The federal government approved a data center on public land outside Boulder City, Nevada — without a single new public meeting. Now the city and national conservation groups are racing to stop it before it becomes the blueprint for the American West. Plus: a "not a drop" developer sues for Colorado River water, Ohio voters get the final say on a $2B Amazon campus, and America's biggest grid warns data centers they could be forced offline.
📣 **COMMUNITY** — The BLM approved the 81-acre Townsite Data Center in Eldorado Valley by amending a 2023 solar-farm permit — with no new public meetings. The Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter filed appeals Monday; Boulder City's council voted unanimously to appeal and seek a construction stay, calling itself a national test case as Congress weighs a public-lands data center ban. (Source: Center for Biological Diversity / Las Vegas Review-Journal / FOX5 Vegas)
💧 **WATER** — The developer of California's largest planned AI data center — who once vowed the project "does not touch a single drop of the Colorado River" — is suing the Imperial Irrigation District for 287 million gallons per year to cool a 330 MW facility, after two cities refused to sell it wastewater. The plan would retire irrigation equal to a ~160-acre farm. (Source: Tom's Hardware / KPBS)
📣 **COMMUNITY** — Sunbury, Ohio residents gathered 450 signatures — nearly 3x the 174 required — to put a 25-megawatt data center cap on the November 3 ballot. A yes vote would block the planned $2B Amazon Data Services campus. Council certified the measure unanimously; Mayor Joe St. John confirmed 351 verified resident signatures. (Source: NBC4 / ABC6 / The Cool Down)
⚡ **POWER** — PJM Interconnection, serving 67 million people, announced Monday it will hold an emergency September auction to plug a ~7 GW shortfall for 2028 — with costs charged to data centers. Data centers without secured generation could face involuntary outages as soon as mid-20
