멤피스 시의회는 데이터센터 18개월 모라토리엄 도입안을 부결하고, 대신 135일간 신규 프로젝트를 금지하는 안을 가결했다.

Councilors in Memphis, Tennessee, have rejected a proposed data center moratorium of up to 18 months.

At a meeting on Tuesday, members of the Memphis City Council instead voted for a 135-day pause on new data center applications. The pause will coincide with a 90-day review of the impact of digital infrastructure projects in the city, which Mayor Paul Young commissioned at the start of October.

The 18-month moratorium plan had been under scrutiny for several weeks. DCD reported earlier this month that lawmakers had postponed a vote on the proposal, put forward by councilor JB Smiley Jr., following a controversial meeting attended by more than 100 members of the public, most of whom opposed data centers. The October 6 meeting reportedly ended in protests and fights outside the council chamber.

In the vote on the moratorium, which followed a five-and-a-half-hour debate, councilors split 6-6, with one member absent, and the ban failed to pass. Instead, they approved an alternative that bans data center projects for a much shorter period, pending the outcome of Mayor Young's review. The review is expected to "develop clear, actionable recommendations for regulating large and hyperscale data centers in Memphis."

Hundreds of residents attended this week's meeting, according to local outlet Action News 5. The council chamber fit 407 people, and dozens of others watched the proceedings on screens outside. The attendees included six people whom the council had initially banned for violating its speech and decorum policy at the October 6 meeting. A judge lifted that ban this week, ruling that the council's actions were unreasonable.

Memphis does not have a large data center market, but it is home to several facilities operated by Elon Musk's xAI, which has since been rebranded as SpaceXAI, or SpaceXSI. Developed over the last two years, the data centers power the company's Grok chatbot and offer cloud services to clients including generative AI company Anthropic. They have been the subject of multiple lawsuits, with environmental and civil rights campaigners claiming xAI has violated its permits by using gas turbines, which have helped the company bring its data center online quickly.

Opposition to the data centers in Memphis is considerable, but some councilors said a moratorium would harm economic development in the area, since data center companies could take their tax dollars to other areas. One of Musk's data centers is already located across the state border in Mississippi.

Data center moratoriums have become commonplace in communities across the US as backlash against AI and data centers grows, and some bans have even been introduced at the state level.