City, county, township, and tribal instruments. The map and headline status counts all refer to this inventory.
Download local inventory →
Data refresh · 19 August 2026
The August picture
Local governments are still using temporary pauses, but the fastest-moving policy layer is now state government. The local inventory contains 533 instruments across 42 states; 429 remain in force.
What changed in this refresh
- The status review reduced the recorded in-force total by six. The current mix is 381 active and 48 extended, with 27 expired, 37 replaced, and 6 rescinded. That movement reflects elapsed terms and documented outcomes, not a six-place wave of repeals.
- 1 local adoption is confirmed for August so far: Lakeland, Florida adopted Ordinance 26-018 on August 3. Parma Township, Michigan was also added after its primary public notice was located.
- Extensions now carry a current end date. The tracker keeps the original
term for provenance but uses
current_end_date_isofor the operative extension, preventing the original deadline from being mistaken for a present-day lapse.
State restrictions are a separate policy layer
The state tracker now distinguishes 438 bills from 2 binding non-bill actions, with 84 enacted bills. New York Executive Order 62 holds specified state-agency permits in abeyance while a statewide environmental review proceeds. Texas's August 3 directive pauses ERCOT interconnection progress pending an audit. Pennsylvania SB 1345 would authorize municipal pauses, while SB 1359 proposes a statewide moratorium; both remain proposals. The typed policy fields preserve those legal differences.
How to read the coverage
All 50 states received a month-by-month sweep for May through July, so that window is the most comparable part of the series. August is current only through the 19th and is not a completed monthly sweep. Pre-May totals remain lower bounds because they came from document search and opportunistic discovery. Known gaps records the coverage boundaries.
What is a moratorium?
A moratorium is a temporary pause. A city, county, or township stops accepting or approving a certain kind of development while it writes rules for it. Most run six to twelve months. The trigger is almost always the same: a project arrives that the zoning code has no word for. Read the FAQ →
Top 13 states by moratorium count
Use the data
📊 Spreadsheet
The 533-row inventory as a CSV — opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, or any tool. Includes enacted_status, moratorium_id, and lat/lon for instant mapping.
🐍 Python / R / pandas
Load directly from GitHub raw, no clone required. The data folder guide has working snippets.
Browse data files →📚 Citation
The dataset is published under CC-BY-4.0. Cite the working paper or this dataset directly. CITATION.cff in the repo gives GitHub a "Cite this repository" button.
Methodology
We collect the primary documents first - ordinances, resolutions, board minutes - then code them. The corpus runs to roughly 4,600 files gathered across all 50 states. 348 moratorium texts have been read line by line against a 44-clause taxonomy; that sample predates 28 April 2026 and covers 211 jurisdictions, so it describes what moratoria contain rather than all 533 of them. Coordinates were checked three ways across 89 verifications, with no confirmed errors. Where we could not confirm something, the row says so.
Related projects by Michael Bommarito
Other public resources on the U.S. data center buildout and what it does to the communities that host it.
servercountry.org
An educational resource on the AI data center buildout, with explainers, a nationwide project database, a glossary, and the full book This Is Server Country.
Visit →fightadatacenter.com
A citizen's guide for community members facing a data center proposal: ten-chapter book on local, state, and federal strategies, plus a free abridged online version with checklists and templates.
Visit →michaelbommarito.com
Personal site of the dataset's author. Builder, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of food systems, legal technology, AI, and open source. Co-founder of Alea Institute and 273 Ventures.
Visit →Status & contributions
This working snapshot is current through 19 August 2026. The latest tagged release remains v2026.07. Found a moratorium we missed, or an error worth fixing? Open an issue and we will take it up in the next refresh, which runs roughly quarterly while the wave lasts.