Data Centers in Nebraska: Lawsuits, Disputes, and Your Rights

The Omaha metro is the center of gravity, and Sarpy County is the center of that. Google announced its Papillion campus in 2019, Omaha in 2022, and Lincoln in 2023, and says it has invested more than $15 billion in Nebraska since 2019. Meta built a large campus in Sarpy County, roughly 4 million square feet by Flatwater Free Press's account, and announced in 2022 that it was expanding from six operating buildings to a ninth as part of a $1.5 billion project. Flatwater reported that Meta had spent more than $50 million on roughly 900 acres in Sarpy County since 2017, and that Google paid $25 million for roughly 280 acres in Sarpy County and $21 million for more than 400 acres in Douglas County, at prices far above the regional average for farmland.

Underneath the hyperscalers is a colocation layer that most coverage misses, and it is worth naming precisely because search traffic keeps asking about it:

• TierPoint lists two Nebraska facilities, the Omaha Bellevue Data Center and the Omaha Midlands Data Center. TierPoint's Hawthorne data centers are in New York, not Nebraska, despite what some searches assume.
• LightEdge markets an Omaha data center that is physically located at 1148 American Parkway in Papillion.
• H5 Data Centers lists an Omaha facility at 10917 Harry Watanabe Parkway, in the La Vista area of Sarpy County.

We could not verify a Cogent Communications data center in Omaha from the company's own published facility list, so we are not asserting one exists. If you are researching a specific building, the county assessor's parcel record is the authoritative answer, not a vendor page.

The next wave is a different animal entirely. Flatwater Free Press reported in March 2026 that the energy developer Tenaska had optioned more than 2,600 acres across southeast Nebraska since December, including at least 1,000 acres in Gage County, at least 860 acres in Cass County, at least 450 acres in Lancaster County, and nearly 300 acres in Otoe County, for a Google project that would require 1,000 to 3,000 megawatts. For scale, that is more than the 800 megawatts Lincoln Electric System needs across its whole service area in summer.

Nebraska's complaints are not primarily about noise at the fence line, at least not yet. They are about water, power, and process.

• Water at scale. Flatwater Free Press reported that Google's Nebraska data centers consumed 46.6 million gallons in 2022, 134.7 million gallons in 2023, and 732.1 million gallons in 2025, while Meta's Sarpy County campus ranged from 26.7 to 37.5 million gallons annually between 2020 and 2024. A University of Nebraska law professor told Flatwater that Google's 2025 Nebraska consumption is roughly what it takes to irrigate 2,500 to 3,500 acres of central Nebraska cornfields. Groundwater withdrawal is permitted by natural resources districts, and parts of Nebraska are fully appropriated, meaning new users cannot begin until existing users stop.
• Farmland conversion. The campuses were built on cropland, and the price premiums Flatwater documented, up to roughly ten times the regional per acre average, reshape what neighboring land is worth.
• Grid cost and who carries it. A 1,000 to 3,000 megawatt customer does not arrive without new generation and transmission, and the design of Nebraska's 2026 legislation is about making that cost land on the customer causing it.
• Process and secrecy. The recurring complaint in Cass, Gage, and Otoe counties has been that land was optioned and deals negotiated before residents knew a project existed. Public land records were how they found out.
• Noise, heat, and light. Residents at Nehawka's meetings raised heat, light, and noise pollution and the effect of dissipated heat on surrounding soil. These are the concerns that turn into private nuisance claims elsewhere once facilities are operating.

Nebraska is the only state in the country served at retail entirely by consumer owned electric utilities, according to the Nebraska Power Review Board. There is no investor owned utility anywhere in the state, no shareholders, and no electric rate case before a public service commission. Power is delivered by public power districts, municipal utilities, and cooperatives.

That changes where the argument happens. The Omaha Public Power District, a public corporation and political subdivision of the state created in 1946, is governed by an eight member board of directors elected by the people in the areas served. The Nebraska Public Power District has an eleven member board popularly elected from its chartered territory, serving all or parts of 84 of Nebraska's 93 counties. If you object to how the cost of serving a hyperscale load is allocated, you are not filing testimony in a docket. You are speaking at an open board meeting and, for OPPD and NPPD, voting on the people who set the rates.

Two 2026 laws now define that relationship. LB1010, signed April 14, 2026 and passed 49 to 0, adopted the Large Load Customer Regulation Act. It defines a large load customer as one requesting a new or expanded interconnection where total load at a single site would exceed twenty megawatts, requires public power suppliers to set interconnection standards, imposes a study fee of $50,000 or $1,000 per megawatt, whichever is greater, and authorizes suppliers to set rates that fairly allocate system costs to that customer while mitigating financial risks to other customers. The same act defines a data center as a facility with peak electricity demand of ten megawatts or more and requires its owner or operator to file an annual report with the Department of Water, Energy, and Environment and the Legislature's Natural Resources Committee by September 30 each year, listing the facility's location, annual electricity demand, annual water usage, and tax exemptions. It also requires operators to bear all decommissioning costs and to enter into a community benefit agreement with affected communities.

LB1261, signed the same day and passed 33 to 16, cuts the other way. It bars consumer owned utilities from using eminent domain to acquire a privately owned generation facility built to serve an industrial customer at a single site with new electric load greater than one thousand megawatts, subject to Power Review Board approval and a long term contract with the public utility, for contracts entered on or before December 31, 2031. That is a deliberate opening in the state's public power model, sized for exactly one kind of customer.

No lawsuit is documented. Our research found no lawsuit, regulatory enforcement action, or court challenge involving a Nebraska data center as of September 2026. Google's and Meta's Omaha area campuses have operated and expanded without documented neighbor litigation, and the 2026 fights over new proposals have all been resolved, so far, through land use process rather than filings.

Cass County is the real fight. On June 25, 2026, Tenaska announced it had optioned 1,354 acres in Cass County along Highway 75 south of Murray and Beaver Lake for a proposed 2,000 acre natural gas power plant and data center in partnership with Google. The Cass County Planning Commission approved a moratorium on Monday, July 13. On August 11, 2026 the Board of Commissioners voted 5 to 0 for a twelve month moratorium on data center permits and tabled its proposed data center regulations to September 22. On August 26, the village of Nehawka, population under 200, amended its zoning code to prohibit data centers in every zoning district, including substations, transformers, and generators. Our full report on the Cass County moratorium has the sequence, the residents' group behind it, and the statutes.

The moratorium wave is statewide. Otoe County suspended data center permits for up to a year in May 2026 after residents raised water, power cost, and heat island concerns. Madison County set special permit requirements. 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, where speakers raised energy and water consumption, property taxes, and proximity to daycares and nursing homes. KETV reported in July 2026 that twelve counties had imposed at least temporary moratoriums, and KLKN reported the same count in early September.

The state changed course mid year. On July 20, 2026, Governor Jim Pillen signed an executive order barring new data centers from ImagiNE Nebraska Act tax incentives. KETV reported figures from the governor's office showing roughly $317 million in tax credits, direct refunds, and sales tax exemptions issued to data centers between January 2021 and June 2026, plus $15 billion in personal property exempted, an estimated $519 million in property tax exemptions at a 2 percent rate. On August 19, 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 water, the grid, and local infrastructure.

What we could not find. Despite steady search interest, we found no documented Douglas County or Sarpy County data center moratorium, and no documented opposition campaign, enforcement action, or records fight aimed at the Google Papillion or Meta Sarpy County campuses. The moratorium activity is in the counties receiving new proposals, not the counties already hosting the industry.

This describes what Nebraska statutes say. It is not legal advice, and a Nebraska attorney should confirm what applies to your facts.

• Private nuisance, trespass, and property damage claims. Serious, ongoing interference with the use and enjoyment of your home, from noise, vibration, dust, light, or water impacts, is the theory homeowners are litigating against operators in Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Neb. Rev. Stat. section 25-207 provides that actions for trespass upon real property and for injury to the rights of the plaintiff not arising on contract "can only be brought within four years." These cases are typically handled on a contingency fee basis.
• Board of adjustment appeals, on a fifteen day clock. Section 23-168.04 provides that a person aggrieved by a county board of adjustment decision may petition 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. Sarpy County, for example, maintains a three member board of adjustment that hears variance applications and appeals of zoning requirements.
• Conditional use permit appeals. Under section 23-114.01(6), an appealing party bears 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, with the appeal going to district court in most counties. The statute sets no deadline of its own; the Nebraska Supreme Court held in Preserve the Sandhills v. Cherry County that the general appeal procedure in section 25-1937 supplies it. We are deliberately not printing a number here, because it depends on the procedure that applies to your decision. Ask counsel.
• Open meetings challenges, with a real citizen suit. 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 brought after 120 days but within one year. Subsection (3) provides that "any citizen of this state may commence a suit" to require compliance or void an action. Nebraska does not reserve that power to prosecutors.
• Public records and ordinance enforcement. Section 84-712 lets residents examine public records free of charge during business hours, the tool Cass County residents used to track land option deals before any application was filed. Written noise and code complaints build the record any later claim rests on.

If a project is proposed near you, do what Cass County residents did: pull land option and deed records at the county, get to the planning commission meeting, ask for a pause in writing, and put your objection in the record by name. If your county is writing data center regulations, the setbacks, sound limits, water conditions, and decommissioning security in that draft are the whole ballgame.

If a facility is already operating near you, establish the record. Test your well and keep dated results, take sound readings at your property line, photograph dust and light conditions, and send every complaint to your city or county in writing. Under LB1010, data center operators now file annual water and electricity reports with the Department of Water, Energy, and Environment each September 30, and those filings are worth requesting. Our guide to documenting data center harm covers the full checklist, and how to fight a proposed data center covers the approval process.

Then get a legal read. Our free intake form lets you tell us what is happening; where a participating attorney who handles these matters in Nebraska is available, we may share your information with them with your consent, but we cannot promise that anyone will contact you. Submitting costs nothing and you hire no one unless you choose to.