Holyoke banned them. A Boston city councilor wants to. Ludlow is debating a moratorium, East Bridgewater has moved toward a town-wide prohibition, and Governor Healey signed an executive order on September 8 that she summarized in one sentence: “Unless a community says yes to a data center, we’re saying no.” A year ago the question in Massachusetts was where data centers would go. The question now is whether a city or town can keep them out, and the answer is yes, with limits that are worth understanding before your own planning board takes it up.
What Holyoke did
Holyoke’s City Council amended its zoning ordinance to prohibit new data centers citywide, becoming, according to WBUR, the first Massachusetts community to enact a ban. The amendment carved out the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, a nonprofit research facility founded by Harvard, MIT, the UMass system, Northeastern, Boston University and Yale that has operated in the city since 2012 on a remediated mill site, draws up to 12 megawatts, uses 20,000 to 30,000 gallons of water a day, and runs on a local grid that is 90 percent carbon-free. “They’ve been historically good neighbors,” Council President Tessa Murphy-Romboletti told WBUR. The ban was prompted by a proposal for a second, much larger facility.
That structure, a prohibition on new uses with an existing use grandfathered, is the standard form of a zoning ban in Massachusetts and is the one other communities will copy.
What Boston is considering
Councilor Miniard Culpepper of Roxbury has filed a proposed amendment to the citywide zoning code that would prohibit data centers across the city. His filing cites their cooling systems, which “may consume large quantities of water, create mist or other localized impacts, and place additional demands on municipal water and sewer infrastructure.” An earlier proposal had sought a moratorium. Boston’s zoning is governed by its own enabling act and the Boston Zoning Commission, not Chapter 40A, so the path is different from a town’s, but the substantive authority is the same.
What the Governor’s order does, and does not
The September 8 executive order, as reported by WBUR and others, applies to proposed data centers with peak electricity demand above 25 megawatts. Those projects must comply with the administration’s responsible development framework and enter into a community benefits agreement with the host community, consistent with state standards, before state permitting can proceed. Facilities that cannot immediately procure sufficient clean energy must pay into a new Ratepayer Protection Fund, with the money returned to ratepayers. The order bars nondisclosure agreements between state agencies and data center developers. It directs the Executive Offices of Energy and Environmental Affairs and Economic Development to publish guidance for municipalities by December 31, and the Department of Environmental Protection to design the alternative compliance payment by the same date. The order followed the administration’s decision earlier this summer to halt data center tax breaks.
The order is a condition on state permits. It does not create a local veto and it does not take one away. A community that does not want a data center already had the power to say no through zoning; the order adds that a community which says yes must say it in a written agreement before the state will act. A community that has no zoning provision on data centers, which is most of them, is where the order does its work: the developer now needs the town at the table before the state will process a permit.
Can a town ban a use outright?
Yes. The Zoning Act, G.L. c. 40A, gives cities and towns the power to regulate the use of land, and a prohibition of a particular commercial use throughout a municipality is within that power so long as it is rationally related to a legitimate zoning purpose: public health, safety, water supply, infrastructure capacity, the character of the community. Water consumption, noise, diesel backup generators, and grid load are all conventional zoning concerns. A data center is not a protected use. It is not housing, it is not agriculture, it is not a religious or educational use, and it is not a solar installation, all of which enjoy special protection under § 3 of the Zoning Act that limits how far a town can restrict them. A data center is an industrial use, and towns exclude industrial uses every day.
The limits are procedural and constitutional. A zoning amendment in a town requires a two-thirds vote of town meeting after a planning board hearing under § 5; in a city, a two-thirds vote of the council. A ban that singled out a specific pending project after the developer had already obtained a permit or filed a definitive subdivision plan could run into the zoning freeze provisions of § 6, which protect uses and plans in the pipeline. And a ban with no articulated public purpose could be attacked as arbitrary, though courts give zoning great deference and a ban grounded in water and grid capacity would not be a close case.
Can a town impose a moratorium?
Yes, if it is temporary and tied to planning. The controlling case is Sturges v. Town of Chilmark, 380 Mass. 246 (1980), in which the Supreme Judicial Court upheld a rate-of-development bylaw that limited building permits for a period of years while the town completed a master plan. The court held that interim restrictions on development, adopted in good faith to allow a community to study and plan, are a valid exercise of the zoning power, and that a temporary limitation is not a taking. Massachusetts towns have used Sturges moratoria for cannabis retail, for large-scale solar, for short-term rentals and for cell towers. A data center moratorium of one to two years, adopted while a town writes a data center bylaw, is squarely within it. A “moratorium” with no end date and no planning process is a ban by another name and will be judged as one.
What a ban does not do
It does not stop a data center in the next town. The grid load, the water draw and the diesel generators do not respect municipal lines, which is the argument for a state framework and the reason Healey’s order exists. It does not affect existing facilities, which continue as nonconforming uses. It does not reach facilities on land the town does not control, including state and federal property. And it does not answer the question the Governor’s order also leaves open: what happens to the state’s own goals for AI, for which the administration has been an enthusiastic recruiter, if the communities with the grid capacity all say no.
What to ask before your town votes
Whether the bylaw defines “data center” by size, so that a school’s server room or a hospital’s is not swept in. Whether it is a ban, a moratorium with a date, or a special permit requirement with conditions, which is the middle path most towns choose. Whether any project is already in the pipeline and what stage it has reached, because that determines whether the § 6 freeze protects it. What the town’s water supply and substation capacity are, in numbers, because those are the findings that make a ban defensible. And whether the town has read the state guidance due December 31, which will set the terms of the community benefits agreements the Governor’s order now requires.
Common questions
Can a Massachusetts town ban data centers?
Yes. Data centers are an industrial use with no special protection under the Zoning Act, and a town may prohibit them by a two-thirds vote of town meeting (or a city council) for legitimate zoning purposes such as water supply, noise and infrastructure capacity. Holyoke has done it.
What does Governor Healey’s data center order require?
For projects above 25 megawatts: compliance with the state’s responsible development framework and a community benefits agreement with the host community before state permitting; payments into a Ratepayer Protection Fund if clean energy is not procured; no NDAs with state agencies. Municipal guidance is due December 31.
Is a moratorium legal?
Yes, if temporary and tied to planning. Sturges v. Town of Chilmark, 380 Mass. 246 (1980), upheld interim development limits adopted while a town completed its planning.
Does a ban affect an existing data center?
No. An existing lawful use continues as a nonconforming use. Holyoke’s ordinance expressly carved out its existing research facility.
What is the middle option?
A special permit requirement with conditions on water use, noise, backup generation and grid impact, which lets a town review each project rather than exclude all of them.
Holyoke facts from WBUR, September 11, 2026. Boston proposal as reported by Universal Hub. Executive order provisions as reported by WBUR, Boston.com and GBH, September 8 through 14; the order’s text was not retrieved. Sturges v. Town of Chilmark, 380 Mass. 246 (1980), verified against CourtListener. Zoning Act provisions summarized from G.L. c. 40A. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.