Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 45 U.S. data center projects worth nearly $68 billion between April and June, according to the second-quarter 2026 report from Data Center Watch, a research group that tracks community resistance to data center development.
The quarter did not set a record. Data Center Watch had counted at least 75 projects worth approximately $130 billion disrupted in the first quarter, a tally the group described as the largest single-quarter concentration of blocked and delayed projects on record. What the second quarter did, in the group’s words, was sustain “the elevated level of project disruption seen in Q1” β after the legislative sessions that drove much of the first-quarter activity had ended.
Adding the group’s own two quarterly figures together puts the first half of 2026 at a minimum of 120 affected projects and roughly $198 billion in project value β already well above the at least $156 billion in publicly disclosed value that Data Center Watch counted as blocked or delayed across all of 2025.
What the data center opposition numbers do and do not say
These are floors, not estimates. Data Center Watch counts projects with publicly disclosed values, which means deals that die quietly, or that were never announced with a price attached, do not appear. “Disrupted” also covers a wide range of outcomes β a rezoning denied outright, a permit application withdrawn, a vote postponed, a project shelved while a county writes new rules. A delayed project can still be built; a blocked one can resurface under a different owner in a different county.
What the series does capture well is direction. In its first report, which ran through the first quarter of 2025, the group tallied $64 billion in blocked or delayed projects β $18 billion blocked outright and $46 billion delayed β and identified 142 active opposition groups across 24 states. By the first quarter of this year, it reported that the number of active opposition groups had more than doubled since the end of 2025 and now spans 49 states. Every state but one has organized resistance of some kind.
Moratoriums are arriving before the developers do
The most consequential finding for site selection may be the second-quarter report’s observation that communities are imposing data center development moratoriums preemptively β “often preemptively before developers expressed interest or filed permit applications,” the report says.
That is a meaningful shift in how land risk works. A moratorium adopted in response to a specific proposal is a fight a developer can join, with a site, a tax package and a set of concessions to negotiate. A moratorium adopted before anyone has filed anything removes the parcel from consideration before diligence begins, and it does so in places where no one was tracking the politics because nothing had been proposed. It also shifts the timeline for organized resistance: a group that forms before a proposal exists has no deadline to work against and no specific applicant to negotiate with.
Thirty statehouses moved this session
The report counts 30 statehouses that introduced β and in many cases adopted β legislation, resolutions or executive actions addressing data center siting, electricity and water constraints, and infrastructure cost-sharing during the 2026 session. Opposition, it says, “became more local and project-specific, increasingly targeting permitting, infrastructure, and individual policy decisions as regulatory scrutiny expanded across 49 states.”
That legislative wave built quickly. Data Center Watch’s first-quarter report found more than 300 state data center bills filed in the first six weeks of 2026 alone, with statewide moratorium proposals introduced in 14 states from lawmakers in both parties. Maine, the group says, came within one state House vote of becoming the first state to impose a statewide data center ban.
The pattern matches what has already reached Congress and statewide campaigns. U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna has introduced a “Data Center Bill of Rights” giving communities clearer authority to refuse facilities, and a Michigan Senate nominee reversed position to back a one-year state moratorium. Polling this month put local opposition to nearby data centers at 69%.
What it means for the pipeline
On our reading, the second-quarter numbers argue against the idea that the backlash was a first-quarter spike tied to legislative sessions. Sessions ended; the disruptions did not. For developers, lenders and the industrial landowners selling into this pipeline, that argues for treating entitlement risk as a primary underwriting variable rather than a line item, and for assuming a longer gap between a signed land contract and a shovel in the ground than recent years have required.
Data Center Watch frames the politics bluntly, writing that “as communities call for local, state, and national politicians to respond to developments in their communities, data centers will play a bigger role in national elections.” The group sells the full quarterly report, including project-level data and case studies, and publishes only the headline findings publicly. More of RealtyWire’s coverage of the sector is on our Technology & AI page.
