Proposed data center draws ire of some Boulder City residents
An ambivalent crowd of about 100 milled around a Boulder City building Tuesday afternoon, some unconvinced that a data center is the right move for the town that built Hoover Dam.
Because despite being located next to the nation’s largest reservoir and hydropower dam, developers will need to look elsewhere for both energy and water. Rick Lammers, manager of development for the proposed project, Townsite Solar 2, flew in from Houston to meet residents and answer their questions.
“We like to listen to what people are telling us, especially before we start the construction,” Lammers said. “We continue to do that after projects begin operations.”
Boulder City residents have caused an uproar over the proposed 88.5-acre data center, with an online petition circulating that had garnered 2,100 signatures in opposition to it as of Tuesday evening.
In an interview last month, Boulder City Mayor Joe Hardy said the city is being careful to attract development and revenue through land leases while ensuring that data centers would find power generation elsewhere so that the city-owned utility doesn’t raise rates for everyday people.
According to Lammers, the company would pay the city $1.46 million annually to lease the land — more than double what it would pay for a solar farm and battery storage.
Brynn deLorimier, a resident who started the petition, said the city officials have, so far, blown past community concerns in public meetings. She and her partner have decorated the sign at the historic Flamingo Inn Motel with lettering that reads: “Dear City Council No Data Centers in BC.”
“This city has a goal of ramming this through come hell or high water,” deLorimier said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them progress so fast and so aggressively on any other contract.”
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Voters to weigh in this November
Separately, Boulder City residents will consider a ballot question this November about whether data centers can proceed in what’s known as the Eldorado Valley Transfer Area. To move forward with a new type of project for that 107,400-acre land area, according to the Boulder City charter, voters must approve it as an acceptable land use.
It does not apply to the Townsite Solar 2 data center, which is outside of that zone.
DeLorimier said the Feb. 24 City Council meeting at which officials approved the ballot question coincided with her birthday, but that didn’t stop her from tuning in and speaking remotely during public comment.
Much like her peers interviewed at the event, deLorimier said she did not find herself convinced by the “dog-and-pony show” on Tuesday afternoon that she felt left little room for fact-checking or pushback.
“It doesn’t make that much for our city,” deLorimier said of the data center. “It seems like a very tiny amount to sell out for.”
Tara Davis, 40, said she has taken her children, ages 8 and 10, to protest against data centers coming to the city, where her husband was raised. Before coming to the event, Davis took her children to a dollar store to make signs, and they even persuaded a store employee to attend the town hall after asserting that a data center could increase disease.
Some studies have linked air pollutants from data centers to increased respiratory diseases, cardiovascular conditions and cancer risks, according to the nonprofit Environmental Health Project.
“I don’t feel like it needs to be here, especially for my kids’ future,” Davis said.
The unseen health impacts and lack of acknowledgment from city officials could drive Cherubael Laub, 24, away from Boulder City long term, Laub said. The resident feels betrayed by Hardy, who was Laub’s childhood physician.
“Mayor Hardy was Dr. Hardy for me, and he was one of the doctors who used to be up in arms about how (pollution) affected my life,” Laub said. “When I stand before the man who saved my life and hear him say, ‘That’s not something to be concerned about,’ it’s absolutely heartbreaking.”
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Some concerns have already broken through
Since submitting an initial proposal for a lease that the Boulder City Council approved to move forward, Lammers and his company, backed by a Texas-based hedge fund management firm, have made changes in response to residents.
Boulder City remains the only Southern Nevada user of Lake Mead that does not return its water back to the reservoir. That’s because of a lack of infrastructure — a problem that the Southern Nevada Water Authority has spent millions to solve to no avail.
The developer floated an idea to use that treated wastewater from the city plant to cool off its computer systems. But Lammers said that after community input, and after conversations with the water authority confirming that its 2024 ban on so-called “evaporative cooling” would still apply to wastewater, the company has backed off.
“We made that pivot,” Lammers said. “We heard you loud and clear. And we’ll continue to do that.”
The main driver of the data center race is power generation, analysts say. Lammers said the goal is to buy power from nearby utilities in California and Arizona, transmitting it to a water authority energy line nearby.
Such high energy demands have led NV Energy to admit it might fall short of the state’s clean energy mandate of 50 percent renewables before 2030. Lammers believes that renewable energy will play a role in the data center’s portfolio but said the company has not ruled out any one source.
In a brief interview, City Manager Ned Thomas said residents may notice processes moving faster because of an expiring existing lease. That plot of land is already authorized to house solar panels and battery storage, but that go-ahead will sour at the end of the year.
Generally, the city’s processes to see a lease through can take multiple years, Thomas said.
“We hear a lot about data centers in this community or that community,” the city manager said. “But the difference here is that the city owns the land, and that gives us a tremendous amount of influence and control over what project is built, how it’s built, and how it’s operated and maintained.”
