Loudoun County, 'Data Center Capital of the World,' Moves Toward Moratorium but Virginia Law May Block It

Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 on July 22, 2026 to direct staff to prepare a moratorium on new data-center applications — but the county’s own attorney has confirmed Virginia law requires each rezoning application to be considered on its individual merits, meaning a blanket moratorium may be unlawful. Loudoun hosts roughly 250 data centers with 100 or more in the pipeline and handles an estimated third of the world’s internet traffic. Supervisor Juli Briskman cited resident frustration over visual impacts, noise, rising utility costs, and air quality; the same meeting saw the board separately reject a 3.25 million square foot Amazon campus rezoning. A moratorium vote is expected in September.

Virginia’s data-center capital confronting a state-law ceiling on its own resistance is a distinct case within the national moratorium wave this corpus tracks — Arizona and Illinois used tax-moratorium mechanisms instead of zoning bans (2026-06-22–arizona-illinois-data-center-tax-moratoriums-300-bills-nationally), while Pennsylvania negotiated incentive conditions rather than a ban (2026-06-02–shapiro-releases-pennsylvania-data-center-incentive-conditions-2b-exemption). If Virginia law forecloses zoning-based moratoria even in the county most exposed to grid and ratepayer strain, it is a preview of the legal terrain other states’ data-center corridors will face as local resistance escalates.