After the city of Reno approved the Keystone, Oppidan and Webb data centers in early 2025, the Regional Planning Commission tasked the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency (TMRPA) with studying how data center developments would affect the city of Reno, city of Sparks and Washoe County region.
On Aug. 20, 2025, the TMRPA held the first community conversation to discuss their research on high-energy-demand users such as data centers.
After receiving feedback from the community, the agency launched the Data Center Engagement Effort, which included interviewing stakeholder organizations including local, county and state government; labor groups; and environmental groups. The effort also included a public survey asking the community for their thoughts on the potential impacts of data centers.
On Aug. 5 of this year, TMRPA shared its findings in a community conversation hosted at the Reno Public Market with more than 130 attendees.
At the time of the presentation, 34 organizations had been interviewed, and 150 people had filled out the public survey. Opposing views were presented side by side and not attributed to the organizations from which they came. For example, one view was that public opposition to data centers is “emotional and media driven” while another commenter said the concerns are genuine and worth taking into consideration.
Multiple attendees criticized this side-by-side comparison and said that answers should be weighted to take into account that industry voices will lean in favor of data centers because of the potential for financial gains, while community voices have been consistently against data centers.
Other criticisms included the lack of Spanish versions of the website and survey, when Spanish is the second-most-spoken language in Nevada.
Autumn Harry, a member of the Water Over Data Alliance and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe pointed out the lack of interviews with tribes. By the time of the Aug. 5 meeting, the TMRPA had only managed to get an interview with the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony.
“I know that you had made efforts to contact the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, but I see a lot of agencies send out emails to tribes,” Harry said. “… I really hope that you can … drive out to Nixon, go to the tribal office, and really engage in conversation with the tribal leaders.”
A work in progress
The Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency addressed many of these concerns right away. By the time the group presented updated information to the Regional Planning Governing Board during that board’s Aug. 13 meeting, TMRPA was already working with the University of Nevada, Reno’s Latino Research Center to translate the survey. By the following week, a Spanish version was posted to the Data Center Engagement Effort webpage.
The TMRPA also contacted the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and announced plans to include the tribe’s voice in the final report. TMRPA director Jeremy Smith said that an interview in Nixon, slated for Aug. 17, was delayed due to wildfires, and that the agency and the tribe have a good line of communication.
The TMRPA also suggested to the Regional Planning Governing Board that if it wanted to implement a weighted approach to stakeholder and public sentiments, a firm should be hired to make sure that it’s done correctly.
“The survey design was done in-house and very much as an engagement tool, not a targeted market survey,” Smith said in a later interview.
Interviews and survey responses are being used to draft recommendations for potential data-center policies at the local and state level. As of Aug. 5, these include adopting design standards that minimize environmental impacts and strengthening Nevada’s regulatory capacity for high-energy data centers.
The TMRPA has no power to enact these recommendations. When a final list is presented, it will be up to local and state authorities to decide whether or not they will act on them.
“I don’t know if (responses are) always ‘banned forever.’ Maybe it’s ‘ban until the rules are in place’ or ‘banned for a couple years as we figure it out or get the infrastructure.’”
TMRPA director Jeremy Smith
By mid-August, TMRPA had interviewed a total of 38 organizations, and the survey had more than 9,000 responses, which Smith attributes to the community rallying together to share the survey on social media after the community conversation at RPM.
Ninety-six percent of those responses were against data centers; some called for an outright ban.
“I don’t know if (responses are) always ‘banned forever,’” Smith said. “Maybe it’s ‘ban until the rules are in place’ or ‘banned for a couple years as we figure it out or get the infrastructure.’”
By the next planning board meeting, scheduled for Oct. 8, Smith hopes that the board can share a final report on its findings.
“I think that we’re going to make sure that the concept of a ban is loud and clear, and that’s a viable option for how to move forward,” Smith said. “That is clearly coming from the people, right? We’re not going to shy away from it at all.”