The federal government established Boulder City in 1931 to house the families who helped build Hoover Dam. Nearly a century later, it remains one of just two Nevada municipalities to prohibit gambling, maintaining a time-tested habit of rejecting the same commercial sprawl that’s come to define its metropolitan neighbors.

That tradition is now being challenged by a proposal to construct an AI data center—designed to store equipment used to power AI systems, cloud computing and digital storage—on city-owned land. In recent months, hundreds of residents have mobilized in opposition, organizing protests, planting hand-painted yard signs and flooding public meetings. 

For resident Brynn deLorimier, who started a change.org petition that has garnered more than 6,200 signatures against the project, the data center question threatens Boulder City’s very identity. 

“We’re a historic town at our heart and soul, and one example of that is with respect to gambling. We’ve all said we just don’t want it in this town, even though it’s lucrative. You can do it right up the street at Railroad Pass, a five-minute drive away. We said, ‘We don’t care, we don’t want it, bring it there,’” deLorimier says.

Boulder City is hardly alone. Across Nevada and the American West, the AI boom has triggered a data center land rush that is reshaping energy grids, straining dwindling water resources and forcing communities to pick sides. Today, there are over 60 operational data centers statewide, including more than 30 in the Valley, plus dozens more that are either proposed or under construction.

These facilities already consume close to a quarter of Nevada’s electricity, according to a 2026 Desert Research Institute study that projects the figure will more than double by 2033. The state’s largest data center, Google’s Henderson facility, consumed at least 205 million gallons of water to cool its systems in 2024 alone, according to the company’s own 2025 environmental report. It did so using the same evaporative cooling technology that the Southern Nevada Water Authority has since banned for new data center projects.

In Boulder City, Texas-based developer Townsite Solar 2 LLC first proposed building the town’s first data center on 88.5 acres of city-owned land just south of Interstate 11 in January. If the city council approves the project, developers say it would generate $3.6 million in revenue for the city in just its first year, while the facility itself could eventually be worth as much as $4 billion. 

The proposal got its first public test on May 20, when the Boulder City Planning Commission held a three-hour public hearing in which more than 50 people spoke or called in—with all but three of them in opposition. When the dust settled, the commission voted 6-1 against recommending adding the project to the city’s Land Management Process, the first step toward leasing the land for development. 

The commission’s decision is strictly advisory, however. City Clerk Tami McKay confirmed via email that the city council may consider the proposal as soon as July. Still, the planning commission hearing laid bare just how deep the data center rift in Boulder City has become.

Kendra Dyson, a resident who attended the developer’s two community open houses in addition to the hearing, left all three unconvinced.

“The feeling is that they seem to think that if we just understood it, we would love this. And that’s just not the case at all,” Dyson tells the Weekly.

In the hearing, project manager Rick Lammers sought to address the opposition’s most persistent concern—water—by highlighting the developer’s pivot to a 100% air-cooled, closed-loop system, rather than the evaporative cooling system that’s now been banned regionally for using far too much of it.

“It doesn’t require any type of use of water, other than a one-time fill of 400,000 gallons—about 20 average-sized swimming pools,” Lammers said, adding that daily kitchen and bathroom usage would equal just 10 local homes. “We could even have [the water] trucked from California or Arizona … You don’t even have to get it from Boulder City.”

Commissioner Matt DiTeresa, a retired operating engineer, didn’t buy it.

“I don’t want to be rude, but that is absurd. There are hourly blowdowns all over the equipment. You’re going to be constantly refilling the system. That’s just the nature of the animal,” DiTeresa said. “If you’re putting out misinformation like this, how can I trust anything else you people say?”

Tensions grew when Commissioner Beth Bonnar asked Lammers about projected corporate revenues. Lammers replied that tenant revenues were “to be determined,” but Bonnar continued to press him until Lammers said it was “at least 12% of the $2 billion investment”—implying a minimum return of $240 million.

Commissioner Steven Morris—a former city attorney appointed to the commission by Mayor Joe Hardy just five weeks after the developer submitted its application—cast the lone yes vote.

“The vote tonight is not an endorsement or a denial of this project itself. The authority of this commission is to determine whether the applicant has met the threshold of being included in the land management process. Honestly, it’s a low threshold,” Morris said, adding that “the city can dictate the terms by which this project has to adhere to.”

In an email to the Weekly, Lammers recognized that “revenue alone will not carry this proposal.”

“We are committed to working with the city to incorporate the parameters that make this project one Boulder City truly wants,” Lammers wrote, adding that the developer is considering a separate application to build the data center on adjacent federal land just beyond city limits if the city council ultimately rejects the proposal. 

The opposition is also working on its own contingency plan. If their citizens’ initiative petition garners at least 1,700 signatures by the end of June, the November 3 ballot will feature a question asking residents to weigh in on a policy requiring voter approval of any future data centers in Boulder City. 

Boulder City is far from the only community to take matters into its own hands. On June 2, in response to similar public pushback, the Reno City Council voted 6-1 to extend a 30-day moratorium on new data center approvals through August 2027—a first in Nevada. It came just a week after the Nye County Water District Governing Board unanimously approved an emergency order urging the Nye County Commission to establish a similar restriction for the Pahrump Valley. 

Those actions echo a national trend quantified in a May 13 Gallup poll in which seven of 10 Americans surveyed said they opposed building data centers in their local area—far more than the 53% who opposed nuclear power plants in the same study. That sentiment was on full display in Boulder City’s Planning Commission meeting, where self-identified MAGA conservatives and progressives united over shared environmental concerns.

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