Brighton City Council voted Tuesday night, Oct. 6, to move ahead with a one-year moratorium on data-center applications, extending a six-month pause initially proposed by city staff. The decision followed hours of public comment and came as city officials announced that an application for a proposed data-center campus near Lochbuie had been withdrawn. The project, identified in city documents as the Silo or Willard Property proposal, envisioned eight two-story buildings of about 315,000 square feet each on a 155-acre site near Brighton’s border with Lochbuie. The buildings would have totaled more than 2.5 million square feet. Construction had not begun. Residents at the meeting questioned how a development of that scale could affect water supplies, electricity demand, noise, air quality, traffic and nearby homes. Some speakers supported data centers’ potential to bring jobs, tax revenue and infrastructure investment, while calling for safeguards against higher utility costs and pressure on water resources. Brighton resident Stacey Baca, who used an open-records request to learn more about the proposal, urged council members to take time to evaluate its potential effects. Lisa Burin, a resident of the Homestead neighborhood near the proposed site, told the council the concerns were about health and safety, not opposition to technology. Mayor Pro Tem Peter Padilla, who asked that the moratorium be considered, said Brighton’s existing land-use rules do not adequately define data centers or set requirements for them. He said the city needs time to study effects on water and wastewater, conservation, air and noise, power, infrastructure and construction before establishing rules for future proposals. The moratorium is intended to pause the acceptance, processing or approval of data-center applications while the city develops its approach. The proposed site could affect residents outside Brighton as well: the property is near Lochbuie, which approved a five-year data-center moratorium earlier this year. Padilla announced during a break in Tuesday’s meeting that the application tied to the Brighton campus had been withdrawn. That ends the current application’s review, but does not prevent the same applicant or another developer from proposing a project at the site later.