WILMINGTON, MA — At is meeting last week, the Wilmington Economic Development Committee voted 6-0, with 2 abstentions, to recommend to the Select Board to a call a Special Town Meeting to ask voters to approve a moratorium on new data center construction in town.
Committee member Mark Gauthier noted that the Lowell City Council recently enacted a similar moratorium.
“Lowell just did one. We can replace ‘the city of Lowell’ with ‘the Town of Wilmington’ and update a couple of dates. It’s a straight forward legal document,” he said. “Lowell had a plan of action along with their moratorium”
“I don’t think it would hurt to consider a moratorium. It would be a pretty easy thing to do,” added Committee Chair Joe Maselli. Maselli pointed out that a moratorium would allow Wilmington to see how the Attorney General rules on the Town of Mansfield’s recent zoning amendment to limit where and how data centers can operate in its town. That ruling will affect Wilmington’s approach to a permanent ban, or near ban.
Planning and Conservation Director Valerie Gingrich told the committee that concerns over data centers is not unique to Wilmington.
“This topic is a very active on the Massachusetts Planners List-Serv. Everyone is talking about it. Everyone is asking,” said Gingrich. “Can there be total bans or will that cause a legal problem? There’s no precedent for a total ban from the Attorney General’s Office.”
“There has been some statements from the State House supporting data centers,” she continued. “But what kind of data centers are they talking about? Small ones that can be sustainable without using all of our natural resources? Thankfully, there hasn’t been a big run on building data centers yet, but everyone wants to be prepared.”
“Because this is going to take a while to get right, we think there should be a mortarium,” said Select Board member and Committee member Jake Gearwar.
Committee member Suzanne Sullivan noted several concerns around data centers, stating some communities are signing non-disclosure agreements with companies, making it difficult to get an accurate count of data centers in Massachusetts and nationwide.
Sullivan noted companies are exploiting the evolving definition of data centers.
“Businesses are rebranding, marketing and labeling data centers as offices, warehouses, research and development facilities, manufacturing, or any other use for zoning purposes,” she argued. “It would be wise to do a mortarium until we get our act together.”
Sullivan contended that at the federal government level, there are entities which wish to take away look control to stop data centers.
“The sooner we act, the better,” she reiterated. “A moratorium would be low hanging fruit.”
Sullivan is also worried about data centers’ effect on the town’s water supply, noting — at this very moment — the town is in a drought and even private wells are drying up.
Members of the Committee will spend the next two months collecting data from the Water Department and from the Reading Municipal Light Department (RMLD) about the town’s inherent water and power limitations to get a better understanding of the size of data center which could even be hypothetically accommodated. The Committee will also keep an eye on the Attorney General’s review of Mansfield’s near ban of data centers, with a ruling expected before the Committee’s next scheduled meeting on Tuesday, August 18, 2026.
‘It’s a good start,” Committee Chair Joe Maselli summed up.
Any proposed moratorium language would be reviewed by Town Counsel. The Select Board would then need to call a Special Town Meeting. The Planning Board and Finance Committee would be required to hold a public hearing.
Resident Rob Fasulo, a vocal proponent of a data center moratorium and eventual permanent ban, offered public comments, mainly around the importance of defining data centers accurately.
“The language is going to have to be somewhat fluid as technology changes constantly,” stressed Fasulo. “It also needs to be a definition created in a way that’s not going to alienate certain companies, like the Analog Devices.”
“Once the definition is created, the prohibition will be fairly easy to do. It’s not a heavy lift,” continued Fasulo. “This is going to be presented to 90% of the people in town that have never read a bylaw, so it has to be simple enough that people can understand.”
Fasulo offered his own alternate definition, which he handed out to the Committee.
“We’ve got to be careful [when creating the definition]. There needs to be criteria. Otherwise, we’re going to really affect companies who are already here,” warned Fasulo.
Committee member and Select Board member Jake Gearwar agreed with Fasulo’s desire for the language to be fluid.
“This will likely be amended multiple times over the next five to ten years,” he concurred.
Fasulo also pointed out that the cooling methods for data center facilities are now changing.
“They’re moving from water to air, which is creating sound problems for neighbors,” he said.
Below is a DRAFT of a proposed language currently under discussion by the Economic Development Committee regarding a ban of data centers:
PART 1 — AMENDMENT TO TABLE 1: PRINCIPAL USE REGULATIONS
New Row to be Added Under §3.7 Prohibited Uses:
Insert the following row in Table 1 immediately following the existing §3.7.2 Marijuana Establishments row. The rows for §3.7.1 and §3.7.2 are reproduced below for placement reference only.
| PRINCIPAL USES | R10 | R20 | R60 | O55 | NM | NB | GB | CB | GI | HI | LI/O | SITE PLAN REV | GW PD |
| 3.7 PROHIBITED USES | |||||||||||||
| 3.7.1 Prohibited Uses | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | NR | * |
| 3.7.2 Marijuana Establishments | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | NR | * |
| 3.7.3 Data Centers | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | NR | * |
PART 2 — NEW §3.7.3: CLASSIFICATION OF PROHIBITED USES
Insert the following paragraph immediately following §3.7.2 in Section 3:
3.7.3 Data Centers Prohibited — A Data Center, as defined herein, is expressly prohibited in all zoning districts of the Town of Wilmington in order to protect public health, safety, and welfare; preserve the integrity of the Town’s electrical distribution, water, and transportation infrastructure; prevent adverse impacts on the residential and commercial character of Wilmington’s neighborhoods; and ensure that the Town’s finite industrial and commercial land resources are directed toward uses that generate meaningful employment and fiscal returns for the community. The prohibition applies regardless of whether computing infrastructure is housed in a permanent structure, a modular unit, a prefabricated enclosure, a shipping container, or any other form of enclosure, whether permanent or temporary.
For purposes of this Section, a Data Center means any facility, or portion thereof, primarily designed or used to house computer servers and related information technology infrastructure for the storage, processing, management, or transmission of electronic data. A Data Center includes, but is not limited to, server racks, data storage systems, cooling systems, power conditioning equipment, substations, uninterruptible power supplies, backup power generation equipment used in support of data center operations, telecommunications equipment, and associated mechanical and electrical infrastructure. A Data Center expressly includes (regardless of the label applied to such use), without limitation: colocation facilities, cloud computing infrastructure, hyperscale computing facilities, cryptocurrency mining operations, artificial intelligence compute facilities, GPU clusters, AI training and inference facilities, and modular or containerized computing installations.
A use shall be classified as a Data Center if:
(a) more than twenty-five percent (25%) of its gross floor area is devoted to server racks, computing equipment, or associated mechanical or electrical infrastructure, or
(b) its primary purpose, as determined by the Planning Board, is the housing and operation of computer servers and related infrastructure; or
(c) it is served by, or is designed to be served by, an electrical service or utility transformer with a capacity exceeding [__ MVA], when such capacity is primarily dedicated to computing, data processing, or associated mechanical infrastructure.
The criteria in (a), (b), and (c) are independent; satisfaction of any one shall be sufficient for classification as a Data Center.
No facility shall avoid classification as a Data Center by reason of
— phased construction (provided that cumulative electrical demand or floor area, when aggregated across all parcels within the Town of Wilmington under common ownership or control, whether or not contiguous, meets any threshold above)
— rebranding, marketing or labeling as an office, warehouse, research and development facility, manufacturing or any other use for zoning purposes
— the use of emerging technologies including but not limited to artificial intelligence, edge computing, cryptocurrency mining, or blockchain processing as its primary function
The Planning Board shall have authority to classify any use as a Data Center based on its functional characteristics, regardless of the label applied by the applicant.
This prohibition shall not apply to an on-premises server room or telecommunications closet that meets all of the following conditions:
— operated exclusively to support the internal business operations of a primary use lawfully conducted on the same premises;
— does not provide hosting, colocation, or data processing services to third parties, whether for compensation or otherwise;
Notwithstanding the foregoing, any on-premises computing installation utilizing graphics processing units (GPUs), tensor processing units (TPUs), or other specialized AI accelerator hardware with an aggregate installed capacity exceeding [__] kilowatts shall not qualify for this exclusion regardless of its described purpose.
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