New Orleans City Council bans data centers for a year after concerns

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The New Orleans City Council on Wednesday (Jan. 28) approved a one-year ban on data centers, setting up an interim zoning district that begins immediately and buys time for city officials to determine how data centers should be defined in the city’s zoning rules. The council’s move followed community and political concerns that new data center development could increase pressure on local energy and water use, issues raised by neighbors and Mayor Helena Moreno.

Councilmember JP Morrell, who introduced motions for the ban and related zoning actions alongside Councilmember Jason Hughes, said the city could not impose a permanent prohibition without defining data centers in the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance. “In order to ban data centers you have to define them,” Morrell said. “When you don’t define an item, you create loopholes for it to exist.”

Morrell and other council members said the decision is designed as a short-term pause rather than a final zoning solution. The moratorium is described in language from the motion as proceeding out of “an abundance of caution,” with the City Planning Commission beginning a review process to recommend how data centers should be handled as a zoning use.

The interim zoning district also prevents new data center development in New Orleans East, an area that has attracted attention from neighbors because of a proposal in the planning pipeline. Council members said the council’s zoning work is aimed at stopping construction while officials “figure out what we’re doing,” as Morrell put it, and then moving quickly on defining the category “to block this.”

However, not everyone at the meeting viewed the one-year structure as fully protective. Osarumwense Adun, who said he opposed the council’s motions in the days leading up to the vote, argued that the council’s approach could create a pathway for future approval once the interim district expires. “With this language in the motion set forward, you are paving a pathway for potentially a data center to be developed in the future after the interim zoning district is over,” Adun said.

Residents also criticized the council for how appeals could function under the interim zoning district. Morrell responded that city law requires the council to create an appeals process, and he told attendees, “You’re entitled to your own opinion but not entitled to your own facts.” Despite that, residents said the timeline still leaves a need for a longer-term solution by the time the year ends.

The City Council’s action comes as a separate data center proposal for New Orleans East remains in preliminary stages. The project would require rezoning for land near Interstate 10 and Read Boulevard, and the City Planning Commission has not received proposals or applications, according to CPC Executive Director Robert Rivers. The company planning the project, MS Solar Grid Data, held a neighborhood meeting in December, a step described as required before submitting a zoning change application.

Rivers told the council that the commission had not received any proposals or applications from the developer, MS Solar Grid Data, and the motions approved Wednesday are aimed at halting development in the meantime. The proposal’s notice for the earlier neighborhood meeting described a request to change zoning from single-family residential district zoning to commercial district for two plots, specifically to create a “two-phase commercial technology data center.”

The ban also follows public opposition from local officials and residents. Mayor Moreno recently posted on Instagram to oppose the New Orleans East project, saying she learned about it only through news coverage and that she is working with the City Council “to prevent projects like this from happening in our neighborhood.” Council attendees and residents said they expect negative impacts including environmental effects, noise and light pollution, and lower property values, but they also noted that limited information has been available about the project because the company has not submitted plans to the city.

Concerns about data centers frequently focus on resource consumption and infrastructure needs, including large energy and water requirements. The news report on Wednesday’s meeting also pointed to Entergy’s work on new power generation tied to a Meta data center project in northeast Louisiana, and it said MS Solar Grid Data’s stated goal is to build solar-powered data centers, though it had not publicly provided detailed plans to the city at the time of the council discussion. James Ramsey III, the company’s CEO, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the report said.

Outside New Orleans, residents have increasingly pressed back against large data centers amid tech demand associated with artificial intelligence. The report cited Axios as saying there were 3,000 planned new data centers as of 2025 and referenced commentary on land, energy, and water demands, noting opposition in places such as Texas and Virginia. In Louisiana, residents have also opposed Meta’s planned facility in Richland Parish, where the report said the project’s scale and costs have drawn scrutiny and where residents have raised concerns about traffic and noise pollution since construction began.

With the motions passed, the City Planning Commission will make recommendations to the council at a public meeting in about two months, setting the next step for how data centers may be defined under New Orleans zoning. Hughes said at the meeting that the council action represented “a major first step.”