Pima County AZ Supervisors Vote 3-2 for 120-Day Data Center Moratorium Under Resolution 2026-56

The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on September 22, 2026 to impose a 120-day moratorium on new data center development in unincorporated Pima County, under Resolution 2026-56. Chair Jennifer Allen made the motion and Vice Chair Matt Heinz seconded it; Supervisors Steve Christy (District 4) and Rex Scott (District 1) dissented. The moratorium exempts projects that already have permits for site improvements — grading, paving, flood control, construction — in hand, but halts new permits for the duration. The board took up the resolution after an executive session of more than an hour with County Attorney Laura Conover.

The stated purpose is to give county staff time to draft permanent zoning regulations for large-scale data centers, addressing water consumption in an already water-stressed desert region, energy demand and reliability, air pollution, noise, and waste-heat dispersion; staff hopes to bring the full policy to the board for approval by December 10, 2026. No specific hyperscaler project was named as the proximate cause in the reporting reviewed. Pima County’s action follows Arizona’s legislature-imposed three-year pause on state data-center tax incentives and lands the same week as parallel county-level moratoriums elsewhere — this timeline separately documents Marshall County, Iowa’s six-month moratorium adopted the following day (2026-09-23–marshall-county-ia-six-month-data-center-moratorium-unanimous-vote) and St. Joseph County, Indiana’s vote the same day to begin a data-center ban process (2026-09-22–st-joseph-county-in-council-votes-6-3-to-begin-data-center-ban-process) — part of a broader 2026 wave of county governments moving to pause hyperscale development pending zoning review.

Note: the capturing ledger produced two near-duplicate story files for this event on the same day (datacenter-watch source_routine). This entry merges the fuller-sourced of the two; the other is dispositioned as a duplicate in the ledger.