Pittsburg approves 45-day data center moratorium amidst heated pushback

KTVU's Amanda Quintana live in Pittsburgh with the vote by city leaders. Amanda, good morning. Good morning. They had a special meeting last night where they unanimously voted for this moratorium. It'll last at least 45 days here in the city of Pittsburgh. Now, at some points during the meeting, some things got heated. People are very passionate about this. They were yelling, interrupting parts of the meeting. They had to pause and ask some people to leave because people are upset about this because even though there is a moratorium, it pauses consideration of any new data centers, but there already is a data center that is going to be built. It's being approved and this does not stop the first phase of that. That's the Avio data center project that's being built on the former Delta View golf course. That was approved back in November of 2024 and though the moratorium could halt phases two and three of that opponents do not think this moratorium goes far enough it's exhausting for us to come down here uh and have to ask and beg to not harm our community and um i know that we that phase one isn't on the agenda today but i also don't believe that there isn't anything we can do to stop that excluding phase one makes this formal pause completely useless we say 90 days minimum minimum because we we hope you all know no matter who sits behind this in the next few weeks in the next year we're going to be here we will be back to ensure that this moratorium continues unto a full ban of data centers no data centers in pittsburgh no data centers in pittsburgh is this a political tactic so you could like announce on the media like hey look we put a moratorium you know we're for you we hear you like where was this like months ago where was this before like phase one got even approved the council does have the option to extend the moratorium council members say the 45 days will give them time to study data centers and their effects and create new regulations to ensure the Avio project is being built safely. Now this is just the latest city to do this to pass a moratorium. We're seeing this all over the Bay Area. Last week we were in Hayward talking about this same thing. They passed moratorium. We've had San Francisco and Oakland do the same thing this month and this is not just in the Bay Area. This is something that we're seeing all over the country where city councils are saying hold on we need to look into this further and figure out what these data centers are really going to do to our communities. Live in Pittsburgh Amanda Quintana KTVU Fox 2 News.