1. Richland Parish, Louisiana – Gird your loins for the coming fight over the Meta Hyperion data center’s gas pipeline.

• On Wednesday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission laid out plans for an environmental assessment of the Entergy pipeline for the Meta data center under the National Environmental Policy Act and stated it’ll be issued in early January 2027. Federal agencies have been ordered by the panel to complete any remaining decisions on authorizations by April.
• The decision to do an environmental assessment under NEPA will be controversial. The Sierra Club filed comments to FERC stating they wanted an environmental impact statement instead that took into account the environmental impacts of the data center being fed by the pipeline, as well as a review of the project’s cumulative impacts, as the activist group said they’re explicitly linked to the data center’s operations. “The power stations and data center are not remote or speculative developments unrelated to the proposed action,” their comments read.
• This is quite similar to what’s playing out with the Green Chile pipeline in New Mexico for Oracle and OpenAI’s Project Jupiter, which we recently explained could turn into litigation with high stakes for future gas pipelines linked to data centers. But to me, this conflict with Meta feels like it has more at stake for this individual project, as it’s playing out while construction on gas power plants for the data center has been underway for almost a year after earlier being blessed by state regulators.
• I asked Sierra Club what could happen next. Eric Huber, one of their managing attorneys, told me on Thursday, “I heard the EA is expected in January, but we are in wait and see mode and will decide on further steps when it comes out.” Meta and Entergy did not respond to a request for comment.

2. Spartanburg County, South Carolina – I have one last data center race to tell you to watch on Tuesday: South Carolina’s 4th, on the northern rim of the state.

• In a normal world, no one would care about this safely Republican congressional seat held by military servicemember William Timmons. But it’s the first case I’ve ever seen where an aggrieved neighbor of a data center project is running against an incumbent member of Congress — that would be Courtney McClain, a Democrat who says she lives in Spartanburg County, one mile away from a data center under development. McClain is also the executive chair of the NAACP’s youth works program.
  
• What’s happened in Spartanburg is nothing short of confusion and chaos over data center development. The county enacted a restrictive ordinance on new projects after community opposition led to a project withdrawal. It was supposed to be a moratorium, but I struggle to call it that;amendments allow data centers to still be developed if they demand fewer than 65 megawatts and are located in a current or former industrial zoned site. The rules here state project applications that don’t meet that criteria would be paused. This also didn’t apply to projects that received a permit within the previous year before they were enacted.
  
• The new county rules allowed for a very contentious data center development to proceed. NorthMark’s Valara hyperscaler is now the subject of aggressive environmental litigation at the state level. McClain has personally testified against further development of the project.
  
• Recently, at the only candidate debate for this seat, McClain directly challenged Timmons to speak on data centers he previously supported and weigh in on those being built today. Timmons demurred and said he has “no role whatsoever in how data centers are located: “That’s just not how life works. My job as a member of Congress is to legislate in Washington, and the job of county council and city council is to address this issue. Simple as that.”
• Can an anti-data center activist ride a potential blue wave election riddled with anxiety about artificial intelligence to Congress? I’m not convinced. Cook Political Report continues to rank this as a safe Republican race in spite of a toss-up statewide U.S. Senate campaign in which Democrat Annie Andrews has specifically brought up Spartanburg County in her bid to oust Senator Darlene Graham, the sister of the late Lindsey Graham.

3. Goodhue County, Minnesota – Google reached a settlement with an environmental group suing to stop its data center in the small southern Minnesota town of Pine Island, resulting in what local press are saying will be the Land of 10,000 Lakes first state-level environmental review of a data center project.

• The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy sued to block the project, stating it believed Google did not fully disclose the total impacts and scope of the facility, including total energy and water use. The settlement, which was also approved by the Pine Island government, halts development of Google’s Project Skyway until the state proposes and approves a mitigation plan.
  
• This is the second time in less than a month that environmental litigation has resulted in a settlement requiring state regulators to deeply scrutinize data center development for the first time. That’s how Wisconsin wound up becoming one of the few states to launch a comprehensive review of the entire industry’s impacts on ecology, the grid, and local communities, joining only New York and Maryland.

4. Trumbull County, Ohio – Ohio looks like it just got a tad friendlier for data center opponents.

• The Ohio Supreme Court unanimously granted Lordstown the right to reject consideration of a data center project after realtors seeking to develop filed a lawsuit against the village for enacting moratoria. The court found Lordstown adequately enacted the pause and had no “legal duty to proceed with a site-plan review” of their project.
  
• At least one data center appears to still be in progress in the Lordstown area at a former General Motors plant as part of OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank’s Project Stargate. This is the same ex-auto work site Trump promised he’d bring jobs back to when he first ran for president in 2016.