Alamance County NC Commissioners Unanimously Enact One-Year Moratorium on Data Centers Requiring 10MW or More

Alamance County commissioners voted unanimously on August 17, 2026 to enact a one-year moratorium on new data centers requiring 10 megawatts or more, following a two-hour public hearing at which more than 23 residents spoke in favor of the pause — many of them asking for two years rather than one. The ordinance carries built-in research deadlines and requires the board to reconvene 30 days before the moratorium expires in August 2027 to decide whether to extend it. The vote landed the same week NC Newsline reported a large developer walking away from a Raleigh project, with Greensboro and Yadkin County weighing pauses of their own.

The 10-megawatt threshold is the operative policy lever, and it is the detail that distinguishes this ordinance from a blanket freeze. Hyperscaler campuses run roughly 100 to 500 megawatts; smaller co-location facilities generally do not reach 10. Alamance therefore drew its line where the load is, catching the AI-buildout class of project while leaving conventional server hosting outside the pause — the same threshold Greensboro used for its 120-day proposal (2026-08-18–memphis-greensboro-datacenter-moratoria-advance-nc-tn-spread). Where earlier moratoria in the corpus were written against a named project or carved out an incumbent already in the ground — Jeffersonville, Indiana exempting Meta (2026-08-04–jeffersonville-in-8-0-data-center-moratorium-meta-exempted), DeSoto County, Florida preserving its loophole (2026-07-29–desoto-county-fl-moratorium-approved-loophole-preserved) — a megawatt threshold is category legislation. It applies to whatever arrives.

This is the actual enactment behind an entry that until now recorded Alamance only as “considering.” It extends a North Carolina wave already spanning at least eleven counties plus Durham (2026-08-03–nc-moratorium-wave-11-counties-durham-hearing-aug24), in a corridor between Charlotte and the Research Triangle that has become one of the country’s densest AI data-center targets. The comparison point for duration is Hamilton County, Tennessee, whose own one-year pause (2026-07-15–hamilton-county-tn-one-year-data-center-moratorium) set the same clock; Alamance’s mandatory 30-day-prior reconvening is the procedural addition, converting expiry from a default into a decision the board must make on the record.