Lordstown council just put a 180-day freeze on new data center permits, signaling local resistance to more AI and cloud infrastructure despite statewide growth.
Residents are pushing for stronger action, citing noise, land use, and especially heavy water consumption and utility impacts that come with large-scale compute.
The moratorium directly stalls Bristolville 25 Developer LLC’s proposed facility, and council also rejected an engineering agreement tied to that project, slowing it further.
This is another data point that siting GPU-heavy, power- and cooling-intensive builds in smaller communities is running into social and political friction, not just grid and land constraints.
Vendors and operators should read this as a warning that local services (fire, police) capacity and clear water and noise plans are now table stakes for community approval.
Ohio may be a major data center state, but towns like Lordstown are looking to reassert control through zoning updates and moratoriums before the next wave of AI builds.
Worth reading the full piece for how one project and one village meeting capture the emerging grassroots pushback shaping AI data center deployment.
Source: Lordstown council approves moratorium on data centers | News, Sports, Jobs – Tribune Chronicle
