The following report from the Nevada Independent covers a regulatory development Keystone Corporation has been monitoring. Henderson’s decision to reject a moratorium and pursue measured code changes instead is an encouraging contrast to other Nevada jurisdictions that have opted for blanket construction pauses.
By Oona Milliken / The Nevada Independent
The Henderson City Council decided against imposing a 180-day moratorium on data center construction Tuesday evening, opting instead to explore additional code changes.
Henderson Mayor Michelle Romero, who proposed the moratorium last month, said during the meeting that city staff would develop regulations for future licensing of data centers in city limits. Any future data centers would be subject to an individually negotiated development agreement between the city and the developer.
“There has to be a framework of laws and ordinances for us to refer to,” Romero said. “A development agreement proactively gives us the ability to change the codes now and adaptively update them as technology changes.”
City attorney Nicholas Vaskov said that code changes would be more permanent and more effective in the long run than a moratorium. There are no pending data center applications currently before the council, according to Romero.
“A moratorium is temporary to some degree — they are only defensible for up to a certain point, usually that’s up to 12 to 18 months before you have to make some permanent changes to your code,” Vaskov said.
The Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter expressed disappointment with the outcome, saying the decision falls far short of the temporary pause residents requested to allow the city time to develop comprehensive regulations before additional projects move forward.
Neighboring Southern Nevada municipalities Boulder City and Clark County are considering new regulations on data centers amid the artificial intelligence buildout, while other local governments — including Reno and several rural counties — have passed moratoriums on new data center construction. The issue is playing out nationwide as additional infrastructure is built to handle the demands of the AI boom.
Around 20 people spoke at the meeting about the need for regulating data centers, with major topics of concern including energy use, noise pollution, and environmental impacts. Several called for a yearlong moratorium while others asked for an outright ban.
There are 43 data centers in Clark County, some of which have been operating for decades. Switch, one of the oldest data center companies in the country, has been in Las Vegas since 2000 and employs approximately 1,200 people in the county.
Source: The Nevada Independent, July 21, 2026. Reported by Oona Milliken.