The Memphis City Council voted 6-6 on Tuesday night on a one-year moratorium on new data centers, and a tie means the measure fails. Council member Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, who co-sponsored the moratorium in August, was absent because of a family emergency.
The proposal came after a debate that ran five and a half hours. The council instead passed a substitute ordinance for a 135-day pause on new data center applications, timed to run alongside a 90-day study of the facilities’ effects that Mayor Paul Young ordered at the start of October.
Those who pushed hardest for the moratorium live closest to the machines. As Word In Black reported, all three of Elon Musk’s hyperscale data centers in the Memphis area sit in predominantly Black neighborhoods, among them Boxtown, a community founded by freedpeople in the 1860s. Residents there have been demanding limits since the first xAI facility, Colossus 1, was built in 2024. The moratorium would have given the city time to adopt permanent zoning rules and to study air quality, electrical infrastructure, water protection and noise.
“The Memphis City Council failed the people of Memphis and the mid-South tonight,” said Justin J. Pearson, the state representative for Boxtown.
KeShaun Pearson of Memphis Community Against Pollution told CBS News: “It’s as if the people who have been elected to protect us and to stand up to corporations and be that representative have just completely abdicated that responsibility.”
A Memphis resident told WSMV the result “feels like a slap in the face because I was raised here.”
A ban on six residents, lifted hours earlier
The vote was a second attempt. The council’s Oct. 6 meeting ended with the chamber cleared, and the council later barred six people from attending two upcoming meetings, citing “unruly behavior” in a letter. They were Justin J. Pearson, KeShaun Pearson, Kimberly Owens-Pearson, LaJuana Abraham, Jasmine Bernand and Amber Sherman. They sued the council over the ban, citing the First Amendment.
Federal Judge Thomas L. Parker issued a 14-day temporary restraining order lifting the ban, and the group was back in the room on Oct. 20. Sherman said she was “grateful that we were able to file this lawsuit and have it officially ruled unconstitutional.” More than 400 people attended, according to Word In Black.
Ordinance 18, a separate measure passed that night, sets standards for large data centers, including a ban on evaporative and once-through cooling and limits on withdrawals from local water sources.
Council member Jerri Green, who backed the moratorium, told CNN the residents “have been pushing for this for over a year. They’re the people who are being deeply impacted by environmental hazards.”
During the 135 days, the city will study how data centers affect residents, energy demand and the environment, and will recommend where future facilities should go.
Have your say