The data center fight in Gallatin, Tennessee
As of September 27, 2026, Gallatin, Tennessee has a data center moratorium under consideration (action taken 2026-07-08).
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
City Council voted to move forward with creating a data center moratorium. The Planning Commission recommended a 12-month moratorium; final council vote expected September 2026. A 60-day pause on new data center applications was approved in the interim.
SourceNews
read 2026-09-06
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
The project on the table
Meta Gallatin —
Operator: Meta · Owner: Meta · Size: 87 MW
Chip types: B300. Epoch AI estimates ~87 MW.
Next: Already operating — the leverage now is enforcement: noise and water conditions, tax revenue tracking, and any expansion filing, which reopens the record.
Latest in the record
- 2024-11-15 — Meta officially launched its Gallatin data center campus as operational, with total investment exceeding $1.5 billion across four buildings totaling more than 1.7 million square feet and over 100 permanent employees; the Nashville Business Journal called it one of the top five largest business investments in Tennessee history. · source
- 2024-11-15 — The Tennessee Municipal League reported Meta's Gallatin data center began operations, noting the company's partnership with TVA supports eight Meta projects adding 530 MW of renewable energy to Tennessee and that Meta had donated over $1 million to local nonprofits and school systems. · source
- 2024-05-20 — Gallatin approved Meta's fourth data center building on the campus, a 276,000-square-foot structure that would bring total campus space to approximately 1.9 million square feet with total investment well beyond $1 billion. · source
- 2024-04-15 — Meta filed plans for a fourth data center on its Gallatin campus, a 278,000-square-foot building shaped like a stretched plus sign representing a 17% increase to its existing footprint, with a public work session set for April 29 and a vote scheduled for May 20, 2024. · source
- 2023-01-01 — Meta's first data center building on the Gallatin campus became fully operational in 2023, designated GTN 1, a two-story H-shaped building on 800 acres at 1 Meta Loop. · source
- 2022-09-23 — Meta announced a nearly $1 billion expansion of the Gallatin campus with two new structures totaling approximately 2 million square feet, including a cold storage facility, with peak construction workforce reaching 1,700 workers. · source
Full dated timeline on the project tracker.
Source. Read 2026-08-14.
Recent news
4 stories tracked since 2026-06-23 across 3 outlets. 4× Local officials are moving to pause or block the project. Most recent: “Gallatin city council advances 12-month data center moratorium for vote next week” (WZTV, 2026-09-09).
- Gallatin city council advances 12-month data center moratorium for vote next week
- Gallatin leaders set to vote on data center moratorium
- City of Gallatin closer to passing year-long moratorium on new data centers
- Gallatin residents describe living near one of Tennessee’s largest data centers as city council defers moratorium vote
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 4 headlines archived.
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 Tennessee.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- Tennessee briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Nearby in Tennessee
- Cedar Hill (18 mi) — Enactedexpires 2028-06-01
- Nashville (24 mi) — Enactedexpires 2026-12-01
- White County (61 mi) — Enactedno end date — permanent
- Warren County (61 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-06-22
- McMinnville (62 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-12-03
- Shelbyville (63 mi) — Enactedfixed term, end date not recorded
- Maury County (64 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-07-19
- Coffee County (65 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-06-09
All 27 tracked actions in Tennessee are on the state page.
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.