The City of Hayward is considering a moratorium on data centers. This happened after a public outcry over the approval of STACK, a 76-megawatt data center on Eden Landing Road.
The data center was approved by the city’s planning commission in May 2025 and is under construction.
The topic was brought up after council referral from Mayor Mark Salinas and Councilmembers Angela Andrews and George Syrop asking for a ban on data centers. The council said during the Sept. 15 council meeting that the possibility of a data center ban is still on the table.
A data center is a room or building full of servers that process and load information from the internet. Bigger data centers like STACK can be used to power AI. A moratorium would come back to the council for a vote in late October.
Although there are no pending data center applications, city manager Jennifer Ott said at the meeting there’s some interest from developers wanting to have a data center in Hayward, and that it would be bigger than STACK.
Councilmember George Syrop said there’s an urgent need for a ban on data centers. “Given the time needed to develop a ban, and given that there’s already interest in a data center coming to Hayward, I’m supportive of an urgency moratorium, because that’s something that we can put in place sooner rather than later,” he said.
Over 60 people showed up to make a public comment. Many were Hayward residents calling for a data center ban. Those speaking against data centers received cheers and applause from the audience. The top data center concerns were its noise, the straining of the power grid and claims that the centers use tons of water.
One Hayward resident said a data center does not represent the community and what it stands for. “You don’t have to listen to the applause to know what the people of Hayward want, and that is AI data centers out of Hayward,” she said.
A young Hayward school district student also spoke during the meeting. “I would like to talk about the data center environmental impact,” she said. “It is going to impact the Earth. It’s just going to use and pollute our water, and it’s going to hurt younger generations. The children are the one[s] that will have to live with the impact that we leave.”
