Big Tech Asked for Looser Clean Water Act Permitting. Trump Wants to Give It to Them

There are currently more than 50 permits of 404 delivered nationally, some of which are still pre -construction notifications – which are renewed once every five years. Many of these exemptions are intended for agricultural activities, such as harvesting and building ponds for farms, or scientific services and scientific services such as surveying and maintenance of soil. Certain types of coal extraction and oil and gas activity are also included in the program.

Buildings such as stores, restaurants, hospitals and schools currently have their own national license, some of which fall. However, the permit requires a more in-depth individual analysis if the project has an impact on more than a half-knowledge of protected water.

The DCC in its Mars comment recommended the creation of a license on a national scale with “robust notification and coverage thresholds” and argued that “long deadlines are not consistent with other national permits which have higher limits or not or have a threshold where a PCN is not necessary, which allows immediate action.” Meta, which has announced its intention to build massive data centers in several states and is currently developing a 2,250 acres data center in Louisiana, has also requested a national permit in its commentary and suggested that the federal government “rationalizes” the 404 permit process.

Meta World Affairs Director Joel Kaplan published on X last week that the AI action plan “is a daring step to create the right regulatory environment for companies like ours to invest in America”, and that Meta “invests hundreds of billions of dollars in job creation infrastructures through the United States, including centers of card.” Meta refused to comment on this article more through a spokesperson.

Environmental lawyers are not sure that a national permit for data centers, whatever their size, would follow the intention of the Clean Water Act. “What makes [a blanket data center exemption] A little delicate is that the impacts will differ a little according to their situation, “says McElfish. Although a data center may have an impact only on an “fraction of an acre”, he says, by reconstructing a crossing of watercourse or by filling in a wetland, other data centers in different areas of the country can have much greater impacts for local waterways during their construction.

Hannah Connor, main lawyer of the Center for Biological Diversity, agrees. “What we see here is an attempt to expand the 404 Nationwide license program so that it goes through this regulatory examination a lot reduced outside the intention of why [the permitting] The program has been created, “she said.” There is a lot of reduction in the regulatory journal to a kind of speed along the paving of wetlands. »»

Today there are certain data centers projects that have encountered significant problems with the waters protected by the federal government. In Indiana, Amazon Galvan is currently the local opposition while trying to fill nearly 10 acres of wetlands and more than 5,000 flows to build a massive data center. In Alabama, environmentalists warn that the imprint of water from a proposed data center could have serious impacts on local rivers and cause the possible extinction of a species of fish.