L.A. County Froze New AI Data Centers. One Memo Did It.

Planning director Amy Bodek's memo stops large-scale AI facilities while the county writes the prohibition into its zoning code.

New large-scale data centers can't be approved in unincorporated Los Angeles County, under an immediate prohibition the county's planning director ordered September 17, 2026. Amy Bodek, director of the Department of Regional Planning, set it down in a memorandum that tells her staff how to treat applications until the ban is written into the zoning regulations. City News Service reported the memo, in an account published by ABC7 Los Angeles.

The fight that got the county here started in the San Gabriel Valley. In Monterey Park, SDCF Monterey Park, LLC proposed clearing vacant commercial buildings at 1977 Saturn St. In their place would go a single-story data center of 218,400 square feet on 15.8 acres, a 2024 proposal reported by LA Public Press. Neighbors told a January community meeting they were worried about air, land and water pollution next door.

Board Chair and First District Supervisor Hilda Solis said she brought a motion in April over public health and environmental concerns about the facilities. The Board of Supervisors approved it unanimously, she said.

“I introduced it in response to concerns raised by San Gabriel Valley residents who were understandably concerned about the effects of data centers in their communities,” Solis said in a statement carried by the outlet.

Regional Planning came back to the board with zoning amendments that would bar the facilities outright, Solis said. She added that the case for a ban had been “further underscored by alarming developments from the AI sector on catastrophic impacts the technology may have on humanity.”

Cities in the valley didn't wait for the county. Monterey Park's City Council imposed a 45-day moratorium, then extended it while staff wrote a permanent rule. In June, voters approved Measure NDC, amending the city's land use element to bar all data centers unless a future vote repeals it. ABC7 reported that's a first for California. In late April, the councils of El Monte and Baldwin Park each adopted a one-year ban on data centers proposed inside their city limits.

The City of Industry went the other way. Its City Council voted unanimously in February to rezone for a battery storage site. Residents there and in La Puente objected, along with people in the unincorporated communities of Rowland Heights, Avocado Heights, Hacienda Heights and South San Jose Hills. They argued the change opened a path to a data center at the largely vacant Puente Hills Mall. The No Data Centers SGV coalition, which includes San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action, SGVoices and No Data Center Monterey Park, opposed the rezoning.

The industry's own numbers are the argument on the other side. California has at least 287 data centers, ABC7 reported. The Data Center Coalition, the sector's trade association, said the facilities supported more than 665,000 jobs in the state in 2024. It put their state and local tax generation at $14.1 billion.

Solis said she intends to bring further items to the board to carry out recommendations from Regional Planning and Public Health and amend the zoning code. Ordered in September. Codified, the county says, whenever that amendment reaches the board, and no hearing date has been announced. Until then, the memorandum is what planning staff apply.

Source: abc7.com, retrieved September 20, 2026.