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First-of-its-kind public Nevada data center halted over review concerns

Completed Townsite Solar facility near Boulder City, Nevada, combining a 180 MW solar array with 90 MW of battery storage. The site is separate from the unbuilt solar project whose environmental review was later used for the proposed data center. Source: ENR (image by Arevon Energy)

Approval for a planned 167 MW data center near Boulder City, Nevada, has been temporarily halted after a federal appeals board found that the environmental review used to authorize the project was likely inadequate.

The proposed Townsite Data Center would be built on Bureau of Land Management land west of U.S. 95, near the existing Townsite Solar development. The scheme includes four data center buildings, a 70 MW battery energy storage system, an electrical substation, backup generation and connection to 230 kV transmission infrastructure.

Federal filings described the development as representing around USD3bn in planned capital investment, including buildings, computing equipment and supporting infrastructure. Construction had been scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027, with startup and testing later that year and commercial operation targeted for the second quarter of 2028.

Planned Townsite Data Center site near Boulder City, Nevada, located on Bureau of Land Management land west of U.S. 95. Source: ENR (image by Bureau of Land Management)

The issue is not whether a data center can be built on the site, but whether the correct environmental process was followed before approval.

The Bureau of Land Management approved the data center in June by relying on a 2023 environmental review prepared for an unbuilt 19 MW solar project on the same site. The agency argued that the two projects occupied the same location, used the same acreage and involved similar construction footprints.

The Interior Board of Land Appeals disagreed at this stage. It found that the challengers were likely to succeed in arguing that a 300,000 sq ft data center is materially different from a 19 MW solar power facility. The board also noted that the construction duration could increase from around 12 months for the solar scheme to up to 18 months for the data center, which could change the scale of noise, dust, traffic and emissions impacts.

The stay does not permanently cancel the project. It pauses the approval while the appeal proceeds, with the administrative record and expedited briefing expected to follow.

The May federal filing still referred to geotechnical investigation required before construction, while final building dimensions and some other details remained unresolved.

For a large data center, early design information needs to address foundation conditions, grading, drainage, earthworks, utility corridors, access roads, substation interfaces, battery storage areas, backup generation, heat rejection systems, construction logistics and long-term operational impacts.

Even when two projects use the same site, their engineering footprints can differ significantly. A solar facility and a data center may have different foundation loads, building massing, cooling requirements, traffic profiles, water demand, emergency systems, visual impact and operational risk.

The Townsite decision therefore underlines a simple infrastructure lesson: environmental review, geotechnical investigation and constructability assessment must match the actual project being built. Reusing an earlier assessment can only work if the proposed development is genuinely comparable in scale, function and impact.

Sources: enr.com, commondreams.org, biologicaldiversity.org