Adelanto and High Desert Residents Oppose Data Center Amendments
6 min read
A roadside welcome sign marks the entrance to Adelanto, where concerns about water and infrastructure fueled opposition to a data center zoning amendment rejected 3-2 by the Planning Commission.
By Francisco Aviles Pino
A proposed zoning change would open parts of the city to data centers and new energy infrastructure. High Desert residents say Adelanto should address basic needs — including water — before welcoming resource-intensive development.
Many people had traveled hours and got off work in order to give public comment against an amendment to city zoning.
For Esmeralda Santos, lead organizer with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, that journey underscored a larger problem facing residents of the High Desert: People are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make their voices heard in decisions that could reshape their communities.
“I met someone yesterday who traveled two hours from one side of Adelanto to get to the Planning Commission meeting,” Santos said. “There’s things people need urgently. And so the solution is not the data center.”
During a contentious Aug. 19 meeting that stretched several hours, residents and advocates packed the public comment period to oppose a proposed zoning amendment that could pave the way for data centers and new energy infrastructure in Adelanto.
The proposal, Zone Text Amendment 26-01, would add data centers as an allowable use within the city’s Light Manufacturing, Manufacturing Industrial and Airport Development District zones. It would also add natural gas and hydrogen power plants, fuel cells, battery storage systems, small modular reactors and microgrids, among other uses, to the city’s zoning code.
The amendment would not approve a specific data center. Instead, it would rewrite the city’s zoning rules to allow developers to pursue data centers and other energy projects in areas where those uses are not currently listed, establishing the regulatory framework for future proposals.
Data centers are large facilities filled with computer servers and other equipment that store, process and transmit digital information. They underpin services ranging from cloud storage and streaming to artificial intelligence. Keeping thousands of servers operating around the clock requires substantial electricity and generates heat, meaning data centers also require large cooling systems. Depending on how those systems are designed, some facilities can consume significant amounts of water.
That water use varies enormously from one data center to another. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that water consumption depends on factors including the type of cooling system, local climate, server efficiency, and the source of electricity powering the facility. The U.S. Department of Energy notes that facilities using cooling towers consume water primarily through evaporation as they remove heat generated by computing equipment. In other words, a data center does not automatically mean a particular amount of water use, but the technology and scale of a future project would determine how significant its demand could become.
The amendment would not approve a specific data center or authorize construction. Instead, it would change the city’s zoning rules to allow developers to seek permits for those uses in the future. Any individual development would still require discretionary approval and its own environmental review, according to the city.
But for many residents who spoke Wednesday, the possibility of bringing the resource-intensive industry to Adelanto raised a more immediate question: Why should the city make room for data centers when residents say some of their most basic needs remain unmet?
Water concerns drive opposition
Santos said residents throughout the High Desert have already been organizing around water scarcity, jobs and access to basic services.
In Adelanto, IC4IJ has worked with Unidos Por Un Mejor Adelanto, and other partners on a broader water justice campaign. Those concerns predate the current data center debate.
In 2022, researchers and community organizations working with Pitzer College documented residents’ reports of discolored and poor-tasting tap water as part of an Adelanto community water project. The effort brought together Pitzer’s Community Engagement Center and Robert Redford Conservancy with IC4IJ, Unidos Por Un Adelanto Mejor and other local partners.
Those complaints have continued. In December 2025, residents again went before the City Council describing brown, cloudy, or foul-smelling water and raising concerns about residue and effects on their skin and hair. By January, the city was moving to provide qualifying residents with home filtration systems, according to reporting by the Victorville Daily Press. That reporting also documented that PFOS, one of a group of synthetic chemicals commonly known as PFAS, had previously been detected in Adelanto’s water system.
The complaints do not by themselves establish that Adelanto’s tap water is currently unsafe throughout the city, and water appearance and taste can have multiple causes. But they show that distrust over the city’s water system has been building for years, well before officials began considering data centers.
“It was just extremely concerning for residents to see that the city would even be interested in proposing this type of industry to come into their city when they know that residents don’t even have access to the water that they deserve,” Santos said.
The city’s staff report acknowledges that future projects would require environmental review examining hydrology and water supply, along with air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, hazards, noise, transportation and energy use. City staff recommended exempting the zoning amendment itself from additional review under the California Environmental Quality Act because the amendment does not authorize a physical project.
Opposition also extended beyond Adelanto.
Santos said people traveled from Victorville, Hesperia and Apple Valley to participate because they view the potential environmental consequences as a regional issue.
“It was really a High Desert movement that was happening yesterday,” she said.
Who gets to decide Adelanto’s future?
The debate also exposed questions about representation and how consequential land-use decisions are made in a city where Planning Commission meetings typically attract little public attention.
Santos said even residents who regularly organize in Adelanto struggled to identify who sits on the Planning Commission or find information about them online.
“There’s even this gap of transparency of who is representing folks and folks that they’re representing,” Santos said.
For IC4IJ, the debate is also familiar.
The organization has spent years opposing the expansion and operation of immigration detention facilities in Adelanto. Santos sees parallels between the promises made around detention and the economic arguments now being made for data centers.
She said detention facilities were promoted as a source of jobs, infrastructure and economic development. Similar arguments about employment and investment are now being used around data centers.
“There’s just the promise of economic growth without recognizing that these industries are not providing jobs that are healthy,” Santos said.
City staff, meanwhile, has argued that expanding allowable uses would benefit Adelanto’s economic development and accommodate energy generation, transmission, storage and related infrastructure. The proposed changes would apply across properties zoned Light Manufacturing, Manufacturing Industrial and Airport Development District.
For Santos, the disagreement ultimately comes down to competing visions of what economic development should provide.
She pointed to needs residents have raised for years: closer access to hospitals and medical services, locally rooted green jobs, food access and businesses that keep money circulating within the High Desert.
“Meaningful economic development would invest into people’s medical care,” Santos said. “It would invest into green jobs that stay local.”
After hours of discussion and public opposition, the Planning Commission voted 3-2 against the zoning amendment. But the vote was not necessarily final. Because the commission serves in an advisory capacity on zoning changes, the proposal can still go before the Adelanto City Council, which has final authority over the amendment.
That means residents who packed the Aug. 19 hearing may have another opportunity to weigh in.
Adelanto posts upcoming agendas, meeting videos and recordings through its online meeting portal. Planning Commission meetings are generally held on the first and third Wednesday of the month, according to the city’s Aug. 19 agenda. The city also allows members of the public to participate in meetings in person, by phone, or through written correspondence; individual agendas include instructions for participating and submitting comments.
Residents can follow upcoming meetings and review agendas through the City of Adelanto meeting portal. Because meeting dates, locations, and participation instructions can change, residents should check the agenda for the specific meeting they plan to attend.
For Santos and the residents who spent hours waiting to speak Aug. 19, the debate is now bigger than whether Adelanto will eventually host a data center. It is about who gets to shape the High Desert’s next wave of development, and whether residents who have spent years asking for investments in water, health care, and basic infrastructure will have a meaningful say in what comes next.
IECN contacted the City of Adelanto for an interview and responses to questions about the proposed zoning amendment, including potential water and infrastructure demands and whether the city has received interest from data center developers. The city did not respond by time of publication.
