Ottawa, Kansas Voters Approve 10-Year Ban on Large Data Centers

Voters in Ottawa, Kansas, approved a 10-year moratorium on data centers with a capacity above 25MW, with 71.85 percent supporting the measure at the ballot held alongside the 2026 US midterm elections last week.

Ottawa sits in Franklin County, Kansas. The poll question asked voters whether to adopt the new ordinance, and roughly seven in ten who cast ballots backed it. The threshold of 25MW now defines which facilities the ban covers: anything larger cannot be built in the city for a decade.

What does the ordinance actually prohibit?

The moratorium applies to large-scale data centers only. Facilities with a capacity of more than 25MW fall under the ban; the ordinance runs for 10 years from approval. Ottawa City Commission, the local authority, had previously agreed to sell land for exactly the kind of project the ordinance now blocks.

In short: for the next decade, no data center above 25MW can be developed in Ottawa.

Who campaigned for the ban?

The vote marks a win for Ottawa United, a campaign group formed to oppose data center development in the city. The group organized after a 450MW facility was proposed for Proximity Park, a 300-acre site in Ottawa.

Jessica Christopher of Ottawa United told KMBC News the campaign drew support from across party lines. "It was a mix between Republicans and Democrats and a bunch of unaffiliated voters," she said. "And we all just came together for a common good, which is why we named it Ottawa United."

Her comment points to a broader pattern: opposition to data centers has spread across America in recent months, and it does not follow traditional political divisions.

What happened to the project that started it?

The 450MW proposal that triggered the campaign is already dead. Ottawa City Commission had agreed to sell the Proximity Park land to a developer, Lightfield Energy LLC, which planned to build a data center and a natural gas power plant on the site.

Negotiations between the parties ran for more than 18 months. They never produced a development agreement. Councilors terminated the sale agreement at a meeting in September.

The sequence leaves an irony at the center of the story: residents voted to ban for 10 years a project that had already been cancelled.

How widespread is this movement?

Ottawa is not an isolated case. Two other Kansas communities, Emporia and El Dorado, approved data center moratoriums at the same elections last week.

Nationally, voters backed more than 40 similar pieces of legislation at the midterms. The cumulative effect is a growing patchwork of local bans aimed squarely at hyperscale and large colocation builds, at a time when demand for data center capacity continues to expand.

The numbers frame the market impact plainly. One city, one vote, one 10-year ban — and more than 40 more like it across the country.