Among the poorly conceived water bills in the Nevada Legislature this session is a proposal to prevent local governments from prohibiting businesses that use evaporative cooling.
Think of AB385 as a prohibition on a moratorium from the bill sponsor, Republican Assemblymember Lisa Cole.
Evaporative cooling is highly water-consumptive at scale compared to some emerging techniques for cooling. Data centers, businesses and homes use different variations of the technology, which comes at a high cost for electricity and water.
In 2023, Southern Nevada prohibited new businesses from using evaporative cooling machinery because of its water usage.
But now, as we’ve seen with other water-saving measures, there is pushback. The legislation would ban the ban, per se, across the state. That’s a problem for Las Vegas. The Southern Nevada Water Authority has done its long-term planning analysis with this prohibition on evaporative cooling in mind. This would essentially mean that Las Vegas would use more water than was once predicted, which could impact its share of the Colorado River. Nice.
Tell Assemblymember Cole that you oppose this bill.
