EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ — East Brunswick has become the latest New Jersey municipality to ban data centers, joining more than 50 towns across the state that have adopted similar prohibitions amid growing concerns over utility costs and pollution.
The Township Council adopted Ordinance 26-21 at its Monday meeting, amending the township's zoning code to add a definition for "data centers" and designating them a prohibited use in all commercial, business, and industrial zoning districts.
Ahead of the vote, the council made a technical correction to the ordinance's text, changing the phrase "primary use" to "principal use" to match terminology already used in the township's land use code. Officials described the change as a clerical correction that had already been made at the planning board level. No members of the public spoke during the ordinance's public hearing, and it passed unanimously.
Charlie Kratovil, identified as the Central Jersey organizer for Food and Water Watch, spoke in support of the ordinance during the meeting's general public comment period, after confirming with the council that the hearing had already closed.
"We wanted to express our strong support for this prohibition on data centers in East Brunswick," Kratovil said. "Data center prohibition is a common sense approach to zoning in the year 2026. East Brunswick now joins more than 50 other New Jersey communities in taking this action."
Kratovil, speaking on behalf of the group's roughly 70,000 New Jersey members and supporters, said the ban protects residents from increased utility costs often associated with data centers, as well as noise, air, and water pollution.
Data centers, which house computer servers and networking equipment for cloud computing and other digital services, have faced growing opposition in New Jersey and other states over concerns about their electricity and water consumption, noise from cooling systems, and impact on local power grids.
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