The Interior Board of Land Appeals is allowing the Bureau of Land Management to conduct further review of the proposed Townsite Solar II data center.
Townsite Solar II is a 167 MW data center with 70 MW of battery storage proposed by Skylar Capital Management. It was initially proposed on 88.5 acres within Boulder City limits. The development team later withdrew its original application after the Planning Commission recommended denial.
Developers then resubmitted the project on BLM territory just outside the city on a site that had received approval for a solar farm in 2023. The solar farm plan was scrapped to accommodate the data center, allowing it to bypass the National Environmental Policy Act process, as it had already been conducted.
Following the BLM’s approval, two separate appeals were filed by the City of Boulder City, as well as the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity. This project has been extensively covered by NVBEX.
Interior Board of Land Appeals Administrative judges David Gunter and Clifford Stevens signed the order allowing the BLM to conduct further review on Oct. 15.
City of Boulder City representatives are concerned this will not guarantee a proper environmental assessment. Once a decision is made, the City will be able to seek an additional review, but the Board of Land Appeals will not oversee the review process until then.
The order also affirms the judges’ previous decision that the data center and solar farm projects are not “substantially the same.” This would mean the transfer was in violation of NEPA.
