On February 11, 2026, Canton, North Carolina voted unanimously to enact a 12-month townwide moratorium on new data centers, server farms, and cryptocurrency mining, explicitly covering the roughly 185-acre former Pactiv Evergreen paper mill site. The moratorium begins before any formal permit applications were submitted and suspends permit intake and processing while staff draft zoning and performance ordinance updates. Town staff were directed to begin drafting ordinance updates immediately and to schedule public workshops and planning board reviews over the coming year. A public hearing that preceded the vote drew roughly fifty attendees who raised concerns about water supply, noise, grid impacts, environmental cleanup, and job quality. During the moratorium, staff and the planning board will evaluate zoning options and operational requirements, including restricting high-density compute to specific industrial zones, requiring conditional permits with case-specific protections, and introducing performance-based standards for water use, noise at the property line, and real-time energy reporting. Officials directed staff to add reporting, monitoring, and enforcement tools to enable tracking of ongoing operations if projects are approved later. Guidance for project teams and applicants includes prioritizing low-water cooling strategies and heat reuse, coordinating early with the local utility on interconnection studies and grid-impact modeling, preparing acoustic modeling and construction logistics plans that specify truck routes and hours, planning on-site water reuse and stormwater controls sized for extreme events, implementing commissioning plans to validate promised metrics, and pairing technical commitments with workforce development measures such as local hiring targets and apprenticeships. Entitlement schedules should include scoping, public workshops, at least one full planning and board hearing cycle, and contingency for outside peer reviews on noise, water, and grid impacts; teams should monitor draft ordinance text, staff reports, public workshop calendars, planning board materials, and the final vote, and the town may extend the moratorium if additional time is needed. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/canton-pauses-data-centers-crypto/

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