Waterville Township data center inquiry, Waterville, Ohio

An unnamed company wants to build a data center in Waterville Township, in Lucas County, Ohio, township trustee Toby Miller confirmed in April 2026, though officials say they still do not know who it is or exactly where it would go. No application has been filed, and the township is using a one-year moratorium, from December 17, 2025 to December 17, 2026, to write tougher zoning before a developer arrives. The Waterville Township Zoning Commission held a public hearing on the new rules, case Z22-C141, on September 14, 2026; that hearing was scheduled for that date, and no result has been published yet. The Board of Trustees, Toby Miller, Julie Theroux and Kyle Hertzfeld, will review the amendment next and make the final decision.

"Is there a data center coming to Waterville Township?" Miller told a standing-room-only trustees meeting on April 22. "Yes. There is a company interested." He said environmental studies were under way, that the interest dates to 2024, and: "We know it's not Meta or Google." Residents pushed back from the start: Janice and Anthony Braida urged the trustees to adopt a moratorium in October 2025, and Monclova Township resident Lyn Cox, who started a Facebook page against the project, said, "As residents, we're pretty much madder than hell." Trustee Kyle Hertzfeld said he would recuse himself from any vote because his family owns property there, and Miller, whose own house sits in an area suspected to be under consideration, told residents, "I stand to be screwed substantially."

The new rules would replace the township's existing path for data centers, a conditional use permit on agricultural land decided by the appointed Board of Zoning Appeals. Instead, a developer would have to ask for land to be rezoned to a new M-3 campus industrial district, which Miller said means residents could gather 327 signatures to force a referendum. The draft required a nonrefundable fee of $500 an acre, an escrow of 1 percent of the project's cost, and a closed-circuit, non-evaporative cooling system. "Hopefully it dissuades a data center from coming in, but if a data center does come in, they have a lot of hurdles to jump through and a lot of money they're going to have to put out," said Brian Gowing of the township's advisory committee.

At least 138 Ohio municipalities and townships had active data center moratoriums as of September 17, 2026, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.