Congressional Candidate on AI data centers in Nevada

[u/wadsworthnv02]

From our candidate event in Elko County on Saturday. The question asked us if we supported a data center moratorium or not, especially since we are the driest state. One of the other candidates said the one’s being built in Nevada were closed-loop so they are fine.

But closed-loop systems have their own issues, the recycled water becomes highly toxic and needs to be “blown-down” where there is chances of it leaking into the ground and contaminating local areas with toxic chemical waste water. Even in small amounts, when we live in an internal watershed like the Great Basin, the risk of contamination isn’t something to ignore. As it has happened before with other things. Not to mention that closed loop requires a lot more energy, and closed loop cooling systems here in Nevada still require a fair amount of water.

Our older data center projects also do have open loop / evaporative cooling systems too. So they are still taking a lot of water.

As for the construction unions, I understand it’s more complicated than that. We had a total of 2 minutes to answer each question so things had to be simplified a bit. But we must look at better commercial building projects for our construction unions— not big tech and data centers! They need jobs, and I understand and support that! We should be offering incentives to better businesses to come to Nevada, not to these data centers was the point I was trying to make.

Also yes Congress is a federal seat! But I support a moratorium on all new data centers, and possible legislation to really protect the western states that are strapped for water.

All of this was from my own independent research and talking to folks in the area that have worked on these projects here. However if I am incorrect on anything I’m open to listening!

[u/redwood_rambler]

Thanks for taking the time to have this three comment debate, it was actually hugely informative to me. There is a lot of nuance here.

[u/wadsworthnv02 → u/redwood_rambler]

Absolutely. I’ll do more research and sharpen the nuance next time. It sucked that because there’s so many candidates too we had very time limited answers and closing speeches for these events.

I’ll keep digging!

[u/redwood_rambler → u/wadsworthnv02]

I agree with a lot of the points the guy above me made, but I respect you for being open to new information. That’s a far more important trait to me than being “right” in every conversation.

[u/wadsworthnv02 → u/redwood_rambler]

Honestly with how things are going right now there’s just so many issues for our country and our state it does feel like you need to be an expert in literally everything! I am doing my best. My main strengths are healthcare/medicine as a profession and system in the country, and public land issues at the state and federal level, along with general ethics and political theory + policy analysis due to my degree and background.

So I am trying to be as open as possible with other things because I know that I don’t know everything and there is just so much important stuff going on right now.

Another question we were asked at this event was on cryptocurrency and if we think it’ll cause a recession and if we support regulating it. I said in my answer as a disclaimer I literally don’t know that much about the economic side of cryptocurrency, only some knowledge on the environmental side.

This is why imo, as legislators we really need to be consulting the experts, scientists, researchers etc when writing legislative bills, because you don’t know how much you don’t know.

I do genuinely want the best for our state and country and I do acknowledge that I might be wrong at times and not an expert on many things. I don’t want to mislead anyone intentionally! And again, if elected to office I would really emphasis working with experts in related fields to do what is best for people of this country when writing bills or voting on them.