By Joyce Chu, San Jose Spotlight October 17, 2026
San Jose residents and advocates are calling for San Jose to place a temporary moratorium on data centers before development standards are finalized. City officials presented draft standards at a community meeting on Oct. 15, 2026. Photo by Joyce Chu.
San Jose is creating development standards for future data center projects, but residents and advocates said they don’t go far enough to protect their health and the environment.
City officials presented the draft standards for the first time Thursday in front of a packed audience at City Hall. Dozens of residents spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting, which lasted nearly two hours. Cheers erupted from the audience as speakers called for a temporary moratorium on data centers until the standards are in place. The City Council is expected to finalize the standards in December.
While some speakers such as union representatives supported the draft standards and called for the city to enforce fair wages for workers building out data center projects, other public commenters took issue with what they see as weak environmental protections — and wording in the rules that could let developers skirt city enforcement.
“A lot of community members have told the ways that the standards fall short,” Dashiel Leeds, conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, said at the meeting. “You’re not covering the heat island effect at all. You’re not studying low-frequency infrasound at all. Diesel backup generators can still pollute our communities with nitrous oxide. The data centers getting approved by the planning director and not the city council just is not accountability.”