NYE COUNTY (KTNV) — Nye County commissioners passed new rules that expand the county's regulation on data centers.
You might remember the county recently passed a permanent ban on new data center construction in August — but that regulation only applied to the Pahrump Valley. (A lawsuit challenging that ban has since been filed.)
Additional rules passed on Thursday apply to data centers that would be built anywhere else in the county, which is Nevada's largest by geographic area at approximately 18,000 square miles.
The nearly-200-page ordinance contains a number of provisions to regulate any future data center construction, including:
- Requiring data center developers to get a special use permit and development agreement
- Banning the construction of data centers in all residential and agricultural districts
- Requiring any developer applying to build a data center to cover infrastructure costs, including the cost of energy
- Prohibiting data centers from using more than 1.5 acre-feet of water, per acre, per year
- Banning the use of evaporative cooling or release of process air emissions (meaning a data center could not release gas or vapor byproducts into the atmosphere)
The ordinance is expected to take effect on Oct. 28.
Watch Nye County residents react to the data center ban approved in August:
As locals continue to raise concerns about data centers in Southern Nevada, Channel 13 has worked to get answers that help you understand what's happening in your community. Our five-part "Data vs. Desert" series delves into the issues at the center of this discussion and addresses concerns you've shared with us. Find out more at ktnv.com/datacenters.
