Data Center Interim Zoning
Update 7/10/2026: The county commissioners voted July 9 to establish a moratorium on permitting new or expanded data centers in Missoula County outside city limits. The moratorium is in effect July 9, 2026, through July 8, 2027, or when replaced by new zoning regulations. The moratorium will expire July 8, 2027, regardless of whether there are new regulations by then.
Project overview
Missoula County is considering the adoption of interim zoning to place a temporary pause on the development or expansion of data centers while the County develops updated zoning regulations to mitigate potential impacts to health, safety and natural resources. The proposed interim zoning would apply to both zoned and unzoned areas of Missoula County outside the Missoula city limits.
Data centers are a significant new use with distinct potential adverse impacts. Data centers are capable of consuming enormous amounts of energy and water while producing heat, noise, vibration and other impacts to their surrounding environment. This is particularly salient given the recent development of high-profile, large data center projects across the West.
By initiating interim zoning and taking a pause, Missoula County intends to investigate the circumstances that constitute the emergency, explore the potential options for mitigating the emergency, and determine the course of action that the county commissioners intend to take, if any, to mitigate the emergency. Developing clearer, more robust regulations would provide more clarity for the public, staff and applicants in terms of what the County’s residents would need to see in responsible data center development before the development occurs.
What are data centers?
The Montana Department of Environmental Quality defines a data center as “a physical facility that houses and runs large computer systems. Data centers typically include multiple computer servers, data storage devices and network equipment that can provide information technology infrastructure services for organizations to store, manage, process and transmit large amounts of data. A primary driver of rapidly growing demand for data centers is in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).” Data centers optimized for AI are sometimes called AI factories.
What is interim zoning and how long does it last?
Interim zoning is a tool the county commissioners can use to establish temporary zoning districts and enact temporary zoning regulations. This authority is granted to county commissioners in state law (§76-2-206, MCA). The commissioners may only adopt interim zoning to address an emergency that involves public health, safety, morals or general welfare. The purpose of the interim zoning regulations is to allow the governing body sufficient time to address the emergency.
Before adopting interim zoning, the commissioners are required to hold a public hearing and provide the public with an opportunity to comment on the proposal. If interim zoning is adopted, the County is required to initiate a study within 30 working days to verify that an emergency exists and to determine the course of action the governing body should take to mitigate the emergency. These regulations are enforceable for up to one year, and if necessary, the commissioners may extend the regulations one time for up to one additional year. The regulations would apply to both zoned and unzoned areas of Missoula County outside of city limits.
How is this different than regular zoning?
The primary differences between interim zoning and general county zoning are that interim zoning must be in response to an emergency; it has a less lengthy public notice and engagement period; and it is temporary.
What are the County’s current zoning regulations regarding data centers?
The County currently has zoning regulations that were developed to address the impacts of cryptocurrency mining operations, which were expanded to also apply to data centers pursuant to state law (chapter 5.10). That means that while the County has some important safeguards in place, because they were specifically designed for cryptocurrency mining operations, there are significant remaining gaps in addressing modern and rapidly evolving data center scale and technology. That includes things like the potential for significant water use, large-scale backup generation (typically diesel) to keep facilities online at all times, and other significant considerations.
Have other places done this?
Yes. More than 100 communities in 38 states have placed temporary administrative pauses (also referred to as moratoriums) on data center development in order to develop guidelines and regulations to mitigate their potential impacts. While some states allow outright bans, many of these moratoriums are temporary.
In our region, this includes (among others) four counties in western North Dakota, several Colorado counties, and Iron County, Utah, as well as cities like Spokane, Washington.
Oliver County, ND resolution - 2025
Iron County, UT resolution – 2026
City of Spokane – June 23, 2026
What impacts can data centers have?
Modern data centers can, in a single location, use as much or more electricity than a city (and require onsite backup generation like diesel to support that full load). They can also use the same amount of water as a mid-sized town (depending on their cooling system). The sheer scale of this technology raises meaningful new questions, considerations and the need for mitigation to protect public welfare.
As County staff have learned more about data centers, what other communities are experiencing, and the ways many of those communities are handling data centers in their own zoning regulations, it appears the County’s existing regulations are insufficient to address the potential impacts.
These impacts include, but are not limited to:
Water quantity and quality – The direct water requirements of data centers can be substantial, depending on the size and type of cooling system used. They can also potentially impact water quality through discharge of pollutants and effects on water temperatures.
Energy use – The new class of AI data centers use enormous amounts of energy. A single 37-megawatt (MW) data center would use roughly the same amount of electricity as all households in the city of Missoula. A 74 MW data center would use the same electricity as all current residential, commercial and industrial power users in the city of Missoula.
Noise and vibration – County regulations are largely designed for intermittent fixed sources of noise, and do not consider the impacts of continuous noise, or noise with low frequency or tonal characteristics common to data centers.
Heat/thermal impacts – The heat given off by a data center is equal to the amount of power it consumes. Heat is an important community health impact, and recent studies have found substantial warming downwind from data centers.
Air quality – Because modern data centers need to operate continuously (as opposed to industrial uses, which typically stop for a certain period of the workday and at night), they require backup power to sustain their complete operating load. This most commonly seems to take the form of diesel generators, which emit nitrogen oxides, diesel particulate matter, and other air pollutants. Without meaningful guardrails, this has the potential for localized acute air quality impacts to human health.
Could future zoning efforts ban all data centers in Missoula County?
No. Data centers are, and will ultimately continue to be, an allowable use in certain locations in the County. However, it is important to meaningfully consider these potential impacts and seek to mitigate them as best possible, including through establishing clear, achievable zoning requirements that provide more clarity and predictability for the public, County staff and prospective data center operators.
How would this impact the proposed data center in Bonner?
UPDATE, 7/5/26:
Missoula County received the following message from Mike Heisey, who owns the building the proposed data center would be in:
"After hearing from the public and understanding what the concerns are, I have decided to withdraw my signature from the Krambu special exception application. Bonner Property will not be moving forward with the data center proposed by them. We appreciate the public's feedback and will continue to actively pursue clients for the mill site. Thank you. Mike Heisey"
This development means the project will not move forward. Click here to learn more and follow this project.
Because Bonner Property's withdrawal means that the proposed Krambu facility will not move forward, there are currently no data center proposals that have active application processes with Missoula County. The interim zoning would apply to any proposed data center in the County.
What is a comprehensive plan and how does it relate to the interim zoning?
A comprehensive plan (or growth policy, as it is referred to in state law) outlines policies and projects intended to guide future change in the County across a range of topics. It provides the legal foundation necessary for the development of responsible policy and regulations. One of the most important topics of the new comprehensive plan is land use and development.
The following guiding principles from Missoula County’s 2016 Growth Policy (p. 2-2) provide a compass to be used in deliberation and decision-making:
• Local government should strive to make decisions that are environmentally sound, fiscally responsible and supportive of healthy communities over the long term.
• The right to a clean and healthful environment is fundamentally important. Missoula County’s natural and cultural resources make this place unique; they should be conserved, enhanced and enjoyed.
• Local government decision-making should consider the impacts of and adaptation to climate change in policy and regulatory decisions.
• Economic measures should focus on long-term economic development that is fiscally responsible and does not unduly compromise quality of life or the natural environment.
• Missoula County will strive to protect public health, safety and welfare in a fiscally responsible manner.
The county is in the beginning stages of developing a countywide comprehensive plan for the unincorporated parts of Missoula County. Unincorporated areas of Missoula County include everything outside of city limits (like Bonner, Lolo, Frenchtown, etc.) Click here to learn more and follow that project.
Public comment
Let us know what you think by logging in or creating an account and submitting your comment below. Follow this project on the right-hand side of this page to be emailed when there are updates.
Who's Listening
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Climate Action Program Manager
Missoula County Planning, Development and Sustainability
Phone (406) 258-3442 -
Phone 406-258-4946 -
Phone 406-258-3425
I support these interim zoning restrictions. I think Missoula county should continue to prioritize the people who live here. Please keep the county free of data centers and the high costs and environmental degradation that come with them.
Absolutely NO
Thank you for considering this moratorium. I am writing in support of the moratorium to give the county time to examine and tighten our regulations to keep Missoula County free any data centers.
As Commissioner Slotnick mentioned, the zoning regulations in 2021 mentioned data centers - but the centers then don't even come close to the centers now. As we consider regulations as a community, I urge the county to look ahead another 5 years and put in place stringent regulations that will protect our air, water, climate, and wildlife. Whatever we come up in a year will be almost immediately obsolete, so I urge the County to think ahead.
Time and time again, these Data Centers have proven to expand beyond the size, resource usage, and neighborhood impact that they propose in their initial materials to successfully land a lease. Time and time again, these companies prove that they are disingenuous at best. They withhold information. They contradict themselves. They lie. Keep beautiful Montana for Montanans. Don't let these big tech companies come and assault our land for their own profit, making our state less inhabitable, and hurt our ability to recreate in our own home.
The Bonner debacle is proof that Bonner-ites, Missoulians, and Montanans don't want Data Centers in our backyard. Though I understand the County's current regulations are a step in the right direction, I would urge Missoula County (as well as the State of Montana, and the entire country) to flat-out ban these large-scale data centers. They are not good for us. AI is not good for us. These centers will only hurt our community.
But for now: Please establish this moratorium. So no data centers move into our backyard before we have a chance to thoroughly evaluate their impacts, and the County's stance on them.
I am grateful the county is conducting a deeper investigation of zoning such a project.
Data centers are proving to be incredibly disruptive and toxic to the communities they are occupying.
It is my sincere hope that the county does vote to put off allowing data center consideration until current zoning law reflects accurately the resource pressure and toxic byproducts of this industry.
I am in favor of interim zoning restrictions on data center applications. The environmental, economic, and lifestyle costs to Missoulians and Montanans have not been adequately considered and the rush to build new data centers put all of these at risk. It is important to make any decisions regarding data centers in a thoughtful and measured way. Interim zoning restrictions will help insure that we can make the best decisions about these facilities. I support the interim zoning restrictions. Thank you.
I strongly support interim zoning pausing development or expansion of data centers.
We have a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. Any data center established in Montana will absolutely infringe on that right as they are responsible for mass consumption of water, energy, and resources. Additionally they impact the health and welfare of the people in the community (as seen in Virginia, for instance), with little to no benefit for the economy. Data centers also almost guarantee dark money seeping further into our state’s government. No data centers in our state, let alone our county!
It makes sense to determine all the things that will affect the county from such projects and tobensure minimum distruption to the functioning of the county before allowing such projects to proceed . Please vote for the interim zoning plan.
I strongly recommend that Missoula County adopt interim zoning.
-We need sufficient and enforceable regulations to guarantee data centers have no negative impacts on MT citizens and our environment before approval is considered.
- According to our state constitition, which was upheld by Held V MT, our state must ensure the present and future health of our youth, which data centers are in direct violation of. Example- electricity and water usage and r
The esulting pollution and lack of availability.
- Data centers contribute to our lack of privacy and freedom that is foundational to our country.
Now is the time to do what is right for the children of today and tomorrow, not what is in the best place interest of corporate profits.
NO. NO. NO to these data centers. They have no benefit to the citizenry of Montana and WE. DON'T. WANT. THEM.
My concerns are captured well in an online post entitled "Man at City Council Meeting Makes Devastating Case Against Proposed Local Data Center" (https://futurism.com/future-society/city-council-meeting-case-against-data-center):
The growing anger over the AI industry’s obsession with building massive and resource-intensive data centers across the country is as palpable than ever.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center highlighted widespread public concern over the facilities’ environmental harms, effects on home energy costs, and the quality of life of nearby residents.
These concerns do seem justified. Experts have found that data centers can spike local electricity prices, generate copious amounts of greenhouse gases, and place a major strain on freshwater resources.
Now, a self-described content creator and digital artist named Will Hollingsworth who spoke up during a city council meeting in Ravenna, Ohio — a small town of 11,000 residents — is turning heads with his passionate argument against data centers. The council’s chambers became overwhelmed with a crowd of almost 100 people during the April 10 meeting, which hosted a debate over a proposed 12-month moratorium on data center construction in the area inspired by a nearby community’s own moratorium.
Hollingsworth’s four-minute speech perfectly summarizes why the backlash is starting to reach a tipping point, as more politicians are calling for a moratorium on new construction.
“These facilities can use millions of gallons of water per day,” he said, as seen in a video that went viral over the weekend. “We are being asked to drain our reservoirs so a chatbot can write a poem or so our sheriff can generate a picture of himself standing next to Bigfoot,” he added, picking up laughter in the room.
Hollingsworth said that he used to rely on AI at his job overseeing video content production at a mattress company, making his point of view particularly noteworthy. He explained that he used to feed AI image generating app Midjourney “prompts to create the perfect commercial, training the very machine that would eventually replace me as three months later they would lay me off.”
Now he’s become a foe of the tech, he said.
“They want us to trust a trillion dollar industry that tells us with a straight face that they can suck five million gallons of water out of our ground a day,” Hollingsworth argued, to “use it as a liquid heat sink, and return it to our rivers without a single consequence.”
Yet the water “does not stay in the loop,” he explained, but “evaporates into the sky by millions of gallons,” while AI companies downplay the amount of “forever chemical runoff” which is used to “bleed the lines to remove toxic sludge.”
“They say the water is filled once and recycled forever,” Hollingsworth said. “In a laboratory, that might be true. But we aren’t living in a laboratory. We’re living in Ohio.”
The content creator also pointed out how few jobs these data centers could offer, despite being a massive strain on resources.
“A big employer who uses the water of 50,000 people… which only hires about ten people is not an employer,” Hollingsworth said. “They are an extraction.”
“I am not a cynic when it comes to technology,” he concluded. “I am a believer in community. I believe that a drop of clean water for a Ravenna child is worth more than a billion AI generated images. Let us choose the child.”
His powerful speech clearly struck a chord. Beyond the assembled committee voting for a one-year moratorium on all new data centers in the area, other netizens lauded him for speaking up.
“There it is right there,” one Reddit user wrote. “Lies, lies and more lies from megacorps invested up to their eyeballs in having just a few people in government believe them.”
“God damn that was good,” another user wrote. “Seriously this should be used as a script in every county these corporations are hustling.”
The fight is far from over. Ravenna is only one of several locations across the state being eyed for data center expansion projects. And plenty of other battles are being fought in other parts of the country as well, as the anger continues to grow.
Just earlier this week, voters in a small town outside of St. Louis, Missouri, were furious after city council approved a $6 billion data center. As Politico reports, local residents showed up in droves, successfully unseating four incumbents mere days later.
“I do hope other towns stand up and speak out like I did,” Hollingsworth later argued in a comment on Reddit. “I know I’m not the only good orator here in the country, maybe this will inspire a wave of political action!”
The impact on the surrounding area these data centers have need to be more closely studied before approving anything. Time and again they are disrupting people's lives, causing health issues, wrecking the waterways, wrecking the surrounding habitats, and in general making the area around them uninhabitable. I don't believe a single one of these data centers has improved the lives of the surrounding area. They've not even had a neutral impact.
Put the brakes on these installations. Vote YES to implement the interir zoning and pause any further development of data centers in Missoula county.
You all need to protect us from the mega data centers. They hold no benefit to communities. They do not create jobs. They consume too many resources and they wreck communities. They produce all kinds of pollution including heat and light. The ill effects and costs ALWAYS get passed onto the community. There is no benefit here.
One more point: Please do whatever is necessary to protect the aquifer and the rivers. I hope you all understand how important that is--once lost it is gone forever
The harms of data centers are too great for them to be built here. Look at what happened to the water in Wyoming (https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-data-center-waste-water-bacterium-cheyenne-wyoming-2026-7?op=1). We are being asked to carry the cost while tech companies profit. This must be stopped. Water is a precious, limited resource, as is clean air. We do not need AI, but we do need water and air.
Please vote yes on pausing data centers. They do not fall in line with the values on Montanans, and are incredibly taxing on our resources and are harmful to the environment. They also do not support the local economy. We need affordable housing and opportunities for the local economy to grow, not data centers.
I strongly recommend that Missoula County adopt interim zoning under the emergency of:
- no sufficient legal framework at the local, state, or federal levels for data centers and AI
- the climate crisis that Missoula County and Missoula City claim to be leaders in addressing
- a rapid progression of fascism utilizing data centers as a method to control resources and the populous
- preventing the negating of all historical investments in environmental rehab
- and most importantly, the severe lack of public trust as more corruption is uncovered at the state and local levels, all related to the "demand" for data centers and AI
In light of how this emergency includes so many categories of statute, and the severe lack of independent and scientific assessments on data centers and AI, the minimum time for emergency zoning should be 2 years. Even this timeline is hardly sufficient for scientific studies, so a much more appropriate timeline would be 4 years, which allows for studies to occur, and the Legislative / Local Rule processes to follow.
Your voters are paying attention. The time to choose between being a dedicated public servant or a holder of empty promise is now.
Thank you to all in the county for permitting public comment. I pray that you listen.
Have you forgotten our state history? Have you forgotten Butte and Anaconda? Has the collective consciousness of our great state sadly forgotten the damage done by outside private interests?
We do not need data centers. We do not need bitcoin mines, we do not need outsiders coming heat and pillaging our beautiful lands to fatten their pockets. We are stewards of the land once we are born here. It is out duty to protect and grow it. Not allow it to be destroyed by thise who do not care.
I implore you to please work towards no Data Centers. Thank you for your time.
Griff B.
I strongly recommend that Missoula County adopt interim zoning under the emergency of:
- no sufficient legal framework at the local, state, or federal levels for data centers and AI
- the climate crisis that Missoula County and Missoula City claim to be leaders in addressing
- a rapid progression of fascism utilizing data centers as a method to control resources and the populous
- preventing the negating of all historical investments in environmental rehab
- and most importantly, the severe lack of public trust as more corruption is uncovered at the state and local levels, all related to the "demand" for data centers and AI
In light of how this emergency includes so many categories of statute, and the severe lack of independent and scientific assessments on data centers and AI, the minimum time for emergency zoning should be 2 years. Even this timeline is hardly sufficient for scientific studies, so a much more appropriate timeline would be 4 years, which allows for studies to occur, and the Legislative / Local Rule processes to follow.
Your voters are paying attention. The time to choose between being a dedicated public servant or a holder of empty promise is now.
I urge Missoula County Commissioners to protect our communities and prioritize the air, water, and health of our people, plants, animals by passing a moratorium on data center development.
Tech companies have financially benefitted from the fast growth of their sector, and we need leaders to stand up to their unchecked expansions into our lives.