Judge strikes down Trump-backed data center on public land

The Biden administration originally approved the same patch of federal land for a solar farm in 2023.

1 minute read

September 13, 2026, 5:00 AM PDT

By Zachary Whalen


View of the mountain landscape near Boulder, Nevada. A town filled with houses with orange roofs is surrounded by mountains.

Prior to getting approval to build on public land, TF2 proposed building a data center in Boulder city limits. | gg-foto

A federal judge has halted what would have been the United State’s first data center on federal land, siding with the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter and the Center for Biological Diversity's appeal. Trump’s Bureau of Land Management gave Townsite Solar 2 the greenlight to build a data center on the land in June, which would have been located southeast of Las Vegas in Boulder City, Nevada.

In 2023, the Biden administration’s Bureau of Land Management approved TS2 to develop a solar farm on the same patch of federal land, Ramin Skibba writes for SFGate. In June, the Trump administration’s BLM allowed TS2 to use the land for a data center instead. The BLM did not require a new environmental review for the proposed data center, arguing that its environmental impacts would be essentially the same as that of the solar project. 

Prior to getting approval to build on public land, TF2 proposed building a data center in Boulder CCity limits. The proposed data center received considerable local opposition and the city’s planning commission voted almost unanimously against it.

Friday, September 11, 2026 in SFGate

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