a story we should cover? Reach out at hello@aigridwatch.com or sign up for the newsletter below.