A small Nevada town is going toe-to-toe with the federal government over a proposed data center — and the outcome could set a precedent for future fights between localities and Washington over the use of federal lands.
Fewer than 15,000 people live in Boulder City, a desert community that once served as a hub for workers who built the Hoover Dam, and is now one of the few places in Nevada where gambling is prohibited.
The battle with the Trump administration is over a 76-acre plot of land west of downtown that sits within city limits but is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. Until recently, that land was slated to host a solar farm and battery storage project.
But earlier this year, the project’s developers amended their application to instead build a data center and the infrastructure to power it. BLM quickly approved the request without public hearings or input, appearing to lean on President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order designed to accelerate the construction of artificial intelligence infrastructure on federal land.
The site is believed to be the first data center approved on BLM land, but it likely won’t be the last. The administration is currently working to get more data centers installed on federal property, including Department of Energy sites and military areas.
For Boulder City, that means an unpopular data center could be built within its borders, relying on city infrastructure and emergency services, but without any revenue going to city coffers. And that prospect has city officials up in arms.
“We’ve had no conversations, there’s been no chance for the community or for the city to provide any input to the federal government,” said Lisa LaPlante, a spokesperson for Boulder City. “This feels so unprecedented for us to have a project placed in our city without the chance to weigh in.”
Now the city is fighting back. The Boulder City Council last week voted to appeal the decision, unleashing its city attorney to initiate a challenge to BLM’s approval through the Interior Department. Separately, a group of citizens is filing its own appeal, aided by the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.
The fracas even has caught the attention of U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), who sent a letter this month demanding that BLM address residents’ concerns in a “public and transparent manner” and questioning the agency’s approval.
A spokesperson for Titus said she also is working on legislation that would force BLM to be transparent in any data center approvals and prevent the agency from similarly installing data centers on lands approved for other projects.
BLM did not respond to a request for comment.
Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter in Nevada who is working on an appeal of the project, said the group is concerned that the rapid approval in Boulder City could “set a horrible precedent” as the government looks to expand the scope of AI infrastructure.
“This was a bait and switch,” Tanager said. “If we allow this precedent to stand, the fear is that this could promulgate throughout not just Nevada, but all over the country in the interest of expediting data centers.”
Small town charm
When Janelle Sorensen moved to Boulder City in 2020 after retiring from a career as an attorney in California, she was drawn to its “charm” and slow pace. Even though it sits in the same county as Las Vegas, Boulder City might as well be a world away, Sorensen said.
Its economy relies on tourists visiting the Hoover Dam or enjoying outdoor recreation in the southern Nevada desert, rather than industrial development.
“We just want to maintain the character of the town as it is,” Sorensen said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t want to be part of the modern world. But we always say that if you want something from the big city, you can just go over the hill” to nearby cities such as Henderson or Las Vegas.
So when Sorensen heard developers might try to bring a data center to Boulder City, she felt she couldn’t just “sit by and let this happen.”
Data centers, she said, could change the character of the town, potentially driving away tourists or forcing people to move away. And that’s on top of concerns about proposed water use, potential noise issues and effect on power demand.
“Anything that’s going to dramatically impact our environment, that sets off alarm bells,” Sorensen said. “When I started talking to people about it, everyone — regardless of political persuasion — was against it. We built up a great deal of momentum.”
The data center plan came from a proposal from developer Skylar Energy Resources through a subsidiary known as Townsite Solar 2. The company had been developing solar energy and storage in the area and held an 88.5-acre site for an energy project.
In January, however, the company asked the city for permission to adjust that site to accommodate two server warehouses, a battery storage system, a substation and other electric infrastructure. They proposed using an air-cooled, closed-loop cooling system that limits the water consumption, in keeping with the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s ban on the more water-intensive evaporative cooling systems.
The developer also proposed building separate from Boulder City’s power network, instead drawing from a nearby substation. The site’s peak demand would be 167 megawatts, or more than the power for 75,000 homes.
Townsite Solar 2 said in a statement that it has “worked to be a responsible neighbor and long-term partner to the City of Boulder City and the people who call it home” and that the same commitment “remains central to this project.”
The company said it wants to “develop a responsible, sustainable project that Boulder City can be proud of and can serve as a national model” — including by making sure Boulder City can receive possible revenue and contribution benefits regardless of project siting.
Skylar Energy Resources is a subsidiary of Skylar Capital Management, a Houston-based investment firm focused on natural gas and power markets. The capital firm is not involved in the Nevada project.
A city planning board voted against the data center, but final approval was required by the City Council. Before the council could vote, however, Townsite Solar 2 withdrew its application. Rather than build on the city land, the data center would instead go less than half a mile away to the BLM site.
At a public meeting days later, council member Steve Walton called BLM’s decision “ridiculous.” Walton and the other council members set in motion an appeal of the BLM decision, which is set to be filed before July 27.
‘Totally irrelevant’
A key argument of the twin challenges to the data center is whether the federal agency was right to amend its 2023 permit to Townsite Solar 2 to put clean energy infrastructure on the site.
In that National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) decision approving a 19-MW solar farm, BLM found the project would have no significant environmental impact.
BLM Las Vegas Field Manager Bruce Sillitoe commended the project in a 2023 press release, saying it “will tangibly contribute to a clean energy economy and create jobs for our community.”
But a data center is a wildly different proposition, said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the CBD.
The determination of NEPA adequacy authority used by BLM is typically used for equivalent projects on the same site, such as an expansion of a cattle enclosure or additional drilling on an already-approved oil site.
“The analysis of a solar project is totally irrelevant to a data center,” Donnelly said.
It’s unclear whether BLM relied on authority from Trump’s July 2025 executive order, which called on federal agencies to streamline environmental reviews for data centers on federal land.
According to an unpublished press release seen by POLITICO’s E&E News and first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, BLM cited that executive order for its approval of the data center. That press release has not been published, and BLM’s documentation for the amended application is not part of the online docket for the site.
Boulder City’s review now goes to the Interior Department’s Interior Board of Land Appeals, an internal agency review body. IBLA will determine whether to put the project on hold during its review; if it does not, Donnelly said, advocates could seek a stay through the courts.
A spokesperson for Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford (D) said Ford’s office has no involvement with the appeal at this point.
Sorensen said the fact that city and environmental attorneys are against it shows that the data center opposition isn’t just “a couple of weirdos.” And she said she hopes the pushback serves as an inspiration for other cities and towns.
“We’re not the only community being threatened by development like this,” she said. “We want to be an indicator of what happens elsewhere to show success in stopping data centers.”
