Umatilla declares emergency over $5B data center permit freeze

A Umatilla, Oregon city official declared a local state of emergency this week over data center tax revenue at risk from Gov. Tina Kotek's October directive blocking new data center permits.

The city council voted at the same meeting to approve a resolution that puts numbers on the exposure. The resolution says the permitting block could delay, potentially permanently, more than $5 billion in anticipated private investment in the Umatilla area. It also says projects could run more than two years past expected go-live dates, and at least 1,000 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent and related positions are threatened, according to Data Center Dynamics' report. Umatilla has four operating facilities, one under construction and two more planned, with Sabey and Amazon Web Services present in the area.

For due diligence on Pacific Northwest data center projects, the resolution supplies a concrete permitting risk figure: $5 billion of anticipated investment in one city and a delay of more than two years. A project model that carries municipal revenue or tax timing alongside its construction schedule now has Umatilla on record saying the timing slips.

City manager Dave Stockdale, who requested the declaration, said prolonged permitting uncertainty could postpone, relocate or cancel planned private investment, delaying revenue and employment "by two years or more, or eliminating some of those opportunities altogether." He called the directive "precisely the type of human-created circumstance involving threatened widespread financial loss that Oregon law expressly recognizes as a potential emergency."

City manager Dave Stockdale's written request ties the emergency to the state's permitting posture. The resolution returns for review in 90 days.