LAS VEGAS— The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter today filed an administrative appeal challenging federal approval of the Townsite Data Center in Boulder City, Nevada.

The 167-megawatt data center, proposed by Skylar Capital Management, was approved by the Bureau of Land Management in June through an unorthodox permitting procedure that avoided any environmental review or public participation. It is the first data center ever approved on public lands.

“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.”

The data center would be built on desert tortoise habitat in Eldorado Valley, southeast of Las Vegas. Water for the project would be sourced from within the parched Colorado River Basin. It is within the city limits of the small town of Boulder City, which is also filing an appeal.

Today’s appeal says the BLM unlawfully sidestepped environmental review laws by using a prior authorization for a solar project at the same site to fulfill requirements for authorizing the data center. This meant the public never had an opportunity to review the data center plans or offer input before the BLM approved the project.

“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. We’re fighting to make sure that never happens.”

Joining the appeal are several residents of Boulder City who would be harmed by the data center if it were constructed.

“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.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill in Congress last week to prevent construction of data centers on all federal land.