Communities fighting data center construction may lose their earliest warning: a federal requirement that polluters announce themselves before getting an air permit. The EPA has proposed scrapping the public notice and comment step for a wide range of industrial facilities, including the power plants being built to run AI servers.
The plan, floated in July, would shift the decision to state and local agencies, which could approve permits without telling nearby residents anything. It targets New Source Review, a permitting regime dating to the 1970s that covers landfills, paper mills, and power plant expansions.
Keri Powell, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, says the change would let facilities obtain permits in secret, with bulldozers the first sign anyone gets. She argues the federal role exists because pollution crosses state borders, so a source in one state can sicken residents in another.
The proposal arrives as permit fights become a flashpoint of the AI boom, with utilities and developers racing to build gas plants for data centers over local opposition. Environmental groups say the rule would remove one of the few levers communities have left.
