The data center fight in Salem, Oregon
As of October 1, 2026, Salem, Oregon has a data center moratorium under consideration (action taken Aug 3, 2026).
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
Council voted unanimously to *begin* the process — a 60- or 120-day moratorium still has to come back for adoption, and staff must first give the state notice and show a compelling need. No pause is in effect; a developer advanced its plan ahead of the vote
SourceNews
read 2026-08-04
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
Recent news
19 stories tracked since 2026-07-29 across 10 outlets. 13× Local officials are moving to pause or block the project. 5× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. Most recent: “City attorney: Salem data center moratorium means Verrus can’t build until it expires” (Salem Reporter, 2026-09-22).
- City attorney: Salem data center moratorium means Verrus can’t build until it expires
- Salem pauses data center projects for 4 months
- Salem joins list of cities halting data center development with moratorium
- See photos as Salem City Council approves data center moratorium
- Salem City Council votes to place moratorium on data centers
- UPDATE: Salem city councilors approve data center moratorium
- Salem City Council bans NDAs, gets update on data center moratorium
- ‘It's not the right fit’: Salem mayor urges denial of permit for data center
- What to expect if you attend Salem's data center town hall meetings
- Salem zoning board rejects developer’s plan for data center as mayor seeks to ban them outright
- Salem data center moratorium rally 2026
- Salem wants your thoughts on data centers. How to participate
+7 more on the story tracker.
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 19 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 Oregon.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- Oregon briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Nearby in Oregon
- Oregon (statewide) (0 mi) — Proposedterm not documented
- Woodburn (17 mi) — Proposedterm not documented
- Hillsboro (40 mi) — Enactedexpires soon — 2026-11-24
- Clackamas County (43 mi) — Proposedterm not documented
- Oregon (state land) (141 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-07-01
- Oregon (enterprise zone tax) (146 mi) — Enactedno fixed end — runs until a condition is met
All 7 tracked actions in Oregon are on the state page.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · 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.