The City of Pasco Council, Washington, has approved a six-month moratorium on development permits for data center construction by a unanimous vote of 6-0, to come into effect immediately.

Pasco is a municipality in Franklin County in the southwest of Washington State.

The municipal council had previously discussed imposing a six-month moratorium to allow time to develop data center-specific land-use regulations as a result of concerns around data center demand for energy, land, and cooling infrastructure.

The moratorium will pause development and construction of new data centers, blockchain computing facilities, AI computing facilities, cryptocurrency mining facilities, and other high-density computing facilities.

The decision follows rapid expansion in the construction of data center-related buildings across Washington State.

As of yet, there have not been any data centers built in Franklin County or the City of Pasco area, but the municipal council expects applications given the growth in data center projects across other parts of Washington State, along with the lack of data center-specific land-use regulations in the municipality.

The City of Pasco Council will hold a public hearing within 60 days of adoption of the moratorium to ensure transparency, in which opinions from the community will be considered. The temporary pause in approval of data center buildings also provides an opportunity for the municipality to develop data center-specific land-use regulations.

The move is part of a wider pattern of temporary moratoriums that pause the processing and approval of data center buildings at a time when concerns around energy usage, land, and cooling infrastructure required by data center projects are increasingly being discussed.

Washington State has seen an increase in temporary moratoriums, including in the state hotspot for data centers, Seattle, which approved an emergency moratorium for large data centers on June 9, 2026, following public backlash. That pause will allow the impact of high-density computing facilities on the environment, land use, water usage, the electrical grid, and public health to be analyzed.