Boulder City Challenges the BLM Permit That Tied an AI Data Center to a 2023 Solar Review

The data center proposed just south of Boulder City, Nevada was approved in late June by the Bureau of Land Management through an amendment to a 2023 right-of-way that had originally authorized a solar farm. The Las Vegas field office ruled the old solar environmental review sufficient for the new use, skipping a fresh round of public and interagency review. If the city's July 27 appeal fails, that move becomes the template: every federal-land solar grant in the West becomes a candidate AI site with a single signature.

The developer is Townsite Solar 2, LLC, a subsidiary of a Texas-based hedge fund that asked BLM in 2025 to switch the project from a solar-plus-battery plant to a data center. BLM Las Vegas Field Office manager Bruce Sillitoe approved the change in late June, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Reporting has not disclosed the project's final megawatt load, square footage, or end operator; the developer's representatives declined to answer questions, KTNV reported.

The legal shortcut sits inside President Trump's 2025 executive order on data-center permitting, which directs federal agencies to speed environmental reviews and identify public land suitable for AI infrastructure. The Review-Journal and E&E News both treated the executive order as the political backdrop for the field-level decision.

Boulder City is not letting it stand. On July 14 the council voted 7-0 to authorize the city attorney to file a notice of appeal and a request for a stay with the Interior Board of Land Appeals. The filing deadline is July 27, Fox5 Vegas reported. The city's argument is procedural: BLM failed to consult with the municipality, denied the public the input federal law requires, and effectively moved the project onto federal land only after Townsite Solar 2 withdrew its application for a city-owned parcel, according to the Las Vegas Sun and the Nevada Current.

Mike Ford, who led BLM's national public-lands policy shop for 25 years before moving to consulting, called the bureau's reading of its own rules "extraordinary and liberal" and "unprecedented in my personal experience," the Review-Journal reported.

Boulder City estimated that a data center on a city-owned parcel would have generated roughly $2.3 million a year in lease and tax revenue. Townsite Solar 2's last publicly disclosed payment on the federal parcel was $1,207.67 in BLM rent in 2023, a figure that reflects the developer's payment on a small solar footprint, not the value of a multi-acre compute buildout.

Townsite Solar 2 plans to buy electricity from outside Nevada via transmission, sidestepping a local utility hookup. NV Energy, the state's largest utility, projects that data centers could reach 64% of its retail sales by 2046, a forecast, not today's load, as the Review-Journal has documented. Cooling is supposed to be a closed-loop, air-cooled system that uses a one-time fill of about 400,000 gallons of purified water mixed with a synthetic alcohol, structured to comply with the Southern Nevada Water Authority's ban on evaporative cooling, the Sun reported.

Boulder City is a national test case because the IBLA's ruling will outlast the project. The board can dismiss on standing without ever reaching the merits, which would still leave the mechanism on the table for the next applicant. If the board reaches the merits and upholds the city, every federal field office that wants to flip a 2023 solar right-of-way into an AI lease has to write a new environmental review. If the board upholds BLM, as RTO Insider framed the trade-off, the next round of federal-land AI siting is already pre-approved.

The Nevada Data Center Alliance, the industry group active at local hearings, has argued the project's jobs and tax base outweigh the zoning concerns. Sierra Club and other conservation groups have joined the opposition. Branden Smith, a Boulder City resident quoted by the Las Vegas Sun, captured the local mood without speaking for any organization: residents showed up because the public process was skipped, not because they oppose data centers in principle.

The IBLA filing is the next milestone. After that, the board's calendar, not the developer's, sets the pace.