ONEIDA COUNTY – The Oneida County Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday, Aug. 18 to approve a one-year moratorium on new data center development in the county’s zoned areas, giving the Planning and Development Committee time to study the industry’s impacts before writing permanent regulations.
The board approved Resolution 56-2026 / Ordinance Amendment 022026, amending Section 9.57 of the Oneida County Zoning and Shoreland Protection Ordinance. The section had previously governed a moratorium on livestock facility licensing that expired in March 2022 and was removed from the code; supervisors repurposed it for data centers.
What the ordinance does
Under the new language, the county will not accept, process, approve or issue approvals, permits or authorizations for new data center development or data center expansion in unincorporated, zoned areas of the county for 12 months from adoption, unless the county board extends or replaces it sooner.
The moratorium does not apply retroactively to any data center project that already held a valid, lawfully issued permit before the ordinance took effect; county officials said no data center applications are currently pending.
The ordinance defines a “data center” as a facility whose primary purpose is housing servers, network equipment and data storage systems – along with supporting mechanical, electrical, cooling and security systems – for enterprise data processing, colocation services, cloud computing infrastructure or other large-scale digital storage and processing operations.
The ordinance applies only to towns that have adopted county zoning. A supervisor raised the possibility of extending it to unzoned towns during board discussion, but county staff said doing so would require those towns to separately adopt full county zoning; unzoned areas currently fall only under county shoreland provisions.
Why supervisors say it’s needed
County staff told the board that data centers currently aren’t addressed anywhere in county zoning code, meaning a proposed project today would be reviewed as an unregulated, unspecified land use – decided case by case by the zoning administrator and Planning and Development Committee.
The ordinance itself states that data centers “may create land use impacts” including high electrical demand, added strain on utility infrastructure, industrial-scale cooling and mechanical systems, noise and vibration, emergency generators and fuel storage, and construction traffic, with “potential compatibility concerns” near residential, agricultural and rural land.
One supervisor, describing the current lack of regulation, said it was “almost like open season for a data center” without something on the books.
Public hearing and comment
The Planning and Development Committee held a public hearing on the ordinance on July 8, where 15 people spoke in favor and none spoke against, according to the resolution.
Two members of the public also addressed the full county board Tuesday.
Victor Simpson, who said he spoke only for himself, argued that any future restriction on data centers should not become permanent, framing data centers as an inevitable consequence of Smartphone and AI use that voters – not permanent bans – should ultimately settle through elections.
Eric Rempala of Irma, speaking on behalf of Oneida County Clean Water Action, urged the board to use the year to draft real water-quality and public-health protections. He pointed to a prior county moratorium on CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) that expired years ago without a follow-up ordinance, leaving the county with no lasting regulation. He also referenced ongoing work with the Oneida County Lakes and Rivers Association on a proposed shoreland protection ordinance amendment.
All 20 supervisors present voted in favor of the resolution.
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