BOULDER CITY, Nev. On Nov. 3, voters here will decide whether data centers can become an approved land use on 14,000 acres of city-owned desert, land now reserved outside a habitat conservation easement in the Eldorado Valley Transfer Area.
The committee backing Question 1 says data center leases could bring in “10 times more rent per acre” than the solar farms that already cover the valley floor. The city’s own long-range finance materials, reported separately, tell a more modest story.
Why Voters, Not Just the Council, Decide This
Boulder City did not choose to put this question on the ballot the way a city typically refers a policy debate to voters. Under Section 144 of the city charter, any new land use in the Transfer Area requires direct voter approval, the same provision that sent solar’s original approval and a 2022 expansion of allowed uses to the ballot.
The council voted 3 to 1 on Feb. 24, 2026, to send the question to voters. A “yes” vote would not approve any specific project. It would only let the council begin considering data center lease proposals on that land, the same way it now considers solar leases.
The Eldorado Valley Transfer Area covers 107,400 acres that the city bought from the federal government in 1995 for about $1.28 million. Roughly 87,000 of those acres are permanently off limits under a multi-species habitat conservation easement protecting desert tortoise habitat. Question 1 applies only to the acreage outside that easement.
What Solar Actually Pays, by the City’s Own Numbers
Boulder City’s most recent published per-acre figures come from its own fiscal 2025 energy revenue brochure, dated August 2024: 11,765 acres under lease or option, generating an average of $1,660 per acre a year across 23 energy leases and options.
Multiplied out, that is roughly $19.5 million a year in total lease revenue, the great majority of it flowing into the general fund, where the city’s own adopted five-year financial forecast puts rents and royalties at 36% of general fund revenue and projects $15.8 million from that source in the current fiscal year alone.
If data center leases really did pay 10 times solar’s $1,660-per-acre rate, that works out to $16,600 an acre. Apply that rate across the entire 14,000 newly available acres and the math produces about $232.4 million a year, a figure calculated for this article and not stated by the campaign or the city.
That is not the number city finance materials actually project. Separate city finance documents reported by Hoodline in March put the total gain from opening the land to data centers at roughly $1.336 billion over the next 70 years, plus up to $100,000 a year in property tax revenue.
Divide $1.336 billion by 70 years, a calculation performed for this article, and the average comes to about $19.1 million a year, which is not 10 times, or even one times, what solar generates today.
It is about 2% less than the $19.5 million a year the city’s own $1,660-per-acre rate already implies from the acreage currently under lease.
| Acres | Rate per acre | Annual revenue | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar today | 11,765 | $1,660 (city average) | about $19.5 million |
| Data centers, if built on all 14,000 new acres at the campaign’s claimed 10x rate | 14,000 | $16,600 (calculated) | about $232.4 million |
| City’s own 70-year, $1.336 billion projection, averaged per year | not stated | not stated | about $19.1 million |
The city has not disclosed what share of the newly opened land its $1.336 billion figure assumes will actually be leased, or over what timeline. Using the campaign’s own 10-times, $16,600-per-acre rate, $19.1 million a year works out to leasing only about 1,150 acres, roughly 8% of the 14,000 acres Question 1 would open up.
The two figures, the per-acre pitch and the total dollar projection, are not necessarily in conflict. A rate 10 times higher can still add up to a modest total if only a small share of the land is ever leased, which is exactly how data centers typically use far less acreage than solar panels to generate similar revenue.
But nothing in the public materials reviewed for this article explains that gap, and no other outlet examined appears to have divided the city’s own $1.336 billion by 70 to compare it with what solar already pays.
A Preview Three Miles Away
Boulder City is not waiting for Question 1 to decide how it feels about a specific data center. On Sept. 1, 2026, the Interior Board of Land Appeals halted construction of the Townsite Data Center, an 88.5-acre project on federal land about three miles outside city limits, land not part of the Transfer Area and unaffected by Question 1.
The board found the Bureau of Land Management had reused an old environmental review written for an unrelated solar project rather than conducting fresh analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act after the developer, Townsite Solar 2 LLC, sought to convert the site from solar to a data center.
Boulder City itself, alongside the Center for Biological Diversity, was one of the parties that appealed the approval. The bureau has until Sept. 21, 2026, to respond, and construction stays paused until the case is resolved.
The city fighting one data center’s paperwork while asking its own voters to open new land to the same industry is not a contradiction the ballot language addresses.
It does mean Question 1 arrives after months of the city and its residents already litigating, in a different forum, exactly how much scrutiny a data center project deserves before it gets built.
A Separate Petition Already Failed
Question 1 is not the only data center measure Boulder City residents have pursued this year, and it is easy to conflate the two. A citizen petition led by resident Brynn deLorimier sought to require a public vote on any individual data center lease exceeding 10,000 square feet, a much broader check than Question 1, which only decides whether data centers are an allowed land use at all.
That petition needed 1,541 valid signatures, 15% of the roughly 10,272 votes cast in the city’s November 2024 election. Organizers collected 1,284, falling 257 signatures short, and the petition committee chose not to submit it for formal verification.
DeLorimier now opposes Question 1 directly, telling Nevada Current, “Our city is moving way too fast on this,” and predicting that if the measure passes, “it’s quite likely that immediately we’re going to have three, four applications.”
The Stakes Beyond One City’s Budget
Boulder City’s fight is a local version of a statewide trend. A Desert Research Institute report published in January 2026 counted 40 data centers operating in Nevada as of 2024, drawing roughly 713 megawatts of capacity, and projected that continued expansion could push the state’s data center electricity use to 25,590 gigawatt-hours a year by 2033.
Under the report’s own efficiency scenarios, cooling alone could require enough water annually to supply anywhere from about 14,940 to 111,140 households, or the equivalent of 17 to 124 golf courses, depending on how much of the growth relies on water-intensive evaporative cooling versus newer closed-loop systems.
Boulder City’s ballot question does not specify which cooling technology any future Eldorado Valley data center would use, and neither the campaign nor the city has published a water estimate specific to the 14,000 acres in play.
The 14,000-acre, 107,400-acre and 87,000-acre figures, the “10 times more rent per acre” quote, the deLorimier quotes, and the Nov. 3, 2026 election date are drawn from Nevada Current’s Sept. 11, 2026 report. The $1.336 billion, 70-year revenue figure, the $100,000 annual property tax estimate, the 1995 purchase price, the Section 144 charter provision, and the description of what a “yes” vote would and would not authorize are drawn from Hoodline’s March 20, 2026 report on the city’s own finance materials. The Feb. 24, 2026 city council vote total is drawn from Ballotpedia’s March 19, 2026 report. The 11,765 acres, 23 leases, and $1,660 average per-acre rate are drawn directly from the City of Boulder City’s fiscal year 2025 energy revenue brochure, dated August 2024. The $15.8 million current-year rents and royalties projection and the 36% general fund share are drawn directly from the city’s adopted fiscal year 2027 through 2031 financial forecast. The Townsite Data Center case facts are drawn from Nevada Current’s Sept. 1, 2026 report. The petition signature figures and quotes are drawn from the Boulder City Review’s July 9, 2026 report. The statewide data center figures are drawn directly from the Desert Research Institute’s January 2026 report. The $19.5 million solar total, the $232.4 million hypothetical full-buildout figure, the $19.1 million annualized 70-year average, the roughly 2% gap between that average and current solar revenue, and the approximately 1,150-acre and 8% figures are original calculations for this article and do not appear in any of the underlying reports.
