The data center fight in Emporia, Kansas
Emporia has a proposed data center moratorium on this tracker. Status is derived, not stored — a pause with a documented end date flips to Expired on its own — and the source is right next to the claim.
Status today
Citizen initiative to ban high-impact data centers, ordered onto the Nov 2026 ballot by the Lyon County District Court after the city commission asked the court to review it. The petition followed zoning changes the commission approved earlier in 2026 that would allow data centers in the city. NOT settled: the declaratory judgment action on whether the measure is a proper subject for citizen initiative under Kansas law is still pending, and a yes vote may not take effect until it is decided. A parallel petition on battery energy storage is also before the court. Distinct from the Lyon County resolution, which covers unincorporated land only
Source
read 2026-08-23
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
What to do next
- Questions to ask at the hearing — force specific answers onto the record.
- Estimate the impact — electricity, water, and rate pressure for any facility size in Kansas.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- Kansas briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Elsewhere in Kansas
- Shawnee County — Enactedexpires 2027-02-17
- Lyon County — Enactedexpires 2027-01-22
As of August 2026 · changes weekly — re-check before citing
Illustrative rather than exhaustive — dozens of localities churn weekly, and this tracks the ones we have read a source for. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to the ordinance, the enacting body's own page, or a datable report of the vote, and were read on that date. Rows marked *unverified* came from bulk compilation and have not been checked against a primary source — the locality, the year, and the status may all be off. Verify one of those with the town clerk before citing it as precedent. **Expiry is derived, not asserted.** A row with a documented end date flips to *Expired* on its own once that date passes. A time-limited moratorium whose start date was never documented keeps showing as enacted — that is a known gap, not a claim that it is still in force. Moratoriums are also routinely extended, so an expiry date is the earliest it could have ended, not proof that it did.
Part of the U.S. data center moratorium tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0.