The Truckee Meadows is changing, as is the course of life. Some of that change is arriving faster than our policies, our infrastructure, and our public processes were written, built, and implemented to handle. Data centers are among the clearest examples. Over the past 16 months, Reno and the region have been asked to absorb a new generation of high-energy, resource-intensive land use - one with real implications for our water, our grid, our neighborhoods, and the communities downstream of us - without clear, appropriate rules for applicants and residents alike, the public process this kind of decision warrants, or the regional coordination that decisions of this consequence demand. What follows is a brief record offered in good faith - in the hope that it helps all of us, especially those in final decision-making roles, navigate what comes next with clearer eyes and steadier hands, and with a reminder that being business-friendly and being community-responsible aren't competing aims - and in good governance, shouldn't be. For the past 16 months, community responsibility has too often been left behind. The months ahead don't have to repeat that.
This is fundamentally about whether we plan our municipalities and region intentionally - with the right guidelines, real predictability for applicants and residents, and respect for community input and long-term community benefit, not just short-term gains, across economic, workforce, environmental, and community-character dimensions, including downstream communities such as Fernley and Fallon, and tribal nations such as the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe - or whether we keep approving consequential land uses one negotiation at a time, against rules built for warehouses. Data centers are not warehouses 18.03.306 (b)(1).
A note on where I'm coming from: I'm a lifelong Reno-ite with deep community roots, raised in the Old Northeast and Old Southeast neighborhoods of historical Ward 3, with three years of public service as a Reno Planning Commissioner and over two decades in industry, including time at Tesla in product engineering, design, and community outreach, among other roles. I bring all those perspectives to this conversation - and a systems-thinking lens that holds them together. I have a strong bias for action. Not action for its own sake - action grounded in good, reliable information, real partnership, and the work of getting things right. Not perfect, but right - and moving, with a continuous-improvement mindset.
This recap is offered in that spirit.
The Record: 16 Months in Brief
The first hyperscale data center came before Reno 16 months ago, in December 2024. Yes, 16 months ago - it's been a minute. Fellow Reno Planning Commissioners Rohrmeier, Villanueva, and Del Villar raised these concerns alongside me from the start - grounded in resident input, in planning best practices, and well within our advisory purview to Council. On December 10, 2024 - just days after that first application - I brought before Council, on behalf of that shared concern, a proposal for a temporary six-month pause to do the research and craft standards built for this kind of land use. When that proposal wasn't substantively engaged, I followed up in early 2025 with a formal resolution before the Reno Planning Commission, and presented the case for the moratorium and accompanying text amendment research the following month.
“[…]With data centers becoming a focal point of discussion both locally and nationally, a brief and focused pause would provide an opportunity to refine the limited tools and administrative interpretations currently guiding our decisions. This approach ensures future projects align with the Reno Master Plan’s principles of sustainability, economic growth, workforce development, and quality of life for all residents, enabling us to lead with strategy rather than reactively addressing challenges at each meeting.[…]” — January - February 2025 Reno Planning Commission Moratorium and Text Amendment Resolution Proposal to Reno City Council as reported on by The Barber Brief, This is Reno, among others
At the same time, parallel action took shape at the regional level - unanimously supported.
Commissioner Becerra Made a Motion to Direct Staff to Include Data Center Requests and Approvals Within the Agency's Existing Land Use Tracking Scheme and to Perform Further Research to Understand the Regional Benefits and Impacts of Data Centers and to What Degree This Land Use Could Trigger Regional Review or Policy Application, Seconded by Commissioner Pierce. The Motion Carried Unanimously With Eight (8) Commissioners Present. — Jan. 23, 2025, Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Commission
Commissioner Becerra Made a Motion to Accept the Report on Data Centers and Direct Staff to Present It to the RPGB and to Continue Their Work and Include It in the Strategic Work Plan Moving Forward, Seconded by Commissioner Pierce. The Motion Carried Unanimously With Nine (9) Commissioners Present.
— March 27, 2025, Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Commission
The timing was both swift and deliberate. The Nevada legislative session was kicking off in February, and a brief pause would have opened a window for coordinated work locally, regionally, and statewide.
What followed at the City of Reno was different. Rather than substantive engagement, the City of Reno rejected the moratorium and text amendment request on Feb. 26 (2025), and pursued an attempt - reported on here, here, here, etc. - through its management and lobbyist, to alter state law (SB48) in ways that would have weakened planning commissioner independence.
“We remain deeply concerned with the way the city of Reno introduced these amendments,” three Reno planning commissioners said in testimony to the Legislature. “That is not how trust is built in civic governance.” — Proposed amendment to allow at-will firing of Reno planning commissioners stripped from bill (May 28, 2025)
The work continued anyway. As they say in Mexican and Latin families across the Truckee Meadows and beyond - including in mine - porque no hay de otra. Because there's no other way.
Who Showed Up
Council members Meghan Ebert, Naomi Duerr, and now-Vice Mayor Miguel Martinez had the foresight and courage to act alongside us and all stakeholders in February 2025. So did the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Commission - led at the time by then-Chair Dr. Kerry D. Rohrmeier and continuing today under Chair Rob Pierce - along with TMRPA's Dr. Jeremy Smith and his dedicated staff, and - shortly after - City of Sparks Council Member Dian VanderWell and her planning team, including Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill. The Reno Sunrise Movement, The Black Community Collective, Make the Road NV, the Energy Coalition - comprised of Th!rd Act Nevada, the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter and other organizations - former NV Secretary of State and Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, and many engaged residents - Jordyn D., Cathy Fulkerson, Robbin Palmer, Bari Levinson, and many others - across our wards showed up at hearing after hearing from the beginning, putting their concerns on the public record while it still mattered.
“I think we can do better.” — Meghan Ebert, Reno Council member, Ward 4 (Jan. 28, 2025)
When Reno leadership cancelled, at the last minute, a joint Reno Planning Commission and City Council meeting on data center policy in fall 2025 - a meeting that should have happened and didn't, which was already rescheduled before - that early coalition stepped up to fill the gap. In October 2025, it took formal shape as the Truckee Meadows Data Center Policy Consortium, which has since grown to more than 70 stakeholder member participants across the region: the Desert Research Institute (DRI), the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency (TMRPA), Reno's senior and long-range planner Lauren Knox, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Water Over Data Alliance (WODA), Western Resource Advocates (WRA), The Guinn Center, UNR’s Office of Government and Community Relations, Washoe County and neighboring municipalities such as Storey County, Lyon County, and the City of Sparks; applicant representatives from small to large firms; and a broad cross-section of area businesses, residents, professionals, and current and former elected officials at the local, state and federal level - including former Nevada State Treasurer and Lt. Governor Kate Marshall.
The Consortium exists to help close the loop. And the day it does, it closes itself.
Local journalists have also done substantive work covering this issue from the start - reporters at This is Reno, KUNR, The Barber Brief, The Nevada Independent, RGJ, Our Town Reno and others - helping the public stay informed as it unfolded. Had the rest of the Reno City Council joined them, we'd be at least 10 months into a thoughtful, iterated ordinance today - not scrambling to draft one a month before a primary, alongside other pressing issues facing the city.
Power and Water: Two Challenges, All Voices
One of the central challenges of this emerging land use is power - where to source it, how to deliver it without straining the grid or pushing costs onto ratepayers, and how to give applicants predictable standards aligned with our city, regional, and state sustainability and energy goals. It also requires being good stewards of natural resources that are finite in some cases - water especially - and of the generations that come after us.
“In Nevada, we can’t create water, but we can create energy.” Planning Commissioner Kerry Rohrmeier said data centers warrant deeper consideration: “Energy and climate are generally the issues of our time,” she said. “We happen to live in a geography with cheap energy and good climate. And so I don’t want to give it all away at the expense of the … future of our city.” — Council approves another Reno data center despite ongoing public outcry, This is Reno (March 14, 2025)
Real conversations are happening around this, both in our region and across the country. And right in our backyard, working examples already exist.
Already Working, Right Next Door
Right next door in Storey County, for instance, Redwood Materials and Crusoe have been powering AI compute through a renewable micro-grid since June 2025 - proof that what’s been called untenable can add resiliency to our aging grid rather than strain to it, protect ratepayers during peak hours, and rethink electrical infrastructure strategically and at scale. The same system passed every applicable test under the latest fire safety standard for battery storage (UL 9540A, 6th Edition), including voluntary deflagration tests - directly addressing the kind of community safety questions that should be on every application. Now imagine the public benefit if excess capacity from high-energy projects like data centers routinely flowed back into the grid during peak hours - as a floor, not a ceiling agreement - reducing costs and building resiliency in the fastest-warming city in the country and across the Silver State.
From Recruitment to Partnership
Innovative companies ready to be part of the solution are already here. In most cases, they've been recruited to do business here. The next step, where not already, is intentionally partnering with them - the way good companies test and iterate on their own products internally to improve them. We should be doing the same with what's being built in our region: learning from these working systems, drawing on the expertise behind them, and engaging the people running these companies as partners and neighbors with talent worth tapping - not just businesses worth recruiting. Recruit and partner, not just recruit and hope. The harder question is why we so rarely require, or even expect, this kind of mutually beneficial design from developers in projects this consequential. The conversations ahead - across our region's planning bodies, our county and city councils, and the next Nevada Legislative session - are where that can change.
Water Is Life
Power is one challenge. Water is another - and arguably the deeper one, here in the high desert.
The same partnership ethic applies, and arguably more so, to our sovereign tribal nations - whose government-to-government relationship to this land and its waters predates every map, line, and ordinance we operate under today.
Water is life: stewardship the Paiute people and their partners have long carried, and every land use decision echoes downstream - to Pyramid Lake, to Fernley and Fallon, to communities and ecosystems that depend on what we choose to do upstream. Just as we should be partnering with industry rather than reviewing their projects in isolation, we should be partnering with tribal nations and downstream communities in shaping these decisions from the start - not consulting them after the work is done.
“[...]I hope that folks can show up on May 14th at City Hall demand a ban on data center development and specifically ask for a moratorium[...]” — Autumn Harry, River Justice
Voice in shaping outcomes is what makes a decision legitimate.
And the Other Considerations
Power and water are a couple of the most visible challenges, but not the only ones. Noise and ambient heat, siting and neighborhood compatibility, cumulative regional effects, infrastructure resiliency and the costs ratepayers and taxpayers bear, and community benefit agreements - among other considerations - all belong in any serious framework. Predictability has to cut both ways: clarity for applicants, and certainty for residents and future generations that quality of life isn’t traded for short-term gains.
Nevada has seen enough boom-and-bust cycles to know the difference between fast money and lasting prosperity.
Closing the Loop
Across data center policy and other consequential decisions before the City, region, and state, we’ve operated under a false binary - that being business-friendly and being community-responsible are at odds. They aren’t, and they shouldn’t be. We can be both, and we must be.
Closing the loop on stakeholder input - public, tribal, or otherwise - means letting that input actually shape outcomes, and explaining transparently when it doesn't and why. Voice limited only to review erodes trust - precisely what we've seen here, where input from the planning commission, the public, and tribal nations alike was not visibly incorporated, or even acknowledged, in the code provisions that reached Council for first and second readings in late 2024 and the start of 2025. That's the very under-specified Land Development Code now governing data center applications in Reno. This can change - and is already underway.
The next 16 months and beyond can be built on strategic partnerships grounded in sound judgment, community values, real performance, and lasting benefits. That’s what moves a region forward.
Any stakeholder operating in good faith can get behind a clear framework - one with sensible guardrails, predictability for everyone, and lasting community benefit that listens beyond its own borders: to tribal nations and downstream communities, to neighboring municipalities and counties, to Cold Springs in the North Valleys and the California border immediately to our west, and to the generations still to come. And listening alone isn't enough - those voices, sovereign tribal nations especially, must shape outcomes, not just review them after the fact. A good framework hears those echoes before they happen, or before they compound when some already have. Our professional planners are more than equipped to design that framework when empowered to do so with stakeholders. Much of the groundwork is already done: the Truckee Meadows Data Center Policy Consortium's 70+ member participants - residents, planners, researchers, industry, conservation, a few individual elected officials, and more - have been doing this work and bringing it to local, regional and state decision-making bodies for over a year.
The next moment is here, too: on May 14, the Reno City Council will finally take up a data center moratorium and accompanying text amendments. Business or resident, supporter or skeptic - the room is yours. Show up.
The work is here. The people are here. The path is here. Let's close the loop.
See also: PDF Version
Related posts
Dec. 16, 2024 - Hot Topics: Data Centers (the start of it all)
Feb. 2, 2025 - Should the City place a moratorium on data centers?
Feb. 26, 2025 - No text amendment or moratorium for data centers by Reno City Council
Apr. 26, 2026 - Never a dull moment in Reno development
