San Diego council votes 9-0 for 45-day data center moratorium, with extension planned

The San Diego City Council voted 9-0 on Oct. 27 to adopt an emergency ordinance that bars any new data center, or the expansion of an existing one, anywhere in the city for 45 days.

The urgency ordinance took effect immediately. It ratifies a moratorium that Mayor Todd Gloria ordered in an executive order signed Oct. 22. Because it is an emergency ordinance under the City Charter, it needed eight votes and is not subject to the mayor's veto.

Under the ordinance, no city department may accept as complete, process or approve any permit, map or other entitlement for a new data center, the conversion of an existing building to a data center, or an increase in floor area or intensity at an existing one. The council's findings say the pause applies to applications already pending as well as any received during the moratorium.

The ordinance exempts server rooms that serve only a building's own business, data centers needed for public safety and emergency communications, telecommunications carrier and public utility facilities, ordinary computer equipment in offices, schools and hospitals, and minor repairs that do not add floor area, electrical capacity or water demand.

The 45 days can be extended. State law allows the council, after a public hearing and with a four-fifths vote, to extend the moratorium by 10 months and 15 days, and no more than two extensions are allowed. The City Planning Department wrote that it will bring an extension to the council before the 45 days run out so it has time to draft permanent rules, which staff expect to bring forward in 2027.

City planners say data centers are not defined in the city's land use code. Those approved so far were classified as "Major Transmission, Relay, and Communication Switching Systems," a category the staff report says does not address their impacts on electricity, water for cooling and land that could hold housing. The ordinance's findings say the city has received inquiries from industry representatives about stand-alone data centers and about filling vacant office space with them.

The staff report acknowledged a cost to the city: the pause "could delay or otherwise deter development of data centers which could result in lower tax revenue should a data center be the only economically viable use for a particular premises."

Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera made the motion, seconded by Councilmember Kent Lee. It added direction that city staff notify the council within seven days of any inquiry from a prospective data center developer or operator. It also set principles for the permanent policy: no direct or indirect costs to residents or ratepayers; no data center allowed by right, and approval only after a finding that housing cannot feasibly be built on the site; 100% renewable power with no fossil-fuel backup generators; a recycled-water plan so no drinking water is used for cooling; construction under a project labor agreement with local hire; community input; and minimum distances from schools, parks and child care.

The motion also asked the city's Office of Government Affairs to "immediately begin lobbying to prevent a large scale data center from being developed at NAVWAR." The Naval Information Warfare Systems Command Old Town campus along Pacific Highway is Navy property, and the motion directs lobbying there rather than any permit action. Voice of San Diego reported Oct. 15 that Manchester Financial Group had pitched a large data center at the site.

Gloria said in a statement after the vote that "data centers can place significant demands on electricity, water, land and infrastructure" and that the city will not "ask residents to absorb unnecessary costs or neighborhood impacts." His executive order creates a stakeholder working group of up to 15 members and requires preliminary recommendations within 180 days.