The City of Gibraltar, located south of Detroit, Michigan, voted on Monday to impose a one-year moratorium on data centers in response to concerns about the environmental and visual impact.

This applies to the “establishing, permitting, consideration, approval, location, construction, and/or installation of any data centers in the City of Gibraltar” and means that the moratorium will also cover data center projects currently under consideration, like the proposal put forth by data center firm Raeden.

Raeden proposed the construction of a 100MW data center at 27800 W. Jefferson, the location of a former steel plant owned and operated by McLouth Steel.

It said that it would get its power from energy company DTE, which confirmed to the City of Gibraltar that its system would have capacity for the data center’s demand.

Raeden also said in a slide deck that its facility would use between 200 and 500 gallons of water per day, and that it would pay for “100 percent of all energy infrastructure and other costs related to obtaining power, refurbishing the building, remediating all the existing conditions, and making the facility ready for data center use.”

But anti-data center opposition in the city has been intense. Gibraltar residents were set to protest against the facility today, but it is unclear whether it will still go forward in light of the moratorium.

Michigan is one of the several US states currently considering whether to implement a state-wide data center moratorium, and House Bill 5594 – which would “prohibit certain authorizations for a data center” beginning from the effective date of the act and until April 1, 2027 – is currently in committee.