Two Indigenous governing bodies move to block data centers along the Colorado River

The Hualapai Tribal Council's resolution puts "free, prior and informed consent" between any hyperscale data center and the tribe's nearly 1-million-acre reservation along 108 miles of the Colorado River. The council calls such facilities "a direct and severe threat to the tribe's sacred water, lands, environment and way of life" (KJZZ). It is the second sovereign-government action in seven months aimed at the same river corridor. The LeChee Chapter, the nearest Navajo community to Page, AZ, unanimously opposed a 500-acre sale to Huntley, LLC in February (LeChee Chapter meeting minutes). Both are saying no, each in their own consent language, to a 1-gigawatt-scale facility on a river already running a multi-year shortage.

The Hualapai reservation runs along the western Grand Canyon and the lower Colorado, with Bullhead City sitting downstream of Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. Upstream, on the Utah border near Horseshoe Bend and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, sits the city of Page. A hyperscale data center is the kind of single AI or cloud facility that can draw as much power and water as a small city, which is why a 1-gigawatt proposal becomes a regional question rather than a local one.

The Hualapai measure is the fresh trigger. According to KJZZ, the tribal council's resolution declares that "no outside entity or private developer may use, damage or compromise" the tribe's resources "without the tribe's free, prior and informed consent" (KJZZ). Chairman Duane Clarke said the tribe will "always protect our air... land... and water" and will "stand strong with any community — and we will oppose these data centers." The vote sets a consent-based floor any future developer must clear before the tribe's resources are touched.

The Page project is what brought the corridor to this point. Last October, the Page City Council authorized the sale of 500 acres to Huntley, LLC for $7 million, a $14,000-per-acre price that Outside Online tied to a possible $10 billion, 1-gigawatt data center build near Horseshoe Bend and Glen Canyon (Outside Online). Per the city's project FAQ, no municipal water source has been committed, and rumors of a Lake Powell drawdown remain "speculative at this time" (City of Page FAQ). A feasibility study is still pending.

The LeChee Chapter's February vote sits upstream of all that. The chapter alleged a lack of transparency and unassessed risks to Navajo people in the Page deal and adopted its own resolution against the project (LeChee Chapter meeting minutes). A chapter resolution is local, not tribal-nation-wide, and the Navajo Nation central government has not been on record on the Page sale. That gap is the next variable.

Both votes target the same over-allocated river. The Colorado is already running a multi-year shortage declaration, and the two resolutions sit on the same stretch of it. Hualapai's language makes the consent mechanism explicit. LeChee's adds a community-allegations mechanism on top. Used together, the votes are a template other governments can pick up.

Bullhead City, downstream of the Hualapai reservation, has watched neighboring rezoning proposals and is worried about future data center development of its own. The Hualapai vote, the LeChee resolution, and Page's pending feasibility study all land in the same window. The Navajo Nation central government, the Hopi Tribe, and Bullhead City have not moved yet.