EPA Moves to Kill Public Comment on Data Center and Power Plant Air Permits

The EPA is proposing to eliminate a federal rule that requires states to notify residents and open a public comment period before issuing air-pollution permits for industrial facilities — a category that now includes AI data centers and the fossil-fueled power plants built to run them. A companion proposal would let developers break ground on data centers before their permits are even approved. The agency frames the changes as returning discretion to local authorities and speeding permitting to support ‘energy dominance,’ and expects to finalize them within a year.

Critics argue the moves strip communities of one of their few formal opportunities to learn a project is coming and to raise objections before construction is locked in. The burden falls unevenly: the rural South, with a disproportionate share of Black communities, has absorbed the fastest data center growth, along with the associated smog-forming emissions, hazardous pollutants, higher utility bills, and displacement. Reporting cites doubled home prices and evictions near Meta’s massive Louisiana build, and notes that one contested South Carolina project surfaced only after developers failed to site it in a whiter Georgia county.

The secrecy problem predates the rule change — local governments have signed NDAs with tech firms and fought disclosure of projects’ electricity use. Opposition to the federal proposals is unusually broad and bipartisan, spanning nearly 200 advocacy groups and more than a dozen states led by both parties. The significance for the tech industry: the regulatory on-ramp for AI infrastructure is being widened at the cost of transparency, and the political backlash to data center siting is hardening rather than fading.