Salem, You’re Doing This Right. Don’t Stop Now. Get A Data Center Moratroum Moving Fast!

Hillsboro Herald — The Real Story – Analysis/Opinion. July 30, 2026.

Monday night, Salem’s city council will meet again, this time to consider a moratorium on new data centers. We watched Hillsboro do the same thing three days ago. We know exactly what’s coming next, and we wanted Salem to hear it from a city that’s already living it.

Here’s the short version: welcome the moratorium, but don’t mistake it for the finish line. And whatever you do, don’t fight it the way Hillsboro did.

We’re glad Hillsboro’s council finally acted. But let’s be honest about the timing: this moratorium arrived only after more than 30 data centers had already been welcomed into our industrial land, our power grid, and our water systems. Residents were raising alarms about this months ago; in fact, for myself and a few others, it has been 2 or 3 years of working on getting something done.  We have packed council meetings, given science-based testimony, and had students who showed up to say their futures were being paved over. Leaders had the chance to act then. They didn’t. The moratorium that finally passed this week is a real, hard-fought step. It is also proof of how much easier it is to stop something before it starts than to slow it down after thirty-some buildings are already standing.

That’s the first lesson for Salem: you have what Hillsboro didn’t. You’re having this fight before the buildings go up, not after.  And while some leaders like Dr Tammy Carpenter, Myrna Munoz, and Hillsboro City Councilor Kipperlyn Sinclair demanded an emergency meeting in April to pass a moratorium, that was rejected by our Mayor and her panel of City Councilors.

Hillsboro’s moratorium was built the right way, legally — city officials quietly filed the required 45-day notice with the state weeks in advance, precisely so the data center industry wouldn’t see the deadline coming and rush the door. It was smart. It was lawful. And it still wasn’t enough. In the final days before the vote, seven or eight more data center applications slid in anyway.  (Editor’s Update -7-30-26) Two applications were turned in during the Moratorium meeting and vote.  This is unbelievable. Hillsboro has not provided information on these new players.

That’s the honest lesson, not a cynical one: even a well-executed, quietly filed moratorium can’t fully outrun an industry that’s watching for exactly this kind of deadline. Salem should expect the same pressure. Verrus hasn’t filed a land use application for its Mill Creek project yet — and whatever the company says about staying on its “usual timeline,” Hillsboro’s experience says the industry moves fast once a deadline becomes visible. Salem may not be the only site with an application quietly waiting in the wings. If Hillsboro’s pattern holds, it likely isn’t.  In February of this year, while producing a National piece with Dan Lieberman of More Perfect Union, we ran into a data center contractor out in the Hillsboro Data Center Alley.  We chatted with me about the massive buildings going up everywhere.  I asked him how many more were coming.  

“Hillsboro is nearing the end.  All the land is optioned up, and now we are moving to Marion County to tie up some sites”.  I paid attention, and I realized then that the Circus was starting to pack up some of the big show and moving on.  I should have said something then.  Therefore, and having watched what happened to my hometown of Hillsboro, I believe Salem will hear of a few more sites coming forward for permits.

Here’s where we want to be honest about something else: Hillsboro’s moratorium happened quietly, on purpose, with almost no public notice, specifically to keep the industry from reacting in time. It worked, mostly. But it also meant Hillsboro residents — the same people who’d been packing council chambers for months — found out about their own city’s move at the same moment as everyone else, with no chance to weigh in before the vote.

What we’ve watched happen in Salem over the past two weeks is the harder, slower, better version of this fight. Hundreds of residents filled a library auditorium until it overflowed into the basement and out onto the sidewalk. People testified for six hours, past midnight, in front of the company that wanted to build there. An economist stood up and said, on the record, that this is one of the worst development proposals he’s seen by any standard measure. A city councilor apologized for a non-disclosure agreement she called a violation of public trust. None of that happened in secret, and none of it needed to.

That’s not a weaker fight than Hillsboro’s. It’s a stronger one. A quiet, well-timed filing can win a single moratorium vote. An engaged, informed, and organized public can win the years of fights that come after it — the code amendments, the community benefits negotiations, the next proposal, and the one after that. Hillsboro is still trying to build that kind of public muscle after the fact, in the 120 days it just bought itself. Salem is building it right now, in public, while the outcome is still genuinely undecided.

So Salem- go Scorched Earth and stop them all.  Hillsboro is cheering for you all, praying for you, and we know what you have at stake because we lost it.

So here’s our honest advice, from a newsroom that’s spent two decades of hindsight learning it the hard way: don’t relax because a moratorium is on the table Monday. Watch the city’s application portal as the next 7 to 10 days play out — if Hillsboro’s pattern repeats, this is exactly the window where filings show up. Ask your council, directly, whether Monday’s vote will take effect immediately or whether it’s the start of a longer legal process. We know that they cannot vote to institute a moratorium on Monday, but they can vote to start the process with the Department of Land Conservation and Development, and that will get you an in-force moratorium in 46 days.    And keep showing up exactly the way you have been, because that pressure, public, loud, and impossible to route around — is the one thing a quiet filing can’t buy back once it’s spent.

We have a lot more reporting to share about what’s actually in this Verrus deal — the tax breaks already granted, the land ownership, the fine print of what Salem is and isn’t getting in return. That story is coming. But this week, we just wanted Salem to know: you’re doing this the right way. Keep going.

HERE IS THE HILLSBORO MORATORIUM PASSED 7-28-26 – Use This As A Base For Your Own City’s Moratorium Fully Signed Moratorium -Notice of Decision Data Center and BESS Facility Moratorium

Dirk Knudsen— The Hillsboro Herald