The site of a future data center being built near Abernathy, Texas, Saturday, July 18, 2026, in Hale County, Texas. (AP Photo/Justin Rex) The Trump administration recently pledged to “streamline” permitting for “minor” sources of air pollution. The move would eliminate the public’s voice in deciding who gets to pollute. Many critics see this as a move that will benefit certain polluting industries.
Don’t let the term “minor” fool you. While these permits are issued to, for example, your neighborhood dry cleaner, they can also apply to much more hazardous facilities, including concrete batch plants and even the gas-burning power plants that power data centers.
What could happen across the country if this so-called “streamlining” is implemented is already happening in Texas.
The Clean Air Act is one of the greatest public health success stories in modern history. During the 30 years beginning in 1990, the act provided $2 trillion in public health benefits for an investment of just $65 billion, a return of more than 30 times the investment.
A hallmark feature of the Clean Air Act is its delegation of authority to the states. Each state develops and implements its own plan to reduce air pollution, issues permits to pollute, and punishes violators of pollution laws.
In business-friendly Texas, state leaders have done the bare minimum, maintaining environmental regulations at the federal floor. In recent years, federal leaders looking to undermine existing environmental laws and regulations have even looked to Texas for guidance. Because Texas regulators work hand in glove with the very industries they are supposed to regulate, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is quick to offer solutions that make life easier for polluters.
The results speak for themselves. Texas has elevated rates of certain cancers, builds concrete plants next to hospitals and schools, and welcomes data centers in communities that are running out of water. Texas has also failed to meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards in some regions for decades.
This is the context for President Trump’s latest erosion of public rights to enrich corporations and their CEOs. Here’s a real-life example of what that looks like.
On May 28, about 150 people gathered in a hotel ballroom in San Antonio. They participated in the first public opportunity concerning a data center in their community. The data center was already built and operating. It has a gas-fired power plant. It has 32 backup diesel generators, with 33 more proposed. It hums loudly and its lights are on around the clock.
The people in this room were angry. The Spurs were in a playoff game, but they didn’t care. They wanted answers. How does a gas power plant get built in their community with no public notice? How can 65 diesel generators be a “minor” source of air pollution?
What’s the point of a public meeting on a permit for a facility that’s already built and operating?
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality didn’t offer any answers, and neither did the company reps that sat next to them. In Texas, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality allows data centers to obtain low-level permits that don’t trigger public notification requirements to authorize dozens of diesel generators or what it calls electric generating units, gas-powered turbines. Some permits are approved within a day of the application being filed. Other permits don’t even have an approval process -— companies just tell the state they are claiming them.
That’s what Trump’s EPA wants for the rest of the country. No public notice, no process, just “build baby build.”
But even with this approach, how does a massive data center with its own gas plant and 65 backup diesel generators get permitted as a minor source? Auto body shops and dry cleaners are minor sources, not power plants.
Put simply: companies are playing games with the facts in their permit filings. In the San Antonio case, the data center treated its on-site, single-client, behind-the-meter gas power plant as a completely separate source for permitting purposes. Texas let it happen.
The data center, in its permit application, also gave an estimate for the hours of operation of its generators that put its potential to emit pollution just under the major source threshold, which allowed it to avoid triggering the public notice requirement. Again, Texas permitted it.
Finally, it appears that in 2025, when the company realized it would need twice as many backup generators as stated in its initial registration, it just dropped the stated number of operating hours, leaving the potential nitrogen oxide pollution emissions the same — just below the major source threshold. Again, Texas let them do it.
It’s not possible to know whether the entire process was by design. The company may or may not have known all along how many generators it would need. Past practice, though, shows that Texas regulators would allow a company to take steps like these to obtain a permit without triggering the public notice requirement. By the time the public gets involved — when a federal permit is finally needed for a facility that has operated for months with a fistful of minor permits — it’s too late. The facility is built. The generators are operating.
What are you complaining about?
Taking away public notice and participation in permitting will remove a major check on unethical or outright illegal actions by corporations: the public eye. Experts working in the public interest can’t call out phony math if they never see the application. And the stunning success of the Clean Air Act won’t continue without transparency and the public’s input.
Data centers face bipartisan opposition across the country for several reasons. They are noisy, thirsty and hot. They are a physical reminder of Big Tech’s latest intrusion in our lives. Their proponents use sneaky tactics to avoid the local opposition they know is coming.
And now, Trump’s EPA wants to exclude the public’s voice. We can’t let that happen.
Adrian Shelley is the Texas director of Public Citizen.
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