Council Halts Data Centers, Rewrites Water Bills, and Presses Feds on Detention

The San Diego City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to impose a 45-day moratorium on new data-center development citywide, following Mayor Todd Gloria's executive order on the matter. The freeze is temporary, not a permanent ban — the explicit goal is to allow time for a regulatory framework to be finalized before additional projects enter the approval queue. The zero-dissent vote on a question that touches on development, energy, and economic growth signaled that concern about grid strain has reached a political threshold where no council member wanted to be the vote that green-lit major new electricity consumers ahead of a potential infrastructure crisis.

Data centers are among the most electricity-intensive facilities in modern development; a single large facility can draw power comparable to a small city. San Diego's grid already faces significant strain during extreme-heat events, and a national wave of proposals tied to artificial intelligence and cloud computing has accelerated pressure on cities to establish rules before projects accumulate.

The council also voted six-to-two to approve a revised water-rate structure taking effect January 1, 2027, with Councilmembers Kent Lee and Henry Foster dissenting and Marni von Wilpert absent. The critical distinction residents need to understand: Tuesday's vote does not impose a new rate increase. The fourteen-and-a-half percent hike for 2027 had already been approved. What the council changed is how that increase is distributed across customer classes — and the redistribution runs counter to decades of conservation-pricing logic. Lower-volume households, those that have already cut water use, will see larger bills than previously scheduled, while higher-volume users and several other classes see relative reductions. City staff told the council that restoring conservation-oriented tiered pricing is not anticipated before 2030 at the earliest.

The council agreed to explore assistance for affected low-income customers using revenue sources outside water-rate collections — but 'explore' remains early-stage language while the new rate structure takes effect in 65 days. Separately, Supervisors Paloma Aguirre and Terra Lawson-Remer sent a demand letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting ICE Director David Venturella regarding the Otay Mesa Detention Center. The letter requests that federal officials preserve medical records and video footage, make staff available to county investigators, supply a full timeline of medical care provided to detainees, and permit ongoing county public-health inspections — with a written response deadline of November 10.