Multiple small Tennessee counties pass temporary data center bans — Nashville also passed near-unanimous moratorium on first reading

The city of McMinnville in Warren County, Tennessee has just passed an 18-month data center moratorium, allowing the city to determine the “electrical grid capacity, water and stormwater impacts, environmental and public health concerns, noise, and community fit” of these projects before even giving them the chance to apply for a permit. The Tennessee Lookout also listed several other bans that have recently been enacted or are under deliberation, like the larger Warren County, which is planning to vote on a temporary ban over its entire jurisdiction on the 22nd.

Aside from this area, other rural counties have passed moratoriums or are in the process of debating one. Coffee County, which sits adjacent to Warren, passed a data center ban at the same as McMinnville, while Knox County will vote on the issue on the same day as Warren County makes its decision. Even Nashville, the capital of the State of Tennessee, has passed a moratorium bill on its first reading with only a lone dissenter among the 40-member Metropolitan Council.

Tennessee is currently home to 63 data centers, according to the Data Center Map, with Elon Musk’s massive Colossus and Colossus 2 data centers located in Memphis. However, it seems that Tennesseans are pushing back on these developments, as several counties are considering and passing temporary bans. This is especially true for rural areas, where many data center developers take interest because of cheaper land, less regulatory friction, and weaker resistance.

“I think that they’re aiming these at … these smaller places in Tennessee because our land is so cheap, our laws are so lenient, the income isn’t taxed like it is anywhere else, and generally they’re just not going to get a lot of pushback, because a lot of people don’t know what’s going on, and they don’t know anything about this,” Kai Sage, a resident of McMinnville told the publication. “Luckily, a lot of people around here were informed, so as soon as we alerted people about this, people quickly reacted.”

These bans are not permanent, though. Instead, they’re designed to give local governments time to assess how it would go about these developments, helping prevent potential disasters that data center projects can bring to the local community. “A moratorium is not a permanent ban. It is a responsible time-out,” McMinnville City Administration Nolan Ming posted on social media. “It gives us time to study the issues carefully, update our zoning and land use regulations, and make sure any future decisions are based on solid information, not rushed approvals.”

No U.S. state has enacted a data center ban yet. Maine’s legislature passed a moratorium in April that would have paused all developments until October 2027, but Governor Janet Mills vetoed it at the last minute because it would affect one well-supported project in Franklin County. Still, the number of bans and moratoriums across the country have been steadily increasing, with 69 jurisdictions enacting one as of May 2026. Even Seattle — home to AI tech giants Microsoft and Amazon — has passed a one-year pause as its studies the community impact of data centers.

Most of these are just temporary delays, as governments try to come to terms with the massive amounts of resources that these projects demand. However, this is also throwing a wrench into AI hyperscalers’ plans to build more compute, whose demand is only expected to go up as AI becomes more advanced and gets more widespread adoption.

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