The data center fight in Spartanburg County, South Carolina
Spartanburg County has an active 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
1-year moratorium (extendable by council vote), no dissent on first reading. Pending ordinance doctrine invoked to halt applications immediately. Exempts previously approved Kohler Plant site project
Source
read 2026-08-13
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
Recent news
6 stories tracked since 2026-06-16 across 2 outlets. 4× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. 2× The dispute has escalated into litigation. Most recent: “Residents, environmental group challenge Spartanburg County data center project before PSC” (FOX Carolina News, 2026-08-05).
- Residents, environmental group challenge Spartanburg County data center project before PSC
- Spartanburg County data center lawsuit: Residents say $2.8B project was wrongly classified as ‘minor’ development
- Data center developer, local SC government skirted public input, residents suit says
- Lawsuit targets Spartanburg County data center project, demands public planning review
- Spartanburg County leaders say they only recently learned of proposed data center. Some residents aren’t buying it.
- ‘We were shocked’: Spartanburg County residents criticize handling of data center discussions
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 6 headlines archived.
Where the decision gets made
County Council — Zoning, land-use ordinances, and the county budget. A lawsuit (Southern Environmental Law Center) accuses the county of letting the $2.8B, 457 MW NorthMark/Valara data center on Pine Street bypass the Planning Commission by treating it as two 'minor' developments instead of one 'major' one, which would have required public review.
Meets: See the council's published meeting calendar; regular meetings are typically 5:15 p.m. in Council Chambers.
Where: Spartanburg County Administration Building, 366 North Church Street, Spartanburg, SC 29303
Public comment: See the council's published agenda/meeting calendar for the public-comment process.
864-596-2528 · website
Read from the official page on 2026-08-11. Meeting details change — confirm before you go.
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 South Carolina.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- South Carolina briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Elsewhere in South Carolina
- Newberry County — Enactedexpires 2027-07-16
- Colleton County — Enactedexpires 2027-01-07
- York County — Enactedexpires 2027-04-13
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.