KVIG Informative

As Nevada communities push for moratoriums on data centers, the industry’s national trade group has a consistent response: the public’s fears are based on outdated information. It’s a talking point built for exactly this fight.

Dan Diorio, a representative of the national trade group Data Center Coalition, has been pushing back publicly on Nevada opposition to data center development, arguing that so-called closed-loop cooling systems — which don’t allow water to evaporate — have been standard for years, and that public concern reflects outdated assumptions about older, water-intensive cooling technology.

Diorio has pointed to a 2024 Virginia Legislature study finding that 83% of data centers use as much water or less than a typical large commercial office building, a statistic he’s cited directly in response to Nevada coverage of the issue.

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Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger has offered a more measured version of the same argument, saying that since Southern Nevada banned evaporative cooling in new development in 2024, tech companies have proposed several data centers using closed-loop systems with near-zero water footprints.

Not everyone finds the industry’s framing reassuring. Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, said her organization has spent months urging Henderson officials to adopt moratoriums and tighten city code ahead of the 2027 legislative session, arguing that water usage is only one of several unresolved concerns, alongside noise, air pollution and heat generation that haven’t been the subject of significant academic study.

The bigger constraint may not be water at all. NV Energy has received requests to serve 39 proposed data center projects statewide, drawing a projected 16,530 megawatts of demand between northern and southern Nevada — a volume that puts the state’s legally mandated 2030 clean energy targets at risk, according to Tanager.

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Tanager’s organization has proposed a sliding-scale business impact fee that would require data centers to compensate communities based on the scale of their impact, along with stricter emissions standards for the diesel backup generators most facilities rely on.

The industry’s message is consistent: the water fears are outdated, the technology has changed, the public just needs better information. Whether that message survives contact with a 16,530-megawatt demand spike and a legislative session still more than a year away is the fight Nevada hasn’t had yet.