Trump’s EPA wants to let data centers hide their air pollution

The Trump administration's EPA has proposed eliminating a federal rule requiring public notice and comment for certain industrial air permits, a move advocates say would let data center developers avoid public scrutiny. The change, announced in July, would shift the burden to state and local agencies, which critics fear may forgo public participation. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin defended the move as cutting 'unnecessary and burdensome red tape,' while Keri Powell of the Southern Environmental Law Center warned that facilities could 'issue the permits in secret behind closed doors.'

Just as new data centers face growing backlash /science/841169/ai-data-center-opposition from neighboring communities, the US Environmental Protection Agency EPA is about to make it harder for people to weigh in on any pollution those centers create. Trump’s EPA wants to let data centers hide their air pollution The Trump administration wants to scrap another federal air pollution rule. Advocates say it’ll help data center developers avoid public scrutiny. The Trump administration wants to scrap another federal air pollution rule. Advocates say it’ll help data center developers avoid public scrutiny. , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. https://www.audible.com/podcast/Hell-or-High-Water-When-Disaster-Hits-Home/B0C15QVQLM Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home The EPA plans to toss out a federal rule requiring public notice and an opportunity to comment when certain industrial sites apply for an air permit. Advocates warn that the move would allow data center developers and other industries to break ground without giving nearby residents a say, or even a warning that construction is planned. “You can see why that would be so interesting to an administration that wants to rush through the construction of data centers,” says Keri Powell, senior attorney and air program leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center SELC . “What EPA would be allowing would be all of those facilities to go through and just not have to deal with the public, issue the permits in secret behind closed doors. Nobody knows what’s happening until the bulldozers are out there.” “Nobody knows what’s happening until the bulldozers are out there.” The EPA’s proposed changes apply to a permitting process that’s been in place since the 1970s called New Source Review https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/new-source-review/ that applies to a wide range of facilities, from landfills and paper mills to power plant expansions. More recently with the rise of generative AI, these permits have also become a flashpoint for opposition to new data centers, as well as to power plants built to provide electricity for all those servers. In July, the EPA announced that it would eliminate the federal public participation requirement for a large set of polluters and place that burden on states. The plan would leave it up to state and local air agencies to decide whether or not to notify the public about certain new sources of pollution — leaving advocates concerned that many of these agencies would forgo the process altogether. Air pollution is often regulated at the federal level because it can waft across the country, affecting residents in one state even if the source is in another. “The state and local authorities closest to the issues and the public should be making the decisions on the permitting process as much as possible, not Washington,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-proposes-streamline-state-and-local-permitting-process-minor-sources at the time. “We are cutting unnecessary and burdensome red tape.” The change applies to so-called “minor” sources of pollution, which the EPA says in its announcement “have relatively low emissions and limited environmental impact.” Powell’s group contends that the “minor” label is a misnomer and that the permitting process routinely covers projects that can have significant consequences for their neighbors. Colossus 1, xAI’s massive data center in Tennessee that the company billed as the “ most powerful AI training system yet https://x.ai/colossus ,” applied for a minor source permit https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17072025/elon-musk-xai-data-center-gas-turbines-memphis/?gad source=1&gad campaignid=22688141957&gbraid=0AAAAADogIi37G3ni58VckSaYS9Bmr7ejS&gclid=CjwKCAiAv5bMBhAIEiwAqP9GuL2zghN4Euya qdzsthO3ICnlceZ FfJnp7pAbHSZJUHm AVt3CQRRoCSwwQAvD BwE in 2025. That led to a hearing and elicited thousands of comments to a public notice posted by the local health department, Inside Climate News reported last year. The SELC and NAACP threatened to sue xAI https://naacp.org/articles/elon-musks-xai-threatened-lawsuit-over-air-pollution-memphis-data-center-filed-behalf for installing unpermitted gas turbines at the site the same year. SELC was one of nearly 200 health and environmental groups that filed comments https://www.selc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Filed-final-Joint-Comments-on-EPA-Community-Shutout-NSR-Permitting-Proposal-8 21 26.pdf last Friday asking the EPA to withdraw its proposal on New Source Review. They argue that by mandating public comment, residents can provide agencies with valuable insight on the repercussions of building a new data center or other industrial facility. “ The EPA’s proposal could deprive the agencies making decisions about these pollution sources the necessary lived experience data of those communities. Without that information, it is impossible for permitting agencies to evaluate the full, cumulative impact of these facilities,” Kentucky Resources Council Senior Attorney Byron Gary said in a press release https://www.edf.org/media/coalition-urges-epa-keep-public-participation-requirements-air-permits . The public comment period for the EPA’s proposal ended last week, and EPA spokesperson Carolyn Holran says in an email to The Verge that they’re still reviewing all the comments submitted https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-1212 — more than 4,900 that need to be addressed before the agency can finalize its rule. Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.