The main utility in Ypsilanti, Michigan, has passed a one-year moratorium on providing water and sewage services to new data center projects.

The City Council of Ypsilanti and the Charter Township Board of Trustees voted in favor of the moratorium on March 3 and April 15, respectively, and the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority (YCUA) approved a request to impose the moratorium on April 22.

In the meantime, the YCUA will conduct a variety of studies related to the impact of data centers on water supply, wastewater, ratepayers, the environment, and more.

The YCUA emphasized “the necessity of rigorous, science-based due-diligence analyses, which are to be completed prior to the approval of high-demand, hyperscale data centers, mid-sized data centers, artificial intelligence computing facilities, and high-performance computational centers.”

This will come as a setback to two data center projects set to be built in the area.

The first is a $1.2 billion project led by the University of Michigan and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was set to be built on a 124-acre parcel off Textile Road in Ypsilanti Township.

The second is an 800-acre facility planned by Thor Equities located in Augusta Township, which is located between Ann Arbor and Detroit but falls under the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority’s service territory.

Both projects are controversial and have encountered significant community backlash.

Ypsilanti is located outside of Ann Arbor, a city in southern Michigan. Most of the state’s data centers are located around Detroit and Ann Arbor, but Ypsilanti is not currently home to any facilities.