Durham to consider 2-year ban on data centers. What to know.
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- Councilman Nate Baker introduced an ordinance to ban data centers in Durham for two years.
- Leaders in Apex, and Orange and Chatham counties agreed to a one-year moratorium.
- A public hearing is set for the May 4 Durham City Council meeting.
As the state’s tech corridor faces a surge in development, Durham could become the first major city in the Triangle to stall the expansion of data centers.
During a Thursday meeting, the Durham City Council briefly discussed a proposed 24-month moratorium on data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations, responding to community concern over the industry’s environmental footprint.
The proposed ordinance, introduced by Councilman Nate Baker, follows recent one-year halts by the town of Apex and Orange County this week. Tuesday night, the Orange County commissioners voted unanimously to support a moratorium, giving staff more time to evaluate where data centers might go. The Apex Town Council also voted to stall plans after months of public debate.
“This is about being conservative, proactive on a rapidly changing and evolving issue before it becomes a problem here in our city,” Baker said. “We’re just trying to take a cool, calm, collected approach to this issue.”
Baker said the city should take more time to study the issue, as data centers have a “number of detrimental impacts.”
‘Impacts outweigh the benefits’
Data centers house networked computers and infrastructure that allow organizations to store large amounts of data. They power digital services, internet and artificial intelligence (AI). While data centers aren’t new (they date back to the 1940s), more have been built in recent years due to the expansion of AI.
In Raleigh, American Tower opened its first “edge” data center, which is smaller and designed for lower volumes of data. Durham is already home to a number of data centers including the one at CyrusOne, which covers over 420,000 square feet in Research Triangle Park.
Data centers consume large amounts electricity, strain power grids and rely on fossil fuels. They also require massive amounts of water to stay cool. Residents and officials are warning that without safeguards, the city risks strains to the regional power grid and threats to the drinking water of 1.5 million people.
In addition to Orange County and Apex, five towns in North Carolina and Chatham County have passed moratoriums on data centers.
“The impacts outweigh the benefits,” resident Rinah Rachel Galper said during the meeting. “It is a land grab of catastrophic proportions. It throws out water system in jeopardy and threatens depletion. It does not promote job growth, despite what developers and their lawyers are saying.”
May 4 public hearing planned
During public comments at Thursday’s meeting, residents in support of the moratorium urged the City Council to impose it and extend the timeline.
Jaina Sims, a resident, told council members that they didn’t need to rush decisions to allow more data centers in the city.
“We don’t need to be an early adopter of those. Either those are going to go away and we didn’t need to take the risk of our community, the harms that come from these data centers. Or if they’re going to stick around, if they’re really going to be part of our country and our fabric, let’s be an adopter of like wave three or four, where all the kinks have been worked out,” Sims said.
Residents also pointed to a lack of local benefit, and Mayor Leo Williams repeated those concerns. He noted that as an urban center, Durham should prioritize housing over industrial data hubs.
“It pulls from our resources pretty extensively,” Williams said. “You choose the housing or data centers ... you don’t want these popping up in an urban center, just land grabbing.”
The City Council will hold a public hearing and could vote on a moratorium at its regular meeting on May .
This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 5:14 PM.