San Francisco Supervisors Move to Freeze New Data Centers for 45 Days

Four members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors want the city to stop approving new data centers for 45 days while the Planning Department works out what to do about them. Supervisor Shamann Walton introduced the urgency ordinance on September 15, a day after announcing it on the City Hall steps with co-sponsors Connie Chan, Chyanne Chen and Jackie Fielder.

The ordinance had not come to a vote as of September 17.

What the Ordinance Would Do

It would pause city approvals of new data centers while the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Department study their effects and write new rules. San Francisco currently regulates data centers under a Planning Code category called “internet service exchange,” adopted in 2001. Under those rules a data center is typically approved through a conditional use hearing at the Planning Commission.

“We cannot use 2001 rules to regulate 2026 technology,” Walton said in a statement released with the legislation.

Walton’s stated goal is a permanent ban, with the 45-day pause as the first step. His office says he has been working on the legislation for months.

The Four-Fifths Problem

This is the part that decides whether the pause happens. The ordinance is an urgency interim zoning measure under California Government Code Section 65858, which requires a four-fifths vote. On an eleven-member Board of Supervisors that means nine votes, not a simple majority of six. The board also has to make a finding that new data centers pose a current and immediate threat to public health, safety or welfare.

Clear that bar and the pause takes effect immediately and runs 45 days. State law then allows extensions, first by ten months and fifteen days and then by a further year, to a maximum of roughly two years, each extension requiring its own findings and public notice.

Why the Bayview

San Francisco has about a dozen data centers. Two of them are in the Bayview, the neighborhood Walton represents in District 10, where residents have been raising air quality and pollution complaints for decades. Several approvals have also landed in South of Market.

The specific facility behind the timing is NOVVA’s site at 400 Paul Avenue, which brought a first 9-megawatt phase online this summer as part of a planned 36-megawatt build. Mission Local reported that a moratorium, if extended, could interrupt that expansion. The site sits across from Digital Realty’s 450,000-square-foot telecom building at 200 Paul Avenue, in one of the most heavily industrial stretches of the city.

Data centers are also an issue in the race to replace Walton, who is termed out. Candidates for the District 10 seat have broadly backed restricting new ones.

The Rest of the Bay Area Is Doing the Same Thing

Gilroy approved its own 45-day moratorium on new data center applications on September 14. Hayward’s city council took up a referral to ban them the same week, after public objections to a 76.6-megawatt facility approved with 28 backup diesel generators. Richmond and Oakland have moratoriums scheduled for consideration in the coming weeks, and Pittsburg has a 92-megawatt proposal with three dozen diesel generators drawing local objections.

A July survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found 73 percent of California residents opposed to building data centers in their own communities, citing grid strain, noise and water use.

What Happens Next

The ordinance goes to committee before any board vote, and the Planning Commission would be tasked with investigating whether the city’s regional data center campuses pose an environmental or public health threat. No vote date had been announced as of this week. We will update this post when the board acts.

For the other civic decisions moving through City Hall this month, see our coverage of the appeals court ruling on the Empty Homes Tax and the mayor’s rent emergency declaration.

Sources: KQED, September 15; Bay City News via NBC Bay Area, September 15; Hoodline, September 11; Mission Local.

Photo: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.