Marysville initiates 6-month moratorium on data centers

Published 2:35 pm Wednesday, July 15, 2026

EVERETT — The Marysville City Council unanimously passed a temporary pause on data centers Monday.

The 6-month moratorium prevents all construction of buildings or facilities in which the principal use is the management or transmission of digital data. Incidental computer servers or digital processing equipment as part of a business with a different primary use is excluded from the ban.

The temporary pause gives the council time to create permanent regulations so “all of our citizens and all of our developers know what they can and cannot do,” council member Kelly Richards said during the meeting.

“We’re not saying ‘no’ to data centers,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out what we are actually willing to accept and what our environment can accept.”

The moratorium would last only 60 days if the city does not hold a public hearing within that period. Also, the council could extend or cancel the ban with a separate vote.

This action is in response to the rapid expansion of information technology and artificial intelligence, Marysville City Administrator Jennifer Stapleton said during the council’s regular meeting Monday.

“Data centers are an essential infrastructure in part of economic development related to these uses,” Stapleton said. “But they also bring with them substantial utility impacts to be considered.”

Data centers are large open buildings that house hundreds of computers called servers. These servers transmit digital information or perform thousands of calculations every second, particularly in AI applications.

Data centers are not currently defined in Marysville’s municipal code, Stapleton said during the meeting. Also, these centers may use water differently than what the city is used to, she said.

A medium-sized data center can use up to 110 million gallons of water per year to cool the servers, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Large data centers can use up to 5 million gallons per day, or 1.8 billion annually.

“Single-large water users such as data centers may also present substantial challenges to sourcing, storage, transmission and distribution of water resources,” Stapleton said.

Also, Marysville’s water does not come from a single source, which complicates things, she said.

Marysville will use the six months to explore how data centers might impact water or sewer rates, spokesperson Lauren Chomiak said in an email.

“This 6-month moratorium will give the City time to complete its water and sewer master plans and associated rate studies which will inform whether regulatory changes are needed to mitigate potential system impacts,” she said. “The rate study will ensure that, if allowed, these uses will bear the full cost of system impacts and utilization rather than impacting rates paid by other customers.”

Public opposition in Arlington surfaced against “Project Cascade” in May, for fear of another data center. It was soon announced as another Amazon facility — prompting Arlington to clarify its code does not permit data centers.

Snohomish County also approved a data center moratorium on June 24.

Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; Bluesky: @btayokay.bsky.social