On September 8, 2026, Governor Healey signed Executive Order 658, and the order of operations for building a data center in Massachusetts flipped. Until Monday, a developer could tie up a site under a code name, file with the state, and meet the host town at the hearing. As of Monday, for any project over 25 megawatts, the town comes first. No community benefits agreement, no state permit.
In one sentence: Executive Order 658 requires any Massachusetts data center with peak demand above 25 megawatts to have a community benefits agreement with its host municipality, reviewed by the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity, before MassDEP, the Energy Facilities Siting Board, MEPA or any other state agency can issue a permit. The PR Bunker, led by Don Martelli, runs the community process that agreement has to rest on. The full order is walked section by section below, with each section linked to the text on mass.gov.
I have spent 25 years in the rooms where Massachusetts projects live or die, and I wrote two days before this order that the code name is the mistake developers make first. The state just agreed. Here is what the order actually says, and what a developer who wants to get built should do about it this month.
Updated October 12, 2026: added the section-by-section reference, the December 31, 2026 agency deadlines, and the DPU's September 24 interconnection directive to Eversource, National Grid and Unitil.
The order builds on the framework the administration put out on June 25, when it paused the data center sales tax exemption the Legislature created in 2024. That framework asked for five things: energy the project supplies or procures itself without raising anyone else's bill or straining the grid; a location with the water and wastewater capacity to support it, with closed-loop cooling where feasible; minimized air emissions and noise, with alternatives to diesel backup; high-quality local jobs, with project labor or labor peace agreements on anything that takes public money; and a meaningful role for the community in planning the project.
Executive Order 658 turns that last item from a request into a precondition. The community benefits agreement is now a document the state checks before it lets the permitting process start. It has to align with the standards the state published in March. And the review sits with the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity, which tells you how the state intends to read it: through the eyes of the residents closest to the fence line.
The order has fifteen sections. The text is on mass.gov. For each section: what it requires, who it binds, the deadline if there is one, and where it lands in a developer's permit path.
Requires: no permit or authorization for a data center above 25 MW unless the applicant shows conformance with the June 25 Framework (air quality, public health, water use, community engagement) and submits a community benefits agreement aligned with OEJE's standards. The applicant consults OEJE before filing, gives OEJE the draft, and files OEJE's written comments with the agreement. OEJE alone decides conformance. Agencies may not sign non-disclosure agreements with data center projects except as provided by law. Binds: MassDEP, the Energy Facilities Siting Board, MEPA and every other permitting agency; through them, the developer. Deadline: none; it applies from September 8, 2026. Permit path: this is the gate. Nothing else in the order matters to a developer until this is satisfied.
Requires: MassDEP, the EFSB, MEPA and other relevant agencies review every permit for projects above 25 MW and amend their regulations to align with the Framework, within existing authority. Binds: the agencies. Deadline: none stated. Permit path: expect rulemaking to add Framework conformance to each agency's own filing requirements over the next year.
Requires: the DPU prioritizes finishing large-load rate schedules under Executive Order 654 so other ratepayers do not pay for distribution upgrades serving data center demand. Binds: the DPU and the electric distribution companies. Permit path: the tariff you will be on, and the number the select board will ask about.
Requires: the DPU directs electric distribution companies to remove speculative projects above 25 MW from interconnection queues using fees, deposits or other requirements. Binds: the DPU, Eversource, National Grid and Unitil. Deadline: the DPU acted on September 24, 2026 (docket D.P.U. 26-DC), ordering each utility to file by October 23, 2026 a list of every load project above 25 MW in its queue, every data center above 1 MW with position, status, cost and timeline, its anti-speculation measures, and a plan to confirm that data centers above 25 MW are legitimate. Permit path: a queue position is no longer free. Expect a deposit and a legitimacy showing before a study starts.
Requires: MassDEP creates protocols requiring projects above 25 MW to procure enough incremental new clean generation to match annual consumption under the Clean Energy Standard (310 CMR 7.75), and establishes an alternative compliance payment for projects that fall short, paid into a Ratepayer Protection Fund. Binds: MassDEP; then the developer. Deadline: December 31, 2026. Permit path: the bring-your-own-clean-energy obligation, and the cost of not meeting it.
Requires: EEA and MassDEP evaluate emissions from projects above 25 MW within the Clean Energy and Climate Plan and use Chapter 21N regulations or other programs to reduce them. Binds: EEA and MassDEP. Permit path: backup generation and diesel alternatives will be scrutinized here.
Requires: MassDEP develops protocols requiring projects above 25 MW to protect water quality and quantity and show compliance with state water, wastewater and stormwater requirements. Binds: MassDEP; then the developer. Permit path: the source, the annual draw and the cooling approach, which are also the first three questions the town will ask.
Requires: EEA issues guidance for annual reporting and disclosure by operating projects above 25 MW; applicants attest with their permit applications that they will file those disclosures. Binds: EEA; then operators. Permit path: an attestation in the application, and a public annual record after opening.
Requires: EEA and EOED publish a Municipal Guidance Document for Data Center Development, built with input from municipalities, utilities, labor, environmental justice groups, businesses and the Attorney General. Binds: EEA and EOED. Deadline: December 31, 2026. Permit path: this is the playbook the town will read before it reads your agreement. Build to it.
Requires: every Commonwealth department and agency cooperates in implementing the order, including helping municipalities evaluate proposed projects. Binds: all state agencies. Permit path: the town will have state help reading your filing.
Requires: agencies encourage projects above 25 MW to use project labor agreements, labor peace agreements, local hiring, workforce training, registered apprenticeships, safe conditions and fair wages and benefits. Binds: the agencies, as encouragement rather than mandate. Permit path: the local hiring commitment in the agreement is where this gets real.
Requires: EEA, with EOED and EOTSS, reports annually to the Governor on policy, regulatory and legislative changes, covering ratepayers, workers, water, air, public health, energy supply, grid security and competitiveness, with stakeholder feedback. Deadline: first report September 2027. Permit path: the rules will keep moving; plan for that.
Defines: a data center as a building or group of buildings housing high-performance computing and storage equipment as defined in 400 CMR 9.00, built or expanded after September 8, 2026, with peak demand above 25 MW; for expansions, the trigger is an added 25 MW. Exempts: on joint decision of the EEA and EOED Secretaries, a project tied to an accredited college or university doing academic research, medical care or a state-sponsored program. Permit path: if you are near the threshold, this section decides whether the order applies to you at all.
Nothing in the order requires action inconsistent with state or federal law, and the order took effect on signing, September 8, 2026, until amended, superseded or revoked.
Three things, and the first is the one most teams will get wrong. The town is now the first filing, not the last hearing. A developer who spends nine months on interconnection studies and site engineering before opening a conversation with the host community has built a project with no path to a permit. The community work has to start when the site work starts, and the people doing it need to be in the room for the life of the project, not flown in for the agreement.
Second, the NDA ban ends the quiet phase. If the state cannot sign a confidentiality agreement, the project will be public earlier than the developer wants. That is not a problem to manage. It is the condition to plan around. The developer who introduces the project with a real company name, a real person, and real numbers at the property line gets to write the first sentence the town hears. The developer who waits gets the sentence written for them.
Third, the agreement is a test of the process, not just the money. The state's standards ask whether the community had a meaningful role. A benefits package negotiated with a select board in a closed session, then announced, will read as exactly that. An agreement that came out of listening sessions, a briefed fire chief and DPW director, abutter-view renderings and a noise study with a number in it, will read as engagement. The difference is not the dollar figure. It is whether residents can say they were asked.
If you have a Massachusetts data center project at any stage, the sequence now looks like this. Map the room: the select board or council, the planning board, the neighborhood groups, the fire chief, the DPW director, the last project's opponents, and the reporters who covered them. Brief the officials the town trusts before anything is public, with plain answers on power, water, noise and jobs. Open the community process on your terms and on the record, so the state can see it happened. Then negotiate the agreement out of what you heard, not what you assumed. Find out what the town is already saying about you before the first meeting, because in Westfield and Holyoke the opposition organized before the developers introduced themselves.
The order does not make Massachusetts a harder place to build a data center. It makes it a place where the community relations work that was always the deciding factor is now written into the permit path. The developers who treat that as the starting condition will get built. The ones who treat it as an obstacle will join the list of projects that were rejected before they were understood. The step-by-step version of getting the agreement signed, in the order that works, is in How Do You Get a Community Benefits Agreement Done for a Massachusetts Data Center Before OEJE Reviews It?
The order itself, No. 658: Establishing Requirements for Responsible Data Center Development and Operations in Massachusetts, is on mass.gov. Governor Healey's June 25, 2026 announcement pausing the data center tax incentive and setting the framework is on mass.gov. The DPU's September 24, 2026 directive to the electric distribution companies on data center interconnection requests (D.P.U. 26-DC) implements Section 4. Coverage of the September 8 order: WBUR, GBH, Marblehead Independent. For the broader 2026 siting reforms, here is what the siting law requires for community engagement.
Don Martelli has led community relations and public affairs work behind more than 165 million square feet of permitted Massachusetts development, including Suffolk Downs, MarketStreet Lynnfield, and projects that faced organized opposition and got built anyway. He is the founder of PR Bunker and president of the Revere Chamber of Commerce. If your project now needs a community benefits agreement it does not have, reach him at don@prbunker.com or schedule a call.
Signed September 8, 2026, the order covers data centers with peak electric demand above 25 megawatts built or expanded after that date. Before any state agency, including the Energy Facilities Siting Board, can issue a permit, the developer must have a community benefits agreement with the host municipality that meets the state's standards, reviewed by the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity. The order also bars non-disclosure agreements between state agencies and developers, creates a ratepayer protection fund, and expects projects to bring their own clean energy.
Under Executive Order 658, yes for projects over 25 megawatts. A community benefits agreement with the host town, conforming to the standards the state published in March 2026, is a precondition to state permitting. The practical effect is that the community conversation now has to happen first, not after the state filings.
No. Section 13 defines the covered facility as one built or expanded after September 8, 2026 with peak electric demand above 25 megawatts, and for an expansion the trigger is an added 25 megawatts. A smaller facility is outside the order, though it still faces local zoning, MEPA thresholds and the DPU's new interconnection scrutiny, which reaches every data center above 1 megawatt in a utility queue. A project sized just under the line should expect the town to ask why.
Under Section 1, the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity checks the agreement against the standards the state published in March 2026, and it alone decides whether the agreement conforms. The developer consults OEJE before filing, provides the draft, and files OEJE's written comments with the agreement. In practice the review turns on whether the community had a meaningful role in producing the agreement and whether the benefits go beyond basic mitigation, which is why the record of the process matters as much as the terms.
The state's framework points to energy that does not raise ratepayer costs, siting where water and wastewater capacity exist, minimized air emissions and noise, high-quality local jobs, and a meaningful role for the community in project planning. In practice a strong agreement names the property-line noise number, the water source and annual draw, the permanent headcount, the tax and infrastructure contributions, and how residents were consulted before it was signed.
PR Bunker, led directly by Don Martelli, with community relations and public affairs work behind more than 165 million square feet of permitted Massachusetts development. The practice maps the community, briefs the officials the town trusts, builds plain-language materials, and runs the engagement that a defensible community benefits agreement has to rest on. Start at the data center community relations practice.
No. The exemption was paused on June 25, 2026, when EOED stopped accepting applications, and the order leaves that pause in place without adding conditions or a reopening date. It only mentions the pause in its preamble. We explain what that means for developers in our page on the tax exemption and Executive Order 658.
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