PAHRUMP (KTNV) — The Nye County Board of Commissioners approved a data center ban Tuesday night — a decision the majority of locals in that area were glad to see.
WATCH | Ryan Ketcham heard from residents on both sides of the data center debate:
"I'm just like everybody else. I'm concerned about our groundwater, not just for this community, but Las Vegas," said Kelly Stillwell, a Pahrump resident who has lived in the area for more than 16 years.
Stillwell, who spoke at Tuesday's meeting, said he welcomed the board's decision. He said the biggest reason he is against data centers is environmental concerns.
"Well, I'm glad they did the ban," Stillwell said.
During Tuesday's nine-hour meeting, the board approved the ban for the Pahrump area and Water Basin 162. This ban does not apply county-wide, though, so the commissioners also decided to move forward to create rules and regulations a company would have to follow to bring a data center to other parts of the county through a development agreement.
They will meet Sept. 14 during a special meeting at 10 a.m.
Not everyone approved of that decision. Pahrump resident William Grubel was among a small number of data center supporters who addressed the board.
"The votes taken, that's lost, but I think Pahrump lost big-time with it as well," Grubel said.
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Grubel said the debate has turned personal, telling me he has faced threats of his own from those who don't support data centers.
"I've received threatening emails. I've been threatened over Facebook," he said.
The meeting also drew a sharp comment from Pahrump resident Toni Hoverman.
"This data center goes in and there's going to be an automatic 30,000 people pissed, and I don't know how many of them carry. I'm just letting y'all know that," said Hoverman, who was later kicked out of the meeting.
Questions remain about at least one major proposed project already in the pipeline, the Manse Technology Campus.
It's an $18 billion, 900-acre data center development planned for the Manse Road Corridor in Pahrump.
The county has declined to comment on the project's status, and the company had not responded to a request for comment at the time this story was published.
Since the ban does not cover all of Nye County, the broader data center debate in the region remains on the table for now.
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