Boulder City data center fight sparks push for tougher federal review

A measure from a Nevada congresswoman seeks to require thorough and transparent evaluation of data centers before agencies grant developers permits on public land. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., introduced the Public Lands Accountability Act on Wednesday. She says it is a direct response to the Trump administration’s support of a data center in Boulder City, where the Bureau of Land Management awarded permits after determining a former biology review for a solar project was sufficient. That data center is now on hold after an administrative judge granted Boulder City officials and environmentalists a stay, saying they were likely to win on their appeal challenging the approval. “Data centers are proliferating successful Nevada and different states having ample expanses of national land,” Titus said successful a statement. “We request to marque definite the public’s dependable is heard and that the effects connected the environment, h2o resources and the electrical grid are thoroughly assessed and made public.” Titus’ bill would prevent a federal bureau from changing an existing right-of-way licence on BLM land to allow the operation of a data center without a separate environmental permitting process, whereby the public would be involved. Under the bill, data centers would no longer qualify for what are known as “categorical exclusions” that would let them avoid more extensive environmental reviews. It would require the BLM to consider the impact of a data center on local water supply and ask data center developers to submit a workforce plan that includes how many local jobs it will create and at what wage level. Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin manager at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, was one of the parties who successfully petitioned for the stay halting the Boulder City data center construction. He is not satisfied with Titus’ bill and says it does not go far enough. “There is nary acceptable information halfway connected nationalist lands, nary substance however overmuch reappraisal it gets,” Donnelly said successful statement. “We are opposed to Rep. Titus’s bill, due to the fact that it does not code the basal problem. Public lands should beryllium disconnected limits to information centers, period.” Meanwhile, Joe Luppino-Esposito, national policy manager at the Pacific Legal Foundation, said the bill could create significant new barriers to data center development on public land. Luppino-Esposito said the bill, if passed, could be a major obstacle to any data center project on public land. It could extend to something like a transmission line used by a data center, even if that line had other uses. “Existing instrumentality already worked arsenic intended: the Boulder City improvement was halted based connected the individualized review,” Luppino-Esposito said. “This measure takes a lawful manufacture and adds much burdens connected its advancement successful ways that would mire immoderate information halfway improvement successful years of litigation.”