Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has directed the state Department of Environmental Quality to stop processing and issuing air and water pollution permits for new or expanded data centers until July 1, 2027. The order came in an Oct. 9 letter to DEQ Director Leah Feldon, which the governor's office did not publicly announce. The n
Editorial press photo of Oregon Governor Tina Kotek speaking, the official who issued the statewide data center permit pause.onprofit Oregon Rural Action obtained the letter and shared it on Oct. 13, and OPB confirmed the exchange with Kotek's staff.
The practical effect is a statewide freeze on most large data center development.
Without air or water pollution permits, hyperscale operators cannot build in Oregon, whether on public or private land. Kotek also told DEQ to stop processing applications from cities and counties seeking to renew or modify wastewater treatment permits in order to serve data centers.
The directive widens a narrower action from September, when Kotek ordered every state agency to pause unapproved easements, rights-of-way, leases, land-use permits, and sales of state property for data center projects, also through July 2027. Baxtel reported on that state-land pause in September. This order reaches private land.
Kotek cast the pause as time to weigh recommendations from her Oregon Data Center Advisory Committee, which delivers final guidance by the end of the year, and to prepare legislation for the 2027 session. "This time limited pause will provide an opportunity for me to evaluate and digest recommendations forthcoming from the Advisory Committee," she wrote to Feldon.
Amazon, the state's largest data center operator, objected. "This directive was issued abruptly, without meaningful stakeholder engagement of the workers, businesses, and municipalities it will affect," said Shannon Kellogg, vice president of Amazon Web Services Public Policy for the Americas.
Oregon's capacity sits mostly along the eastern Columbia River, where more than a dozen Amazon hyperscale facilities operate in Morrow and Umatilla counties. Baxtel tracks 165 data center facilities across Oregon, operated by 39 providers, led by Amazon Web Services with 64 sites; the largest, Google Dalles 5 in The Dalles, is listed at 80 MW.
Oregon Rural Action said the freeze could stall a proposed Amazon hyperscale facility in Boardman, where an air permit is under review. Local pressure has been building for months. Hillsboro adopted a temporary moratorium in July, a one-year pause on new data center tax breaks took effect in June, and the 2025 POWER Act shifted more electricity costs onto large data centers. The state's legislative session convenes in January.
Oregon is now the clearest test of whether a governor can slow AI infrastructure with administrative action alone. Developers weighing the Pacific Northwest should treat the July 2027 date as a real constraint rather than a placeholder. The projects most exposed are the next-phase builds on private land, where no permit means no construction start.
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