The Clark County Board of County Commissioners met in zoning session on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at 9:00 AM in the Commission Chambers. The meeting addressed 62 agenda items, including routine approvals and non‑routine public hearings. Several items were held to later dates (July 8, July 22, and August 5, 2026). After public comment, the board approved the agenda with these holds, approved the minutes of the May 20, 2026 meeting, and then took up the routine consent calendar (items 4–24, with item 4 heard separately). The remainder of the meeting consisted of item‑by‑item hearings, with the most substantial debate centered on the Switch data center expansion (items 50–53).
At the end of the meeting, there is a second public comment period. This final public comment is for items not listed on the agenda. No action may be taken on those comments at that time. All public comments are limited to three minutes unless otherwise announced by the chair at the beginning of the meeting. During all public comment periods, board members may listen but are not allowed to respond. Thank you for being here and for taking the time to participate in your local government. Good morning. Welcome back to the Clark County Commission. Today we are meeting in our zoning capacity. I'll call the meeting to order. We will begin today's meeting with the first time set aside for public comment. If you're here to speak on any items that are on today's agenda, uh that would be four through sixty-two. You can come forward at this time. Please state your name for the record. You may speak for up to three minutes. I'll note that items 25 through 62 are already scheduled to be heard separately. Uh, and if you speak now, you cannot also speak at the time that those items are heard separately. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners. Uh Chair NAFT. Laura McSwain for the record with the Water Fairness Coalition, uh MCSWAIN. I'm here on items 50 through 53, the proposed data center expansion associated with the switch campus. Let me begin by acknowledging that SWIC is a Southern Nevada success story. It has also been recognized by Greenpeace as an industry leader in environmentally responsible data center operations, and it has helped establish Las Vegas as a serious technology data center, a data hub. Data centers are an important part of the modern economy, and facilities like these will continue to play a role in Southern Nevada's future. My concern is not whether data centers should exist. My concern is whether we are asking the right questions when considering new applications and evaluating their long-term impacts on our community in concert with our water policies. Since 2021, Southern Nevatans have experienced a fundamental shift in water policy as water use once permitted for established landscapes became increasingly restricted. The loss of mature trees and urban canopy has become unmistakable. Only after growing criticism over those losses did SNWA launched tree initiatives and heat mitigation programs, effectively acknowledging what residents already knew. Shade and mature trees are not luxuries in the desert, they're essential infrastructure. Yet the fact remains we're losing mature trees in established areas and trying to replace them in others. That's what makes this application noteworthy. It seeks approval to eliminate required street trees and parking lot landscaping from the site. And it is not the only item on this agenda seeking reductions in landscaping requirements. Viewed individually, these may seem like minor requests. Viewed collectively, they raise a larger question about whether our development policies are moving in the same direction as our heat mitigation goals, assuming that you approve those requests. At the same time, residents are repeatedly told not to worry about data centers because modern cooling systems have supposedly solved the water problem. For the sake of argument, let's assume the direct water impacts have been solved. But what about the indirect impacts? Every data center consumes enormous amounts of electricity, and that energy ultimately becomes heat. When additional heat increases stress on surrounding landscapes, increases irrigation needs, raises cooling costs for residents, or contributes to the loss of what's left of our urban tree canopy. Those water impacts have not disappeared. They've siftly been shifted from the facility to the surrounding community. In Southern Nevada, heat and water are inseparable. More heat means more evaporation, more evaporation means more water is needed to save sustain the remaining trees, landscapes, and living infrastructure that make our valley livable. So before we declare declare the data center water problem solved and claim victory, we should ask a simple question. Has the water consumption problem truly been solved, or has it the burden simply been shifted yet again onto residents? And I respectfully submit my comments for the record. And I did provide an article that addresses a Columbia University study about the heat impacts of these uh data centers.