Sixteen Nebraska Counties Paused Data Centers. The Legislature Spent the Same Year Clearing the Way.
Nebraska now has 19 data center moratorium entries on our tracker — 16 enacted, two proposed, one withdrawn — almost all of them county-level and almost all of them passed in 2026. Over the same months, the Legislature passed and the governor signed a law narrowing public power's eminent domain authority to make room for privately built generation serving loads above 1,000 megawatts. Both things are true at once, and if you live in southeast Nebraska they are about the same project.
If you are trying to understand what is happening in Nebraska, the useful frame is not "is the state for or against data centers." It is that two levels of government moved in opposite directions during the same twelve months, and the gap between them is where a resident actually has leverage.
Start with the counties. Our tracker now carries 19 Nebraska entries — 16 enacted moratoriums, two still proposed, and one withdrawn. Otoe County went first: the county board voted in May 2026 to suspend permits for new data centers for up to a year while it updated its regulations. By mid-July, Logan County became the twelfth to approve one — a 12-month pause covering data centers, wind and solar systems, and cryptocurrency mining. County Clerk Jennifer Nicholson put the reasoning plainly: "Data centers are popping up everywhere. We are in the middle of redoing our comprehensive plan and zoning regulations."
That is the honest version of what most of these ordinances are. They are not bans. They are a county buying time to write rules before it has to apply rules it does not have. Nebraska Public Media contacted all 93 counties in July; 27 said they had recently updated, were updating, or planned to update their comprehensive zoning plans.
What the Legislature did instead
On April 14, 2026, Governor Jim Pillen signed LB1261, introduced by Senator DeKay at the governor's request and passed on final reading 33–16. The bill prohibits consumer-owned utilities — which in Nebraska means all of them, since the state is entirely public power — from using eminent domain to acquire a privately owned electric generation facility built to serve a single industrial site with new load greater than 1,000 megawatts. Its requirements apply to contracts entered into on or before December 31, 2031.
Read that threshold again, because it is the tell. A 1,000-megawatt single-site industrial load is not a factory. In 2026 it is a hyperscale data center campus, and the law exists to let a private developer build the power plant next to it without a public utility being able to take that plant over.
The Legislature also passed LB663, which sets a strict timeline for county boards processing special and conditional use permit applications — a quieter change, but one that directly constrains the body a resident shows up to lobby.
The project underneath the policy
The Flatwater Free Press has done the reporting that connects the two. Its review of land records found Omaha-based energy company Tenaska optioning land across four southeast Nebraska counties for a natural gas plant and data center campus. By late June the options had grown to at least 1,454 acres in Otoe County, at least 1,509 in Gage, at least 1,123 in Cass, and nearly 680 in Lancaster.
Flatwater reported, based on documents it obtained, that the data center would need 1,000 to 3,000 megawatts — more than three times Lincoln's 800-megawatt peak summer demand — and that the accompanying gas plant could produce more than twice the 1,365 megawatts of Nebraska Public Power District's Gerald Gentleman Station, the largest power plant in the state. The documents indicated a possible 2029 online date. Google and Tenaska declined to comment; the public power districts said they do not discuss potential customers before a public announcement.
Treat those numbers as what they are: a reporter's reading of planning documents for a project no company has confirmed. But note the fit. A project needing more than 1,000 megawatts at one site is exactly the project LB1261 was written to accommodate.
The disclosure
One more thing from the same reporting, because it is the kind of fact a resident should have before a hearing. State Senator Myron Dorn, whose district includes Gage County, optioned roughly 80 acres of his own land to Tenaska earlier in 2026. He filed a conflict of interest disclosure on March 18, 2026 — the day floor debate on LB1261 began, and after reporters contacted him. Under Nebraska rules the disclosure did not preclude him from voting, and he voted. "My vote is only one of 49," he told Flatwater. "This bill will benefit the entire state and any landowner who may contract with a private entity."
Nothing here has been found unlawful, and we are not saying it was. The point is narrower and more useful: when a bill removes a local check on a specific class of project, ask who near you has already signed an option.
Where towns went further than counties
County moratoriums have a hole in them, and Nehawka found it. A county pause covers unincorporated land under county zoning — not land inside a village's own zoning jurisdiction. In late August the Nehawka Village Board voted to prohibit data centers outright, along with crypto mining, blockchain computing, and the power plants built to run them. Board co-chairperson Chad Kruger said residents had raised concerns about noise, water pollution and water usage, and that the county moratorium did not apply to their area. Jayden Speed of Cass County Data Center Watch told WOWT that residents in Union, Murray and Plattsmouth were already using the ordinance as a model.
That is the first Nebraska municipality on our tracker with a standing ban rather than a timed pause, and it is worth understanding why it could do that when its county could not: different zoning jurisdiction, different tool.
And where a county backed off
On September 10, Lancaster County halted its plan to vote on a moratorium and formed two task forces instead — one on data centers, one on industrial zoning. Bold Nebraska, the advocacy group chaired by Jane Kleeb, had filed a zoning code text amendment application proposing regulation rather than a pause. Commissioner Flowerday argued an effective moratorium already existed, because "you only build these things on industrial land" and there are "very few spaces where you could pull a data center or much of anything that was currently zoned industrial out there."
We record that row as Withdrawn, not as a defeat and not as a win. If you are citing Nebraska at a hearing, this is the row most likely to be thrown back at you, so know what it says: a county concluded its zoning map was already doing the work a moratorium would have done. Whether that holds depends entirely on how much industrial land your own jurisdiction has.
What to take from this
Three practical things, if you are weeks out from a vote in a state with a friendly legislature and an unfriendly map:
- Check which zoning jurisdiction you are actually in. Nehawka acted because the county pause did not reach it. The reverse is also common — residents lobbying a village board over land the county controls.
- Read the state law for thresholds, not for sentiment. LB1261 does not say "data center" anywhere in its operative threshold. It says 1,000 megawatts at a single site. Thresholds are where the carve-outs live.
- Ask what a pause is for. Every Nebraska county clerk quoted above gave the same answer: time to finish a comprehensive plan. A moratorium with no drafting work behind it just expires.
See also: our Nebraska state briefing for the full county-by-county list with sources and dates, and the community pages for Otoe County, Cass County, Lancaster County and Nehawka.