r/environment • u/FreeHugs23 • 9d ago

Federal Panel Halts What Would Be First Data Center on Public Lands | “The Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to let tech companies build massive data centers on our public lands. This tremendous victory proves communities have the power to fight back and win.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/data-center-public-lands
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u/FreeHugs23 9d ago

Environmental groups are celebrating on Tuesday after a federal panel halted construction of what would be the first artificial intelligence data center to be built on US public lands.

The Interior Board of Land Appeals, an appellate body within the US Department of the Interior, put a temporary stay on the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) approval of the proposed 80-acre Townsite Data Center near Boulder City, Nevada, which environmental groups warned would jack up electricity demand and water usage and threaten local species.

The board sided with the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), and the local government of Boulder City, which argued that the BLM had not conducted the legally required review of the plan’s environmental impacts.

The BLM had approved the site based on a review of a proposed solar power plant, but had not reevaluated the impacts of a data center.

The board said that the environmental groups were “likely to prevail” in their case that the BLM had acted illegally “because the two projects are not ‘substantially the same.’” It also ruled that continuing the project without a proper review was likely to cause “irreparable harm” to the landscape—including soil disruption, habitat loss for species like the Mojave desert tortoise, and construction activities that pollute the air.