DATA CENTERS

Northern Nevada is home to a number of data centers, and more are planned or under construction. They are unique in their astonishing appetites for water, electricity, and land, along with their potential environmental damage. But they also offer jobs and significant local and state tax revenue. It is up to local officials—county commissioners, city councils and supervisors—to weigh the costs and benefits and permit, or not, data centers in their communities. This is and should always be a local decision, but because data centers can have a wide-ranging impact on the lives of all Nevadans there is also a role for the State Government:  
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• No tax abatements for data centers. Corporations choose Nevada for their data centers for a number of reasons having nothing to do with taxes. Tax abatements for them are a pointless giveaway. 
• The Legislature must establish baseline requirements and a permitting process that apply state-wide and protect against the worst excesses of data centers. No project will be approved unless and until it meets certain requirements, including: 
  • Water: Data center water use must not impact neighboring residential, municipal, or commercial water right holders. Data centers’ disproportionate water consumption does not contribute to local and regional economies in the same way as well-integrated agricultural, commercial, or residential users. Should conflicts arise, data centers must defer to these other users.   
  • Electricity: Data centers’ appetite for electrical power goes far beyond normal levels of industrial, commercial, or residential consumption. The cost of expanding the electrical grid and other infrastructure to meet this singular demand must be paid by the data centers themselves and not passed on to consumers. Nor should other ratepayers pay any price increases caused by data centers’ distortion of supply and demand in the electricity marketplace. 
  • Environment: Create an office within the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (NDEP) to provide local governments with resources and expertise to assist in the evaluation of data center project applications. This would include a neutral analysis of environmental, social, economic, and other impacts currently not addressed by NDEP and beyond the capabilities of most local governments.  ​

The bottom line here is that the burden is on data centers to prove they are not going to take our water, make us pay for their electricity, or ruin our environment. It is the Legislature’s job to hold them to this standard, and as your Assemblyman I will make sure that happens.

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