The Data Center Backlash Is a Warning for Permitting Reform

Public participation doesn’t kill projects – but leaving the public out can. The intense public backlash to data centers shows us how communities respond when their leaders greenlight new infrastructure without giving them a say. But you wouldn’t know that from the conversation around permitting reform in Washington.

Congress passed environmental laws to protect communities, in part by giving them a chance to weigh in on government actions that affect them. But now, Congress is considering cutting people out of the process, compromising the foundations of protections communities have relied on for decades. Even worse, talking points straight from the fossil fuel industry have convinced many legislators that environmental laws are standing in the way of the transition to clean energy. The real problem is an executive branch that is systematically blocking wind and solar projects using tactics that go well beyond environmental reviews.

It’s essential for any good decision-making process to invite feedback from affected groups. Done well, local feedback makes good projects better and more durable, reducing risk for developers and the government.

Stories of successful projects don’t make national news. Consider two relatively recent projects near SELC’s headquarters in Charlottesville, VA. When Virginia DOT announced a proposal to reduce traffic on Route 29 by constructing a new 4-lane highway, residents pointed to local transportation plans that proposed lower impact and less expensive options to improve existing roads. Decision-makers listened, and the state constructed a collection of improvements that achieved the state’s original goals for smoothing out traffic flow – under budget, ahead of schedule, and with greater community support.

In Virginia’s George Washington National Forest, the Forest Service convened a diverse group of stakeholders, from the timber industry to wildlife groups, to weigh in on plans to restore and manage 100,000 acres of land in the Lower Cowpasture watershed. The result was a successful project with strong support for actions to improve water quality, protect wildlife habitat, promote recreation, and permit a substantially larger timber harvest than would have been widely accepted without that level of engagement.

These types of collaborative wins happen every day. They don’t make headlines because conflicts are resolved before they turn into delays.

The public response to data centers shows us what happens when communities are locked out of the conversation. Across our region in the Southeast, we hear communities voicing their frustration that decisions were made behind closed doors, and they are calling for construction to be delayed or moratoriums put in place. It’s obvious that not inviting the community to the table is a major reason why decision makers and tech companies are having such a hard time crafting data center projects in a way that truly benefits the community. By trying to move fast and break things, they have broken the public’s trust.

Still, lawmakers from both parties continue to introduce permitting bills that would slash public engagement, reduce transparency, and eliminate any form of accountability – all making it easier to blast through approvals for large-scale projects with enormous potential impacts to our communities, public health, and climate without any meaningful opportunities for public participation. It would make the opaque processes, public opposition, and undetermined environmental impacts we’re seeing with data centers the norm for everything from highways to fossil fuel pipelines.

Boosters of these bills want to present an easy solution to fixing our nation’s infrastructure – people are the problem, and we need to get them out of the way. But that conveniently ignores that if it strips back guardrails under an administration that’s actively hostile to clean energy, Congress would be giving the fossil fuel industry exactly what it wants.

If what Congress and the administration want is certainty, pushing people out of the process will only ensure massive backlash. We know how to get efficient environmental reviews and durable permits: do them right the first time and ensure agencies have the staff and resources to get the job done promptly, effectively, and with public support.