The Trump administration has announced AI policy recommendations that include loosening Clean Water Act permitting for data centers, mirroring specific requests made earlier this year by Meta and the Data Center Coalition (DCC), a lobbying group representing tech giants like Google and Amazon Web Services. These environmental rollbacks are embedded within Trump’s broader AI Action Plan, which aims to streamline regulatory processes that tech companies argue slow down critical infrastructure development.
What you should know: The proposed changes target Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which governs how projects impact federally protected waters during construction.
- Current 404 permits for individual projects can be expensive and time-consuming, requiring detailed environmental review and public participation.
- The Trump AI Action Plan seeks to create a nationwide permit for data centers, which would reduce federal oversight and eliminate pre-construction notification requirements.
- More than 50 nationwide 404 permits already exist, primarily covering agricultural activities, ecosystem services, and some coal mining operations.
The lobbying push: Tech companies laid the groundwork for these regulatory changes through coordinated public comments submitted in March.
- The Data Center Coalition argued that “lengthy timelines for the approvals are not consistent with other national permits that have higher or no limits.”
- Meta, which is developing a 2,250-acre data center in Louisiana, separately requested streamlined 404 permitting processes.
- Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan posted that the AI Action Plan “is a bold step to create the right regulatory environment for companies like ours to invest in America.”
Why environmental lawyers are concerned: Legal experts argue that blanket exemptions for data centers don’t align with the Clean Water Act’s original intent.
- “What makes [a blanket data center exemption] a little bit tricky is that the impacts are gonna differ quite a bit depending on where these are,” says Jim McElfish from the Environmental Law Institute, a research nonprofit.
- Hannah Connor from the Center for Biological Diversity warns this represents “an attempt to expand the 404 nationwide permitting program so that it goes through this much reduced regulatory review outside of the intention of why [the permitting] program was created.”
Real-world impact examples: Several major data center projects are already facing significant water-related regulatory challenges.
- In Indiana, Amazon is attempting to fill nearly 10 acres of wetland and more than 5,000 streams for a massive data center, drawing local opposition.
- In Alabama, environmentalists warn that a proposed data center’s water footprint could impact local waterways and potentially cause the extinction of a fish species.
- Some companies are choosing to build in dry states like Arizona, where waters have “lost their jurisdictional reach within the Clean Water Act” following the 2023 Sackett v. EPA Supreme Court ruling.
The bigger picture: The executive order extends beyond data centers to cover a broader range of AI-related infrastructure.
- The review includes transmission lines, gas pipelines, and coal and nuclear power equipment used in data center construction.
- “The energy objectives of the administration are baked into [the new AI policies],” Connor explains, noting that Trump officials are “trying to create more dexterity in the 404 program for all the kinds of means that [they] want to be reflected within the administration’s priorities.”
What they’re saying: Industry representatives emphasize their commitment to environmental compliance while pushing for regulatory efficiency.
- “The data center industry takes compliance and accountability seriously and works closely with the many local, state, regional, and federal bodies responsible for permitting and project approvals,” said Cy McNeill, director of federal affairs at DCC.
- Amazon spokesperson Heather Layman stated: “To maintain global leadership in AI, the US must prioritize the deployment of energy generation and infrastructure to support data center growth.”
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