The Governor's Data Center Advisory Committee (DCAC) has continued to hear lies about how data centers bring jobs and value to our economy, while ignoring how data centers steal water, electricity, and tax revenue from our communities, raising our utility bills and undermining public institutions.

The next DCAC meeting is on July 31st. The topic for this meeting is undecided, and the Committee invited public submissions on what the topic should be. This is our moment to raise the alarm for how DCAC should be discussing a statewide moratorium on new data centers!

Moratoriums, or pauses, on building new data centers are not a new idea. Recently, Maine, New York, Oklahoma, and New Hampshire have all passed legislation to set up moratoriums on these new energy-and water-intensive facilities until more research can be done on their impacts. As a state with an already disproportionate number of data centers, it's time for Oregon to step up and put a moratorium in place so these impacts can be thoroughly studied and understood.