EAST BRIDGEWATER — September 21, 2026 — The Planning Board opened a public hearing Monday night on the town-wide data center ban it sponsored, then voted unanimously to set the article aside, asking the Select Board for a 12-month moratorium on data center siting and town meeting to pass the article over after residents warned it was too weak to survive Attorney General review.
The Full Story
The board advertised the hearing in two legal notices, on September 6 and September 13, for a zoning amendment prohibiting the siting of data centers in every zoning district in town. It voted to open the hearing, and Chair Kevin Reilly said the board was sponsoring the article rather than a petitioner, pointing to Mansfield as a town that had moved first, to a recent decision in Salem, and to a state executive order signed within the past few days.
What followed was testimony that the board’s own article was the weaker of the two bylaws in the room. Katie Sheridan, a resident who had drafted an alternative told the board it was retrofitted from Mansfield’s bylaw, said the town’s version allowed exceptions with no limits, no guardrails and no oversight. A total prohibition, the resident said, might not clear Attorney General review, which would leave the town with no protection at all. The alternative sets conditions on noise, air pollution, power and water, and leaves the Planning Board with final approval over any project that qualifies.
Resident Hester Reid asked the board to at minimum firm up the definition of a data center, arguing that the definitional language is what makes a prohibition hard to engineer around. Lindsey O’Connell, who moved to town two years ago for its right-to-farm status, backed the added water and pollution language, citing drought.
The chair set out three options: move the article as town counsel prepared it, try to amend it on the town meeting floor, or back up and return in the spring with a finished bylaw.
Member Diane Phillips said the article was not safe enough and not comprehensive enough, and asked whether an amendment could be assembled before town meeting. Brian McSweeney, the town’s Water Superintendent, had already floated a 12-month moratorium at an earlier working meeting said a pause would signal that the town was still deciding, not that East Bridgewater was closed, and named water supply as the first concern. Amending on the floor carried a risk, the chair said, that town counsel and the moderator would rule the change outside the scope of the advertised article.
Number one is to request that the Select Board act to put in place a moratorium on the citing of any data centers in the community for the period of 12 months.
— Chair Kevin Reilly [52:13]
The motion that followed asked for that moratorium and, based on the result, that the Town Meeting article be passed over. It carried on a voice vote the chair declared unanimous. A moratorium of that kind goes nowhere for approval, the chair said. It commits the town only to declining applications.
