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Every Thursday, Indivisible co-founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg host a participatory conversation on the week’s news, the state of our democracy, and our plan to defeat the authoritarian threats we face.
📢 Tyranny Tuesday, September 8, 2026
📉Water You Thinking, Nevada?
🔍THE CLAIM: Data centers are unlike any industrial neighbor Nevada has permitted before — they consume power like a city, water like a farm, and land like a military base, while employing almost no one. Left to federal fast-tracking and industry self-policing, they will drive up utility bills, drain the desert’s scarcest resource, and hand our public lands to billion-dollar tech firms with zero local vote. Local and state governments — not Washington, and not the companies themselves — must set the rules on siting, water use, emissions, noise, and rate protection before more of these projects lock in.
💣ENERGY USE & YOUR POWER BILL
A single hyperscale data center can draw as much electricity as hundreds of thousands of homes. EESI reports utilities requested over $29 billion in rate hikes in just the first half of 2025 — double the prior year — largely to cover grid buildout for this demand, with U.S. residential electricity prices up roughly 27% since 2019 and projected to climb up to 40% more by 2030. Forbes reports 2026 modeling from NC State, Carnegie Mellon and other researchers finds data-center and crypto demand could push wholesale power prices up 6–29% nationally, and as high as 57% in the hardest-hit regions. Industry-funded studies claim data centers spread fixed grid costs and can lower rates — but who pays, and how much, depends on rate rules state regulators haven’t finished writing. That’s why local oversight matters now, before the bill comes due.
📣AIR & NOISE POLLUTION
To get power fast, developers are installing unpermitted gas turbines — literally jet engines — on-site, running 24/7. In Southaven, Mississippi, residents near an xAI facility describe a constant roar radiating air pollution and “organ-vibrating” noise; in Prince William County, Virginia, U.S. News reports neighbors linking chronic exposure to data-center noise with sleep disturbance, hypertension, and cardiovascular strain. Nevada has no guarantee these turbines land somewhere else.
❄️ WATER IN THE DRIEST STATE IN AMERICA
A large data center can consume up to 5 million gallons a day — comparable to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people, per EESI. The Las Vegas Review-Journal found 23 Southern Nevada data centers used more than 716 million gallons in 2024 alone. Western Resource Advocates projects data centers across Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico could consume 7 billion gallons a year by 2035 — even as the Colorado River system sits near roughly a third of storage capacity and Nevada is under mandated cuts to its river allocation. More than half of Nevada’s groundwater basins are already over-allocated. Every gallon a server farm cools with is a gallon not going to Nevada families, farms, or the river itself.
✊PUBLIC LAND, SOLD WITHOUT A VOTE
In June 2026, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Townsite Data Center on roughly 87 acres of BLM land in the Eldorado Valley near Boulder City — the first AI data center ever approved on U.S. public land — by simply repurposing a 2023 environmental review written for a solar farm, with no new review and no public comment. It leans on Trump’s July 2025 executive order directing agencies to fast-track data-center permitting on federal land. Boulder City, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Biological Diversity are appealing; Nevada is 88% public land, and advocates warn this becomes the blueprint for the entire West. Days ago, defending the backlash, President Trump warned communities that reject these projects: “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame… China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement.” That is not local consent. That is a threat.
🚨NEVADA’S REGULATORS DECIDE THIS SEPT. 8
On September 8, the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN) rules on Fleet Data Centers’ request to build two private methane gas plants — over 360 megawatts, enough for roughly 396,000 homes — at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, less than 30 miles from Reno, per Nevada Current. The plants would burn about three times the gas NV Energy’s entire Northern Nevada residential and commercial base used in 2025, and advocacy group Nevadans for Clean Affordable Reliable Energy estimates they’d raise statewide emissions nearly 12% while developers argue they’re exempt from Nevada’s 50%-by-2030 renewable standard — a loophole that could open the door statewide. This summer, the PUCN also denied a requested public session on NV Energy’s data-center-driven 2027 resource plan, and canceled or rescheduled others after crowds waited outside in triple-digit heat. This is our regulator, deciding our air and energy future, with the public locked further out.
✊A MORAL RECKONING
These facilities exist to package, compress, and sell something that belongs to all of us: the accumulated knowledge, art, and labor of humanity, scraped and monetized as “AI,” while the communities hosting the machinery breathe the exhaust, absorb the noise, and pay for the water and power. A civilization’s shared knowledge should not be enclosed, metered, and sold back to the public that created it — least of all at the cost of the desert we live in.
✊WHO WINS, WHO PAYS
Consumer Reports and Food & Water Watch estimate the entire U.S. data center industry employs as few as 23,000 people nationwide, and business-school research published in late 2025 found no clear evidence data centers stimulate local tech employment. The wealth concentrates upward — to chipmakers, hyperscalers, and their investors — while clerical, creative, customer-service, and entry-level knowledge workers face the sharpest AI-driven disruption. Nevada gets the turbines, the water bills, and the noise; Silicon Valley gets the returns.
✊THIS IS NOT A PARTISAN FIGHT
A June 2026 poll found 63% of likely voters want a nationwide pause on new data centers — including 67% of Democrats, 66% of Independents, and 58% of Republicans. Moratorium bills have drawn co-sponsors from both parties, and opposition has organized in red and blue states alike, from rural Pennsylvania to Prince William County, Virginia to Boulder City. This is a fight over water, air, noise, and electricity bills — and it belongs to every Nevadan, regardless of party.
🔍Sources: EESI, Consumer Reports, Forbes, Newsweek, Sierra Club, Center for Western Priorities, Electrek, Yale Climate Connections, Western Resource Advocates, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada Current, ABC News, Washington Times, U.S. News & World Report.
✊ JOIN US
📅 Date: September 8, 2026
🕙 Time: 10:00–11:00
📍 Location: Bruce R. Thompson Courthouse and Federal Building, 400 S. Virginia St., Reno, NV, 89501 Register Here: ✊
🦺 PLEASE NOTE: INNV supports non-violent participation in civic events. By registering and attending this event, attendees take full responsibility for keeping themselves safe by following instructions from Marshals, staying within the boundaries of the event, and de-escalating situations if you are confronted.