It's little surprise by now that Gov. Joe Lombardo remains confidently on the bright side of data center development in Nevada.

Lest anyone be left still scratching their heads, he recently doubled down on the subject in a newspaper op-ed. Tailored toward Northern Nevadans increasingly facing development pressure as rural counties adjacent to Washoe County's more circumspect Reno metro area, in late June Lombardo published a guest column in the Reno Gazette Journal that left no doubt where he stands. Despite serious unanswered questions and citizen protest that's giving some county and local jurisdictions second thoughts, he remains all in.

Lombardo reassured those who have read news reports about AI data centers' copious water and energy consumption. Utility customers have been hit hard in many areas amid increasing concerns about the polluted water and excessive heat produced by the behemoths. But it can't happen here, he says. (Insert official Lombardo 100-megawatt smile emoji.)

"But the truth is, it isn't happening in Nevada — because we've made it clear that companies investing in Nevada must do so in a way that protects our resources, our communities and our quality of life," Lombard writes. "Not all data centers are built the same, and we have the ability to define how these facilities operate before they ever break ground."

The ability, yes. But do all the officials responsible possess the will to stand against projects that fall short of their own standards when it comes to protecting those precious resources and the larger environment? (Insert my skeptical columnist raising eyebrow emoji here.)

The answer is mixed, in part, because the real impacts of the hyperscale developments are still being measured. Will officials, ahem, feel the heat once the construction jobs are finished and the generous tax abasements are issued?

When the state's largest utility acknowledges the need to double its capacity to come close to feeding the energy appetite of the AI giants in the coming decade, that skepticism is more than justified. And increased energy generation translates into increased pollution through greenhouse gas emission. Talk about feeling the heat.

Because Lombardo's Nevada data center strategy appears to call for everything but restraint, massive projects in Northern Nevada are moving forward with plans to ship and use natural gas to fuel on-site power plants.

That's not just a challenge for the environment. Closer to home, literally, that's a problem for energy users who will be impacted by the increased "waste" heat such power facilities emit.

According to a recent Tech Xplore report by Arizona State University's School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, the heat coming off large-scale data centers can raise ambient temperatures up to four degrees in neighborhoods one-third mile away. Closer to the buildings, air temperatures can shoot up to 25 degrees.

The school's director, David Sailor, tells Utility Dive that a 30-megawatt center, "essentially puts enough energy into the environment as 25,000 to 30,000 homes" concentrated in a much smaller area. "So just imagine that intensity."

That alone calls for increased rigor in zoning and planning and makes industrial sites far from populations appear more desirable. Even under the best circumstances with the latest cooling systems, they still give off heat that substantially increases the temperature of the surrounding ecosystem.

None of the environmental stuff makes it into Lombardo's vision of the driest state in the union — one already promising more energy that it can reasonably deliver — emerging as a leader in AI data center development.

At one point, the state's chief executive asserts, "The model we support in Nevada is simple: If a company wants to build here, it needs to bring its own solutions with it."

Elsewhere in the state, citizens armed with questions have made their concerns clear. In Boulder City this past week, the application for the TS2 Data Center project near I-11 and US-95 was withdrawn from the approval process. Although the Bureau of Land Management approved its right-of-way application in late June, increasing questions have been raised about its use of long-term available water.

Who knows, maybe someone felt the heat.

Townsite Solar 2 LLC, the Houston-based company developing the TS2 project, has now announced it's moving to adjacent federal land. Whether it receives less public scrutiny — and none of its water — remains unclear.

But Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) is already giving Bureau of Land Management Director Stevan Pearce an earful about the move. She writes in part, "The BLM allowed a private developer to switch from developing a solar farm on city-owned land in Boulder City to developing a data center on adjacent federal land without any public review. This is unacceptable."

Whether located in populated areas, limited to industrial complexes, or placed on federal land, the environmental impacts of AI data centers — even those that have passed Lombardo's Nevada hurdles — are still being measured. So, what's the rush?

That calls more for proceeding with caution than for striking up the band and rolling out the endless red carpet under the banner of economic diversity.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family's Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.