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

The New Orleans City Council passed a yearlong ban on data centers in New Orleans and began an effort to clarify zoning regulations for new data center projects on Wednesday (Jan. 28). The vote will head off any data center development in New Orleans East, which has drawn concerns about energy and water consumption from neighbors and local politicians, including Mayor Helena Moreno.

Data centers are currently not defined in the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, according to Councilmember JP Morrell, who introduced both motions alongside Councilmember Jason Hughes. Morrell said that the city cannot ban data center developments permanently without a definition.

“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.”

The council is making the move out of “an abundance of caution,” according to language in the motion issuing the ban. The moratorium, called an interim zoning district, takes effect immediately while the City Planning Commission starts a review process and makes recommendations on zoning uses for data centers.

But some community advocates who attended Wednesday’s special council meeting said that creating a new business category for data centers in zoning law may create an opportunity for the current council, or a future council, to permit them in the city once the ban is lifted.

“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,” said Osarumwense Adun, who has vocally opposed the motions in the days leading up to the meeting.

Morrell pushed back against recently circulated social media videos criticizing the council for its proposed legislation, and noted that there will be opportunities for public engagement throughout.

“(Interim zoning districts) exist so we can stop building while we figure out what we’re doing,” Morrell said “We want to move quickly on to defining this, to block this.”

Multiple people who attended the meeting criticized the council for allowing for an appeals process that could lead to a data center being built. Morrell noted that city law requires the council to create an appeals process.

“You’re entitled to your own opinion but not entitled to your own facts,” Morrell said at the meeting.

Though, as Hughes pointed out, interim zoning districts are limited to a single year, residents noted that there needs to be a long term solution to the problem when the year expires.

Moreno says no on data centers

The City Council decision follows a proposal, still in its preliminary stages, to build a data center near Interstate 10 and Read Boulevard in New Orleans East. The project would require the proposed site to be rezoned, and the City Planning Commission has not received any proposals or applications from the developer, MS Solar Grid Data, CPC Executive Director Robert Rivers told the council.

The company in December held a neighborhood meeting to discuss the plan with area residents, a required step before submitting a zoning change application.

A letter announcing the meeting stated that the company was requesting a zoning change from single-family residential district zoning to commercial district for two plots of land in the East, specifically to create a “two-phase commercial technology data center.”

Moreno recently took to Instagram to voice her opposition to the project, which she said she only found out about through the news.

“I’m working in collaboration with the New Orleans City Council to prevent projects like this from happening in our neighborhood,” Moreno said.

Some residents in the area say that the project will have negative environmental impacts, cause noise and light pollution, and lower property values.

A chief concern for data centers is the vast amount of power they use, potentially stressing local grids or requiring new electrical generation. Entergy has begun construction on new power plants to serve a new Meta data center in northeast Louisiana.

MS Solar Grid Data, which was established in early 2024 according to state business records, aims to build solar-powered data centers, according to the company’s website. Residents and members of the council have also expressed concerns about data centers’ typically heavy water usage. But as the company has not submitted plans to the city, little information is available about the New Orleans East project, its planned energy use or its water needs. James Ramsey III, CEO of MS Solar Grid Data, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the proposal or the City Council’s ban.

“Where is Mr. Ramsey? Is he in the room?” asked Dawn Hebert, president of the East New Orleans Neighborhood Advisory Committee, saying that calls to the company have gone unanswered. “The energy, the water, the noise, this will definitely enter that residential neighborhood that joins this particular property.

Nationwide surge in data centers sparks resident concerns

The push against massive data centers has been widespread nationally as tech companies look for cheap land to build on to keep up with demand from artificial intelligence, with 3,000 new data centers planned as of 2025, according to reporting from Axios. Data centers require a significant amount of land and pull massive amounts of energy and water, according to Tulane Water Law, which makes rural areas better suited for their structural needs.

But as companies across the country have proposed data centers — heavily in states such as Texas and Virginia — residents in neighboring areas have pushed back.

In Louisiana nearby residents have vocally opposed tech giant Meta’s plans to build what will be the world’s largest data center in Richland Parish — a 4 million square foot hub for artificial intelligence with a price tag that skyrocketed from $10 billion to $27 billion.

Per Meta, the construction will employ over 5,000, with 500 operational jobs after the project is finished. But since construction began, the area has also seen a 600% spike in vehicle crashes and notable noise pollution.

With Wednesday’s motions passed, the City Planning Commission will make recommendations to the Council at a public meeting in roughly two months.

“At the end of the day this is a major first step,” Hughes said.