Bureau of Land Management Approves First-Ever AI Data Center on Public Lands

Data center project in Nevada "is substantially the same" as a previously proposed solar farm, Trump administration claims

“By cutting the public out of the process, they’re trying to hand over Nevada’s desert to billion-dollar tech companies without anyone getting a say. If this isn’t challenged, it won’t stop in Boulder City—it will become the blueprint for data centers across public lands in the West.” - Olivia Tanager, Executive Director at the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter

A little over a year ago, on July 23, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order announcing that “my Administration will utilize federally owned land and resources for the expeditious and orderly development of data centers.”

And indeed, just last month, on June 26, 2026, the Trump administration approved the first-ever commercial AI data center on public land.

The Townsite Data Center would be located on 88.5 acres of federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Eldorado Valley. It would sit within the city limits of Boulder City, Nevada, a historic community of fewer than 15,000 people southeast of Las Vegas, often referred to as the “gateway to the Hoover Dam.”

The facility would draw as much as 167 megawatts of electricity—more than Boulder City itself consumes—and place two warehouse-scale buildings, parking lots, an electrical substation, battery storage, backup generators, powerlines, and a brand new road in the middle of desert tortoise habitat.

And yet, Bruce Sillitoe, the BLM’s Las Vegas Field Office Manager, approved the AI data center in June without preparing a new environmental assessment or soliciting any public comment.

Instead, the agency relied on a prior analysis conducted for a completely different proposal: a solar-energy and battery-storage project called Townsite Solar 2, which was first proposed by the same Houston-based company that now wants to build a data center there instead.

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The maps below, obtained from the BLM’s Plan of Development, show the location of the proposed Townsite Data Center relative to Las Vegas and Lake Mead, and Boulder City. “Development of data center and AI infrastructure is a top priority [of] the United States Government,” the Plan of Development says.

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The BLM’s decision has turned an otherwise obscure federal right-of-way approval into a test of how far the Trump administration may actually go to accelerate America’s artificial-intelligence boom—and whether public lands and environmental law will become collateral damage as a result.

In a Decision Record and a Determination of NEPA Adequacy, both published on June 26, the agency concluded that “[t]he new proposed action is substantially the same as the original proposed action analyzed in the existing environmental document.”

Officials cited similarities in acreage, boundaries, construction duration, and the general dimensions of the facilities.

In other words, the BLM—on the record—claims that an AI data center is essentially the same as a solar farm.

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In this explanation of their decision, a screenshot from the Decision Record, the BLM argues that the new proposed AI data center “is substantially the same” as the original proposed solar farm because it “is within the same analysis area.”

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The BLM literally used an analysis of a solar power project to approve a data center, rather than conducting a new review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

This has zero precedent in U.S. history.

There is, of course, one gigantic difference between both facilities: solar farms generate electricity, while data centers consume it—and they do so continuously and in truly enormous quantities.

To be clear: both a solar farm and data center in this location would have had the same results when considering solely public land, recreation, and access. Both would have given a chunk of public land to a private company to use. And both would have eliminated public access, recreational opportunities, and destroyed desert wildlife habitat.

The Townsite Data Center’s projected peak demand is 167 megawatts, supplied through a dedicated 230-kilovolt line from the Mead substation. Its backup generators could produce air pollution, while construction would damage vulnerable desert habitat.

Although the developer claims that an air-cooled, closed-loop system would largely eliminate water-intensive cooling, the project would still operate within the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin.

The BLM’s data center approval also bypassed Boulder City officials.

“We’ve had no conversations, there’s been no chance for the community or for the city to provide any input to the federal government,” city spokesperson Lisa LaPlante told E&E News. “This feels so unprecedented for us to have a project placed in our city without the chance to weigh in.”

The city is now appealing the decision.

On Monday, July 27, the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter filed a separate administrative appeal, arguing that the BLM unlawfully avoided environmental review and public participation.

The environmental groups contend that converting an approved power-producing project into a massive power-consuming facility cannot reasonably be treated as “substantially the same.”

“It’s an outrage that the Trump administration is giving away our public lands to hedge funds for data centers,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin Director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Public lands are for wildlife and clean water, for recreation and spiritual renewal. They’re not meant for big tech companies to spew air pollution and suck down water for AI and the surveillance state.”

Importantly, they also warn that the decision could establish a national template for placing data centers across Western public lands.

“Trump is sidestepping the law and shutting the public out of decisions about our public lands,” said Olivia Tanager, Executive Director at the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter. “By cutting the public out of the process, they’re trying to hand over Nevada’s desert to billion-dollar tech companies without anyone getting a say. If this isn’t challenged, it won’t stop in Boulder City—it will become the blueprint for data centers across public lands in the West.”

The BLM’s public announcement offered little detail about those concerns. It said the project supports technological innovation, economic growth, and President Trump’s executive order directing agencies to accelerate AI data center construction.

That July 23, 2025 order—Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure—explicitly calls for using federal public land and easing regulatory burdens for facilities requiring more than 100 megawatts.

“[M]y Administration will utilize federally owned land and resources for the expeditious and orderly development of data centers,” Trump’s EO said. “This usage will be done in a manner consistent with the land’s intended purpose—to be used in service of the prosperity and security of the American people.”

The Townsite Data Center approval—again, this is the first-ever data center on public lands—demonstrates what that policy actually means in practice.

In this particular case, environmental review was not just accelerated but literally copied from an entirely different infrastructure project. The public comment period wasn’t just shortened but was non-existent.

The result of this goes far beyond those 88.5 acres of public land outside Boulder City, Nevada. America’s AI buildout will require extraordinary amounts of land, electricity, transmission infrastructure, and water. Public lands may end up playing some role in meeting that demand.

But let’s not downplay what happened here.

This is a data center that’s legally masquerading as a solar farm because their fences, acreage, and construction schedules look alike. This is the federal government judging projects only by their physical footprints, while ignoring what they actually do and which resources they actually require.

If the BLM gets away with this, what would prevent them from approving another solar farm on public land and then simply letting an AI data center being built instead?

“I’ve heard myriad warnings about the negative impacts hyperscale AI data centers have had on small towns across the United States, but have yet to find a single town whose residents have thanked their government for bestowing one of these industrial behemoths upon them,” said Brynn DeLorimier, a local business owner in Boulder City.

“I believe placing such a facility in a water-starved desert where we see increasingly hot summers year over year is about the most shortsighted decision any level of government could possibly make.”

“We don’t want to see our utility rates skyrocket while our property values plummet, we don’t want to see our tourism industry destroyed, we don’t want to see our water supply contaminated, and we don’t want the natural beauty of our desert to turn into an industrial wasteland.”

Lastly, the American public—which, according to poll after poll, is strongly opposed to data centers near population centers—won’t get any help from President Trump’s Department of Justice here.

As reported on Tuesday, July 28, by Inside Climate News, environmental enforcement by the DOJ has absolutely collapsed under the second Trump administration.

There’s no clearer evidence of the massive shift in the federal government’s priorities than what happened to the Justice Department’s ENR Division a month ago, on June 29.

On that day, the DOJ announced it had renamed its “Environment and Natural Resources Division” to the “Energy and Natural Resources Division.”

Same initials, vastly different focus.

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Thanks for reading!

See you on our public lands and waters,

Bram