Data centers just found out a permit can stop concrete faster than a press release can announce it. This is The Data Center Daily. A water fight is brewing, a project got a stop-work order, and a county enacted a ban. So who built first and checked the prerequisites later? And while local officials hit the emergency brake, FERC quietly approved a tool that could ease transmission congestion. Let’s start with the permits. This one's from Bethesda Magazine:
Warner said that last week the company withdrew its appeal of a zoning interpretation related to a now-moot six-month data center moratorium implemented by County Executive Marc Elrich (D) in June. Elrich’s executive order barred the county’s permitting department from accepting, processing or considering permit applications for new data centers.
Atmosphere withdrew the appeal because it targeted Elrich’s six-month order, and the County Council replaced that with an 18-month moratorium. Fine. But withdrawing an appeal doesn’t pour a single yard of concrete at Dickerson. The zoning-interpretation fight ended when its target went moot. Atmosphere is asking the Hearing Examiner for a continuance while it weighs its options. The proposed 360-megawatt campus is still just a proposal, parked under an 18-month county pause. “Continuance” is developer-speak for: please don’t close the folder while we figure out whether this project can survive the new rules. Montgomery County bought time to sort out water, noise, and tax policy—and Atmosphere bought itself a spot in line. This one's from 111things:
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accepted Southwest Power Pool’s proposed tariff revisions on August 19, 2026, establishing a process for the regional grid operator to consider changing the configuration of transmission equipment when congestion limits how electricity moves. The action, in Docket No. ER26-2592-000, allows SPP to evaluate what it calls economic topology optimization.
FERC accepted SPP's topology-optimization tariff in ER26-2592-000, and this boring work actually helps. Sometimes congestion comes down to a smarter breaker configuration, not a glossy campus rendering. SPP wants an October 1 effective date to build and test the software. The tariff lets it assess whether opening or closing high-voltage breakers can reroute flows before paying generators to redispatch around a constraint. It still gets reliability review; nobody's freelancing circuit breakers because a load forecast got exciting. Across 17 states, easing congestion with equipment already on the system can matter while new-wire projects crawl through permitting. Also, no household-rate magic trick here. This is a wholesale operations tool, supplemental to redispatch—not a substitute for transmission buildout or an instant capacity injection. Here's MyChesCo:
East Whiteland Township ordered an immediate halt Wednesday to work under a building permit for the Sentinel/Green Fig data center development after determining the developer had not provided required documentation showing sufficient water availability for the project. The Aug. 26 stop-work order applies to Permit B-2026-221 and covers work including micropiles, footings, concrete pads and a control house that the township stated had been partially completed.
East Whiteland’s Aug. 26 order stops Permit B-2026-221 at 13 South Bacton Hill Road because Aqua’s water-availability confirmation wasn’t in hand. Micropiles, footings, concrete pads, even a control house were already partly built. Apparently they scheduled the paperwork for after the concrete. Hold on—who authorized foundation work before the water provider issued a will-serve letter? The township says its land-development agreement requires that outside approval before improvements begin. Somebody put machines in the dirt on an assumption, and now Sentinel/Green Fig gets an immediate stop-work order. The fix is specific: Aqua has to document that water is sufficient and committed through a signed agreement, a letter, or both. Then the township reviews it before work resumes. We just covered Atmosphere withdrawing its moratorium appeal; in Pennsylvania, permitting risk is already stopping work. From Kim LaCapria at The Cooldown:
A unanimous vote by the Nye County Board of Commissioners shut the door on data center construction and operation in Nevada's Hydrographic Basin 162. The decision makes Nye County the first local government in Nevada to enact a total ban on data centers. Commissioners took that step after approving a countywide moratorium on new data center applications in June.
Unanimous vote: Basin 162 is shut to data centers. Gigawatt Development Partners’ 900-acre Manse Technology Campus said it would need roughly 300 acre-feet a year at full buildout—and Nye County decided it doesn’t have that water to spare. Keep the geography precise: this is a permanent prohibition in Hydrographic Basin 162, the overdrawn basin around Pahrump, not all of Nye County. But it is Nevada’s first local total data-center ban, after the May emergency order and June moratorium. Put this next to the East Whiteland stop-work order: developers should take the message seriously. Water availability is no longer a slide in the community deck. In Pahrump, it killed a 900-acre campus before the excavators got a chance. Commissioner Bruce Jabbour put it more plainly: he would not sacrifice local welfare for a data center in Basin 162. Good luck fixing that with a revised press release. If you’re enjoying The Data Center Daily, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you’re listening. Reviews help other people find the show, and we’re grateful you’re here.
SPP’s requested October 1, 2026 effective date for the topology-optimization tariff changes still hinges on software development, testing, and implementation. Links to every story are in the show notes, so take a look at the ones you’d like to explore further. That's The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.