Stockton residents urged city leaders Tuesday to think twice before courting more data centers as part of the city’s new economic development strategy.
But data centers are not new to Stockton: One has been operating at the port for more than five years, processing everything from artificial intelligence workloads to the city’s own backup public safety infrastructure.
After nearly two hours of discussion and public comment, the City Council voted 7-0 to remove data centers from its three-year economic development plan while the city conducts community listening sessions. The council approved the remainder of the plan.
The reversal followed questions about how data centers made it into a citywide economic strategy before officials had publicly identified what type of facility Stockton wanted, where one might go or what it could deliver in tax revenue and permanent jobs. The plan also contained no estimates for electricity or water demand.
Those omissions are notable because Stockton already has an operating data center officials could examine. The city is itself a customer of the Nautilus Data Technologies facility at the Port, but its actual electricity consumption is not publicly available. State regulators have also cited Nautilus for a monitoring and reporting violation, despite the company later saying that it had been “fully compliant with no violations.”
The council’s vote does not prohibit new data centers or impose a moratorium. It removes them, for now, from a list of industries city staff had identified as potential sources of additional revenue.
Nearly 40 people signed up to speak on the plan Tuesday, with much of the public comment focused on data centers and questions about water, electricity, environmental effects and what, exactly, Stockton hoped to attract.
A revenue strategy with few details
The 2026-28 Economic Development Action Plan draft listed “Data Centers” under “Revenue Enhancements,” alongside auto dealerships, big-box retailers and point-of-sale warehouses such as Amazon and Walmart.
The plan said expanding Stockton’s tax base could help support services such as public safety and infrastructure and identified data centers as a short- and medium-term strategy.
But the document did not identify a prospective developer or operator, potential location, facility type or size. It also did not estimate how much revenue a data center might bring to the city, how many permanent jobs it could create or how much electricity or water it could require.
Economic Development Director Ricardo Noguera sought to make clear from the beginning of his presentation that council members were not considering a specific development proposal.
“This is not the data center item,” Noguera said. “This is an economic development action plan, much broader than what you hear from those who may be advocating or concerned about data centers.”
But residents questioned how data centers could be significant enough to appear in Stockton’s economic-development strategy while remaining too preliminary for officials to provide details.
“You said you skipped over the data part really quickly, and said why are we here talking about it?” Stockton resident Yolanda Amen said. “You put it in your slides. That’s why we’re here.”
Lawrence Calderon, another Stockton resident, focused on what the plan did not say.
“I feel like we glossed over it, didn’t really talk about it,” Calderon said.
He asked why Stockton was considering the industry, what benefits officials expected, where facilities could potentially be located and how residents living nearby would be informed.
Others argued that questioning large data centers did not amount to rejecting AI or technology.
Matthew Amen, founder and CEO of Huddle AI, a Stockton-based startup developing decentralized, privacy-focused AI tools, and co-owner of Huddle CoWork in downtown Stockton, urged officials to consider decentralized computing infrastructure rather than rely on large corporate data-center campuses.
“I urge this council and economic development to invest in the intelligence of our people, protect our natural resources, and back local innovators who build independent infrastructure rather than corporate data pipelines that leave Stockton in the dark,” Amen said.
Spencer Fern, science program manager for Restore the Delta and a District 3 resident, raised concerns about adding industrial development in a region already facing environmental pressures.
The concerns come as data centers are becoming a larger part of electricity demand in California. The state has more than 200 active data centers, which accounted for about 1,000 megawatts, or 2% of peak demand on the California Independent System Operator grid, in early 2026, according to the California Energy Commission. The commission projects that figure could reach about 4,500 megawatts, or 9% of peak demand, by 2040.
Nationally, a 2026 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analysis estimated that data centers could consume about 11.8% of U.S. electricity by 2030 in its reference case, with modeled scenarios ranging from about 9.5% to 15.3%.
Because data centers can vary substantially in size, electricity demand and cooling technology, the details of any particular proposal are critical to understanding its potential effects.
Council removes data centers pending public review
Councilmember Mario Enriquez said the city should have sought community input before placing data centers in an economic plan covering 2026 through 2028.
“When we put that word in a document to say that this is the economic development plan for the city, it is going to activate people,” Enriquez said.
Enriquez said he would have preferred the process to happen in the opposite order: hold listening sessions first, then return with an economic-development plan reflecting what officials heard.
He ultimately moved to remove data centers while those meetings take place. Councilmember Mariela Ponce seconded the motion.
Vice Mayor Jason Lee said no future data-center development should move ahead without extensive public discussion.
“There should be no data centers developed or approved by staff without public discussion and without a minimum of this council voting on it,” Lee said.
Lee also asked staff to eventually provide maps showing where facilities could potentially be located in relation to homes, along with information about their resource demands and plans to address significant environmental effects.
Councilmember Brando Villapudua said he would not support data-center development based on what he heard Tuesday. Ponce separately raised questions about residential water availability, electricity rates, noise and quality of life.
Noguera said the city plans to hold community listening sessions, and City Manager Johnny Ford said they could begin around mid-November. Ford emphasized that no particular site or development proposal is currently before the council.
What Stockton knows — and doesn’t — about the data center it already has
While officials say no new proposal is before the city, Stockton already has more than five years of experience with the industry.
Nautilus Data Technologies commissioned its Stockton facility at the Port in December 2020 and began serving customers in January 2021. It reached full capacity in 2023 and now serves about 10 customers, according to the company.
As of June, Nautilus said the facility was about 88% utilized, supporting AI, cloud storage, local government and enterprise customers. Spokesperson Claire Brunner said the facility employs 10 full-time workers, all San Joaquin County residents.
What is not publicly known is how much electricity it actually uses.
The facility has 6.5 megawatts of capacity, but Nautilus has declined to disclose its actual electricity use, citing confidentiality agreements. The company said consumption is “notably less” than its maximum capacity.
The Port of Stockton also declined Stocktonia’s public-records request for the facility’s electricity-use records, citing state restrictions on disclosing an individual utility customer’s energy consumption.
As a result, Stockton is weighing whether data centers belong in its future economic strategy without publicly available data showing how much electricity the one already operating in the city uses.
Stockton is not merely home to that facility. The city is one of its customers.
Stockton contracts with Poseidon One LLC, a Nautilus subsidiary, for backup data-center services at the Port. A February city memorandum said the facility provides disaster recovery and business continuity for “all public safety network infrastructure,” reducing the risk that city systems go down during emergencies, environmental disasters or cyberattacks.
The agreement runs through February 2027 and carries a total contract value of $46,900. Stockton pays $1,450 per month for infrastructure, power and a fiber connection.
A monitoring violation and a conflicting company claim
Nautilus also offers Stockton an existing record of the environmental oversight that can accompany data-center operations.
Its facility uses San Joaquin River water in an intake-and-discharge cooling system. About 6.5 million gallons per day can move through that system, according to regulatory records, though that does not mean Nautilus consumes 6.5 million gallons daily. The water passes through a non-contact heat-exchange process before being discharged back into the river.
That interaction is subject to environmental monitoring.
In June 2024, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board issued Nautilus a notice of violation after required weekly temperature monitoring was not conducted at one receiving-water location.
Regulators said a new field crew was being trained and required no further action for that specific violation, while also directing Nautilus to correct other reporting deficiencies.
The violation did not establish that Nautilus polluted the river, exceeded a temperature limit or caused ecological harm. But the state record conflicts with what Nautilus told Stocktonia in June: that its water sampling showed the facility had been “fully compliant with no violations.”
Kimberlee Roberson, founder and executive director of The Paradisiac Planetary Earth Institute, a California environmental auditing and systems-analysis organization, said Stockton should use the existing facility as a case study before recruiting another.
“Revenue should not be the starting point,” Roberson said. “Environmental limits, infrastructure capacity, public health and enforceable safeguards should be established first.”
County supervisors are asking similar questions
Stockton’s debate unfolded the same day San Joaquin County supervisors took their own step toward developing rules for an industry local officials are still trying to understand.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously directed county staff to spend six months studying large-scale AI and high-intensity data centers in unincorporated areas, including their potential effects on agriculture, water, electricity, land use, the environment, public safety and county finances.
Supervisors also directed County Counsel Edward J. Kiernan to determine whether a temporary moratorium could be legally justified during the study. No moratorium was adopted Tuesday, and any future restrictions would apply only to unincorporated San Joaquin County, not Stockton.
For now, Stockton has removed data centers from the economic-development strategy that triggered Tuesday’s turnout. The city says it will return to residents before deciding whether to put them back.
Roberson said the public should have enough information to weigh not just the potential economic benefits of future data centers, but also their costs.
“Transparency means giving the public enough information to independently evaluate both the benefits and the burdens,” Roberson said.