Cass County, Nebraska Paused Data Centers and a Village Banned Them Outright. No Lawsuit Was Filed, and That Is the Point.

The Cass County proposal is one piece of a much larger assembly. Flatwater Free Press reported in March 2026 that Tenaska had optioned more than 2,600 acres across southeast Nebraska since December, including at least 1,000 acres in Gage County, at least 450 acres in Lancaster County, at least 860 acres in Cass County, and nearly 300 acres in Otoe County. The reporting described a Google project that would require 1,000 to 3,000 megawatts of power, more than the 800 megawatts Lincoln Electric System needs across its entire service area in summer, and that documents indicated could be online as soon as 2029.

On June 25, 2026, Tenaska announced the Cass County piece: 1,354 acres along Highway 75 south of Murray and Beaver Lake, for a proposed 2,000 acre natural gas power plant and data center campus. KETV reported that many residents at the county planning commission's Monday, July 13 meeting raised concerns about how the project would be funded and what resources it would consume. The commission approved a moratorium that night.

Four weeks later, on August 11, 2026, the Cass County Board of Commissioners held a public hearing on both the moratorium and a set of proposed data center regulations. KLKN reported the board voted 5 to 0 for a twelve month moratorium on data center permits and tabled the proposed regulations until September 22 while it worked through community concerns. The pause and the rulemaking were deliberately separated: stop the clock first, write the rules second.

Nehawka is a Cass County village of fewer than 200 residents. KETV reported that its board had been fielding concerns as talk spread of land deals for a data center north of town, with the village board chairman saying residents were nervous the project would come to their doorstep. On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, after a special meeting considering recommendations from the village planning committee, the board amended the zoning code to ban data centers outright.

The ordinance is broader than most. It applies to every zoning district, and it prohibits data centers from being built, expanded, converted from existing buildings, or operated within the village. It also prohibits the related infrastructure that serves them, naming substations, transformers, and generators. Under the ordinance it takes effect fifteen days after passage, approval, and publication.

That last clause matters more than it looks. A ban that reaches substations and generators closes the workaround where the computing hall sits outside the jurisdiction but the electrical infrastructure that makes it possible sits inside. Communities writing their own ordinances should read that as a drafting lesson.

Cass County Data Center Watch describes itself as a group of residents sharing information and encouraging public participation on proposed data center projects. Its practical work, as its founder described it to KETV, is tracking public records tied to land optioning deals. That is the whole method: find out what has been optioned, by whom, and where, before a rezoning application ever appears on an agenda.

The group's stated goal ahead of the July 13 planning commission meeting was an eighteen month hold, on the reasoning that there was not much information or many specifications available about what the project would actually look like, and that the community should see them before anything was approved. Members told KETV that family farmers were worried about water access, utility bills, low quality zoning, and what the project would mean for their land.

The county ultimately adopted twelve months rather than eighteen. That gap is worth noting honestly: organized residents did not get everything they asked for. They got the pause, the hearing, and a seat at the table for the regulations that follow.

Cass County did not act alone, and its commissioners were not the only Nebraska officials changing course in the summer of 2026.

• The executive order. On Monday, July 20, 2026, Governor Jim Pillen signed an executive order barring new data centers from receiving tax incentives under the ImagiNE Nebraska Act, and creating a state data center task force. KETV reported figures from the governor's office showing that between January 2021 and June 2026 Nebraska issued roughly $317 million in tax credits, direct refunds, and sales tax exemptions to data centers, and that data center projects saw $15 billion in personal property exempted, an estimated $519 million in property tax exemptions at a 2 percent rate.
• The task force. On August 19, 2026 the governor's office announced seventeen appointments to the task force created by Executive Order 26-17, charged with evaluating the industry's impact on Nebraska's water resources, power grids, and local infrastructure, and with making sure county officials have the tools, zoning guidelines, and policy frameworks to manage growth. Its membership includes the chief executives of the state's three largest public power utilities, a Sarpy County commissioner, and natural resources district managers. The first meeting was expected in September 2026.
• The county wave. KETV reported in July 2026 that twelve counties had imposed at least temporary moratoriums; KLKN reported the same count of twelve counties with approved temporary moratoriums in early September. Gage County supervisors approved an eight month moratorium on August 5, 2026 and held a hearing in early September on extending it to eighteen months. Otoe County suspended data center permits for up to a year in May 2026.
• The new statute. LB1010, signed April 14, 2026, requires data center owners and operators to report annual electricity demand and annual water usage to the Department of Water, Energy, and Environment each September 30, to bear decommissioning costs, and to enter into a community benefit agreement with affected communities.

This section describes what the statutes say. It is not legal advice, and Nebraska counsel should confirm which provisions apply to any particular set of facts.

Board of adjustment appeals are extremely short. Neb. Rev. Stat. section 23-168.04 provides that a person aggrieved by a county board of adjustment decision may present a verified petition to the district court, and that "the petition must be presented to the court within fifteen days after the filing of the decision in the office of the board of adjustment." Section 19-912 sets the same fifteen day window for municipal boards of adjustment. Fifteen days is among the tightest zoning appeal windows in the country, and our guide to zoning appeal deadlines by state puts it beside other states' rules.

Conditional use decisions go to district court with a heavy burden. Under section 23-114.01(6), an appealing party "shall have the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence" that a conditional use or special exception decision was arbitrary, capricious, or illegal, or did not adhere to the county's zoning regulations. In counties other than the one containing a city of the primary class, that appeal is made to the district court. The statute does not set its own filing deadline; the Nebraska Supreme Court held in Preserve the Sandhills v. Cherry County that the general appeal procedure of section 25-1937 supplies it. Confirm the applicable deadline with counsel rather than assuming one.

The open meetings citizen suit is unusually generous. Section 84-1414(1) provides that formal action taken in violation of the Open Meetings Act "shall be declared void by the district court if the suit is commenced within one hundred twenty days of the meeting," and is voidable if commenced after 120 days but within one year. Subsection (3) provides that "any citizen of this state may commence a suit" to require compliance, prevent violations, or declare an action void. Nebraska does not route that power exclusively through prosecutors the way some states do.

Records come first. Section 84-712 gives residents and other interested persons the right to examine public records free of charge during business hours. That is the statute behind the land option tracking that Cass County residents used to see the project coming.

If a project is being assembled near you, in Nebraska or anywhere, the Cass County sequence is worth copying:

• Track the land, not the announcement. Option agreements and deed records show up long before a rezoning application. Section 84-712 makes the county records available to you at no charge.
• Ask for the pause first. A moratorium is the request a county board can grant without deciding the merits, and it buys the months in which real regulations get written.
• Write the ordinance broadly. Nehawka's ban reaches substations, transformers, and generators, not just the buildings full of servers.
• Get your objection into the record at the hearing. If a challenge ever becomes necessary, standing and preservation questions turn on whether you were heard at the administrative level.
• Document baseline conditions now. Well tests, sound readings, and dated photographs taken before construction are the evidence that makes a later claim provable. Our evidence guide covers the checklist.

Our guide to fighting a proposed data center walks through the approval process in more detail, and the Nebraska state page covers the wider footprint and the public power question. If a facility near you has moved past the proposal stage and is affecting your home, our free case review connects you with an independent attorney in our network handling data center matters in Nebraska, at no cost and with no obligation.