Homewood Pre-Council Meeting - June 22, 2026
The short version: Homewood is weighing a temporary moratorium on data center applications so it can write zoning rules before any projects show up, not after.
Our Take
Credit to the City of Homewood for airing this one in public, on camera, before a single application landed on a desk. That's the move: pause, study, write the zoning rules, then let developers come knocking — not the other way around, which is how so many towns end up locked into 20-year power and tax deals they never really debated. A moratorium sounds bureaucratic, but it's actually one of the few tools a city has to buy itself leverage.
We say this a lot because it's true every time: once a hyperscaler's site-selection team and their utility contract are already signed, "community input" is theater. The real questions — how many megawatts, how many gallons of water a day, what happens to residential power rates when a 24/7 industrial load shows up next door, and what tax abatements get waved through — need answers before the rendering gets unveiled at a ribbon-cutting. Homewood doesn't have a project yet. That's exactly the point in the process where a city has actual power.
Worth watching whether this moratorium actually gets adopted, and if so, what the resulting zoning guidelines require on energy, water, and noise. We'll be tracking it. If you want to see what's already been approved elsewhere in the meantime, check our facility map, and if your own city council is fast-tracking something without this kind of pause, our take-action page has a starting checklist.
This is GridWatch the USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of City of Homewood, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.