1. United States
2. Colo.
3. Letter

You must block the Trump administration's plan to hand over 17,600 acres of public land to tech companies for data center construction. These projects span six states and were developed without public notice, environmental review, and input from local communities. Many people only just learned about these proposals through press reporting. This is not how public land management works or should work. We the people should have a say in what happens with our public lands. The environmental record of current data centers are damning. Data centers pollute air and water, contribute to PFAS contamination, and consume staggering amounts of fresh water. The noise pollution is over 90 decibels, due to the fans, cooling systems and diesel generators used to power these behemoths. For comparison, a construction site generates 60 decibels. Imagine having that level of noise 24/7 365 days a year. This doesn’t even count the low-frequency noise. U.S. data centers are set to become the fifth largest consumer of natural gas. The top four are the US, Russia, China, and Iran. This administration is gutting the laws that give the public a voice on these type of projects (NEPA) to fast track approvals of these data centers. A judge already ordered a stay on the first BLM approved data center in Nevada after the agency skipped environmental review. Stop this now before it’s too late and our public lands are gobbled up by big tech. Public lands belong to the public. Tech companies need to put a halt on their expansion until well regulated growth can occur. Most communities do not want them in their neighborhoods. Oppose any legislation or administrative action that opens federal lands to data center development, and demand that BLM restore full public comment processes before any such project moves forward.