KVIG Informative

Boulder City’s Planning Commission voted 6-1 against allowing data centers in the city. The federal government approved one anyway, on land the city says is still within its jurisdiction — and now Boulder City is taking the fight to federal court.

The Boulder City Council voted unanimously to formally appeal the Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the Townsite Solar 2 data center, filing the appeal with the Department of the Interior’s Board of Land Appeals on July 23.

City attorney Brittany Walker told the council the BLM’s approval represented a departure from previous precedent and procedure, arguing the agency swept aside a new land use decision without following the processes required under federal law, including meaningful engagement with the City of Boulder City.

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The appeal argues the National Environmental Policy Act requires a new environmental review specifically addressing the data center’s energy demands, industrial noise and diesel emissions from backup generators — impacts the city says were never analyzed because the BLM relied entirely on the three-year-old solar project review instead.

Boulder City’s Planning Commission had already signaled its own opposition months earlier. In May, commissioners voted 6-1 to recommend the City Council reject adding data centers to the city’s list of approved land uses, citing the need for more regulatory oversight over the industry.

Townsite Solar 2 had pursued two separate paths for the same project: one application to build a data center on land owned directly by Boulder City, and a second, ultimately successful request to the BLM to convert its federal land approval instead. The company withdrew its city-land application on July 7, days after the Planning Commission’s rejection recommendation, leaving only the federal approval in place.

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U.S. Rep. Dina Titus criticized the BLM’s handling of the matter in a statement, saying the agency compounded its lack of transparency by failing to respond to the city’s questions before a set deadline passed.

Boulder City voted against this project twice — once through its Planning Commission, once through its City Council appeal. Neither vote had any legal power to stop it, because the land the data center sits on was never the city’s to control in the first place.