Taunton officials are considering a one-year freeze on new data centers, and a company that owns industrial property in the city says the timing could not be worse. The Taunton Municipal Council is scheduled to take up the proposed 365-day moratorium Tuesday, and the company warns the delay could put a multimillion-dollar development deal at risk.
According to WJAR, the pause is meant to give city leaders time to review zoning rules and assess data centers' demands on infrastructure, electricity and the environment. VMD Industrial III, which owns the industrial building at 50 John Hancock Road in Taunton's Myles Standish Industrial Park, says the freeze would do more harm than good. In a letter to Mayor Shaunna O'Connell, the company urged officials to exempt certain existing industrial buildings that are already approved, comply with building codes and generate property-tax revenue, per WJAR's reporting.
The stakes for VMD are concrete. The company says a yearlong delay would derail a pending agreement with a confidential technology tenant, and that its proposed project would require 24 megawatts of electricity across two phases — 13 megawatts in the first phase and an additional 11 megawatts in the second, per VMD's filings with the Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant cited by WJAR. “The 365-day moratorium will eliminate a potential tenant for our building,” said Stephen Gallagher, the director of development at VMD Industrial III, in comments reported by the Taunton Gazette. VMD's own portfolio materials describe the John Hancock Road property as a 151,306-square-foot building the company acquired in October 2020.
Residents Push Back on Data Center Expansion
Not everyone in the region is sympathetic to VMD's timeline concerns. Area residents have raised worries about data centers' potential effects on the environment, water resources and surrounding communities, the station's report notes. In Easton, Peggy Hall said officials need to carefully assess the impact of data centers before allowing more of them to move in, adding that large businesses and billionaires should not be able to overwhelm small-town communities or take their land without repercussions.
In Norton, Jackson Isenstadt offered a more measured view, saying a pause could give officials more time to evaluate potential concerns and that a one-year delay could ultimately prove beneficial. He also said new information about data center lawsuits and other issues could emerge over the next year — a consideration that, in his view, favors caution over speed.
A Statewide and National Pattern
Taunton's proposed freeze would put it in company with a growing list of Massachusetts communities wrestling with the same question. In East Longmeadow, the Town Council voted 6-0 to direct its Planning Board to draft a zoning bylaw regulating large computing centers, according to MassLive, with councilors citing burdens on local water and electrical infrastructure as well as mechanical noise. The outlet reports that other Western Massachusetts communities have gone further still, including a permanent ban in Holyoke, a yearlong pause in Westfield and a nine-month moratorium in Agawam — part of a broader wave that included opposition to a planned 20-megawatt data center in Holyoke over concerns about electric-system capacity, generator pollution and drinking-water use for cooling.
The trend extends well beyond Massachusetts. In Illinois, the Mattoon City Council unanimously approved a yearlong moratorium on large-scale data-center development by a 5-0 vote, with the measure set to automatically renew unless the council votes otherwise after a public hearing, according to The Daily Eastern News, which reported that overconsumption of water was a shared concern among residents and city officials there. Nationally, moratorium bills were introduced in at least nine state legislatures and in Congress this year, though only Maine's bill cleared a legislature before being vetoed, per AI Laws by State, which cites Data Center Census's tracker of 104 local and state moratorium actions across 26 states as of October 1. That same tracker notes most proposals define which projects they cover using electricity-demand thresholds, the same kind of megawatt figures at the center of VMD's dispute with Taunton.
What Happens Next
The Taunton Municipal Council is set to meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Chester R. Martin Municipal Council Chambers at City Hall to discuss the proposed moratorium, according to the city's own meeting calendar. Whether councilors adopt the freeze as written, carve out an exemption for buildings like VMD's, or take another path remains to be seen heading into the session.
