A leading conservation organization warns that the industrial-expediting bill BAAJA (S. 5653) could lock in data centers on public lands.
In a new brief, the Wilderness Society writes: “Alarmingly, the bill could accelerate and lock in the development of data centers on public lands and their impacts on water, wildlife, and communities.”
“If passed in its current form,” BAAJA’s project certainty language “means permanently entrenching data center development on public lands,” the society continues. “With at least 35 data center related applications covering 24,000 acres of public lands already pending, this could have very damaging impacts for public lands and local communities.”
BAAJA “could make a data center moratorium on public lands exceedingly difficult to implement,” the society noted, “and could allow developers to sue taxpayers if their projects are slowed.”
“BAAJA undermines bedrock environmental laws,” the society warns, “turning the National Environmental Policy Act into a dead letter, gutting protections under the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, and giving unchecked discretion to federal officials determining when, if at all, the National Historic Preservation Act’s protections apply.”
These changes would “accelerate data center projects” by “eliminating or curtailing environmental reviews” of “cultural resources, endangered species and wetlands.”
The society cited as an example of the data-center projects that BAAJA would make unstoppable the proposed Townsite Solar 2 Data Center on public lands near Boulder, Nev. A properly permitted solar project was converted, lawlessly, to a data center project. It has since been enjoined by the Interior Board of Land Appeals.
That process would be eliminated by BAAJA.
The Wilderness Society opposes BAAJA.