Imperial County, CA reverses its own data center approval, enacts 45-day moratorium; developer files restraining order

Imperial County’s Board of Supervisors unanimously enacted an urgent 45-day moratorium on June 16, 2026, reversing the April approval it had granted for a nearly one-million-square-foot data center — what would have been the state’s largest — after months of community backlash over water and power concerns. Developer Sebastian Rucci responded within days by filing for a temporary restraining order, arguing the county failed to establish a genuine emergency. The county plans an advisory committee to develop new zoning by January 2027. Imperial sits at the 77th percentile nationally for detention heat (heat score 44), marking it as a place with existing federal infrastructure interest; the data center fight is a parallel extraction pressure in an already-stressed rural desert region with Colorado River water conflicts.

This is the documented local-community-resistance pattern — counties not merely pausing future projects but reversing approvals already granted. It joins the New York S10642 statewide moratorium, the Arizona/Illinois tax moratoriums, and the DeSoto County, FL and Monterey Park actions as evidence of escalating municipal-level pushback against data colonialism.