Fifty Shades of Fed Up

Data center companies want more than 24,000 acres of your public land. That's the count from the Center for Western Priorities, which just mapped every data center application sitting on BLM land. 35 applications, spread across AZ, ID, NV, OR, UT and WY. At least seventeen are data center campuses, and one of them, in UT, would be powered by 456 small nuclear reactors. Thirteen are the roads, water pipelines and power lines to feed them. Many list zero acres, so the real footprint is bigger. BLM already approved one data center near Boulder City, NV, in June. This month it was thrown out after an appeals board found BLM likely broke federal environmental law. If that data center sat on city land, Boulder City would have collected roughly $2.3 million a year. On BLM land, it won't generate any revenue for the city. Now picture 35 applications on 24,000 acres. Then there's what these places eat. Power first. In a Sept. 24 letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 16 House Democrats warned that data centers could use up to 12% of all electricity in the U.S. by 2028, straining the grid and driving up energy prices. Then water. U.S. data centers drank 17 billion gallons in 2023 just to stay cool, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that could double or even quadruple by 2028. Not to mention the wildlife and the land itself. Public lands are often tied to tribal lands and waters, so tribal communities are on the line too. And the public? The Center for Western Priorities says there is no framework for environmental review, public input, or sending revenue back to taxpayers. Lauren Bogard, of the Center for Western Priorities, put it plainly: "Data centers are not like oil, gas, or minerals, which are extracted from public lands because that's where they exist." Not that extracting oil, gas or minerals is good for public lands in any shape or form. If you feel as strongly as I do about keeping data centers off our public lands, please fill out the easy form below. Tell Burgum to stop this dangerous precedent and protect our shared public lands. Then share it with your friends. It's in the first reply. Thank you. #HumanityUnited #DemsUnited 🧵