Drew Ryun

The Interior Department is drawing up lists of public land for AI data centers. This is unnecessary, an inappropriate use of our natural heritage, and should be opposed by all conservatives. BLM state directors got three days in September to name parcels that could host data centers, and at least 15 proposals for data centers and related infrastructure, covering more than 17,000 acres, are pending across six Western states. Developers want land near transmission, and a USGS report this summer found about 91 million acres of BLM land, nearly the size of Montana, within 10 miles of a high-voltage line. We support building data centers responsibly, but our standard asks four things of them: 1) no net cost to ratepayers 2) no net water burden 3) protect valuable land 4) put communities first Putting them on open public land fails the last two. Ranchers graze that land, hunters and campers use it, and federal law directs BLM to manage it for all of them. A solar lease on public land comes with reclamation requirements, so the ground can be restored when the panels come down. A data center campus is a permanent industrial site, and once it goes up, that ground is gone for good. ACC spent this year fighting for permitting reform because America needs to build faster. Shortcuts like this one undercut that case and hand ammunition to everyone who would rather nothing get built at all. Better land, including federal land, already exists. The Energy Department is partnering on a privately funded campus of more than $100 billion at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, a former uranium enrichment plant, with cleanup continuing alongside it. Brownfields, Superfund sites, and retired coal plants come with roads, substations, and transmission already in place, and building there puts land that needs cleanup back to work. Public land should stay public and working for the people who use it, and a decision this permanent deserves more than a three-day list.