Coachella Council to Consider 45-Day Pause on Data Center Development Tonight

Coachella City Council is holding a special session tonight to decide whether to hit pause on data center development in the city, one week after one of the most contentious public meetings in recent memory drew hundreds of residents to City Hall.

Council members will vote on a 45-day moratorium that would immediately stop the city from accepting, reviewing, or approving any data center applications while staff studies the impacts. The city says the move is urgent because Coachella currently has no zoning rules, size limits, or environmental standards specifically for data centers, meaning a developer could submit an application today with nothing on the books to evaluate it against.

The debate centers on the proposed Coachella Valley Technology Campus, a data center complex Stronghold Power Systems wants to build across roughly 240 acres near Avenue 52 and Fillmore Street. Stronghold submitted an initial application earlier this year, but the city rejected it as incomplete, in part because no environmental review had been done. No revised application has been submitted.

The city's concerns go well beyond paperwork. According to the agenda packet, a single large-scale AI data center can use as much power as about 100,000 homes and may require millions of gallons of water per day for cooling, a significant worry in a region already facing groundwater depletion. Diesel backup generators at facilities like this also emit pollutants including nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter, and the Coachella Valley is already considered a nonattainment area for ozone and particulate matter, meaning air quality standards are not currently being met. 

Council will also take up what to do with the development agreement the city signed with Stronghold back in February, which tied the proposed data center campus to the development of a new Coachella Municipal Utility. Staff has laid out four options: terminate the agreement outright, put it on hold while the moratorium study runs its course, open talks with Stronghold about changing the deal's scope, or take no action for now.

At least six other California cities have adopted similar moratoriums this year, including Monterey Park, which went on to permanently ban data centers entirely in April.

Tonight's closed session begins at 5 p.m., with the public meeting opening at 6 p.m. at Coachella City Hall, 1515 Sixth Street. The meeting is here.