Monarch Data Center Approved
Lyon County commissioners voted 3-1 (Commissioner Hockaday opposed; Commissioner Cassinelli abstained) to approve the planned unit development rezoning for Copia Power's ~505-acre, 4.6 million sq ft, 1,000 MW Monarch campus in Mason Valley north of Yerington, which includes a 500 MW natural-gas backup plant and battery energy storage, after 6+ hours of comment from a mostly opposed crowd of nearly 300. The approval covers zoning only: final PUD/design approval, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection and State Engineer permits, and completion of Copia's land purchase remain, and tribal members vowed legal action over cultural resources and sacred sites.
Key facts
- Operator
- Copia Power
- Size
- 1,000 MW
- Acres
- 505
- Location
- Yerington (Lyon County), Nevada
- Hearing
- 2026-08-06
- Decided
- 2026-08-06
- Stage today
- Approved
Source
read 2026-08-14
What to do next
Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.
What has happened so far (2 events)
- 2026-07-14vote
Lyon County Planning Commission voted 4-3 (Loomis, Irvin, Allan opposed) to advance the Monarch project to county commissioners; over 200 people participated and a strong majority spoke against it, including tribal members citing lack of Paiute consultation. · source - 2026-08-06vote
Lyon County commissioners approved the planned unit development rezoning 3-1 with one abstention after more than six hours of discussion with dozens of opposing commenters; final PUD filing (one-year deadline), state permits, and environmental approvals remain before construction. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Nevada DEP — Bureau of Air Pollution ControlThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search Nevada DEP — Bureau of Air Pollution Control for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Yerington (Lyon County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Yerington (Lyon County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
- Public Utilities Commission of Nevada — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 38.990, -119.160 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- Nevada briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Nevada
- Google Storey County — Storey County, 42 mi
- Manse Technology Campus (formerly Project Blackjack) — Pahrump (Nye County), 259 mi Awaiting decision
- Vantage NV1 (Storey County) — Storey County (near Reno) Under construction
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Monarch Data Center”, aigridwatch.com/projects/yerington-monarch-data-center, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).