BLM weighs 35 data center-related applications on western public land

The Bureau of Land Management is considering 35 data center-related applications on public land in the western US, according to a Center for Western Priorities tracker built on the agency's land records and reported by Data Center Dynamics. Of those, 17 are applications to build data center campuses and 13 are for supporting infrastructure for AI data centers; the remaining five could not be classified from the information available.

The Center says some of the proposals dwarf typical data center construction. It cites one project in eastern Utah covering more than 9,000 acres that would be powered by small modular nuclear reactors. Pairing that land footprint with on-site nuclear generation describes something closer to an industrial campus with its own power plant than the warehouse-scale buildings the sector has built to date, though the tracker summary gives no capacity figures or construction timeline.

The Center describes itself as a non-partisan conservation group that aims to provide accurate information and promote responsible policies and accountability in the American West. In a statement released with the tracker, it said the Trump administration should be forced to solicit feedback on putting data centers on public land. "Data centers are not like oil, gas, or minerals, which are extracted from public lands because that's where they exist," said Lauren Bogard, the group's deputy director. "None of these projects should move forward without a permitting framework that lets communities decide where, how, or if data centers get built." Bogard also called for site-specific environmental review, public input and negotiated community benefits.

Data Center Dynamics frames the tracker as evidence that data center development is increasingly an issue of public consent. The same article notes that the US Chamber of Commerce released a report earlier in the week detailing data centers' economic impacts on local areas.

For the developers behind these filings, the tracker is a count of applications in process, not approvals — the BLM records underlying it do not by themselves establish which projects will be permitted, or at what size.