A plan at the Environmental Protection Agency would drop the federal rule that states have to notify the public and take comment before issuing air permits for so-called minor sources — a bucket that now includes many AI data centers and the generators that keep them humming. The Associated Press laid out the fight Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, as the proposal sits after its comment window and before a final rule expected next year.

The proposal itself is already on the books as a July 7, 2026, Federal Register notice: “Minor New Source Review Program Air Permitting Public Participation Requirements for State Implementation Plans” (91 FR 41591, Docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-1212). Today, 40 CFR 51.161 makes states offer public inspection, a 30-day comment period, and prominent local notice before they authorize new minor sources or minor modifications. EPA wants to strip that floor out of what a state implementation plan must contain. States could keep notice, shorten it, or drop it. Existing state rules would stay until a state rewrites its SIP and EPA approves the change. Comments closed Aug. 21.

EPA spokesperson Carolyn Holran told the AP the agency is “saying that states get to pick how they want their permitting process to go for minor sources.” She said the plan is not a data-center special: it would also cover laundromats, car shops, landfills, and steel mills treated as minor under the Clean Air Act, and it would not change federal emission standards. Administrator Lee Zeldin called it “cutting unnecessary and burdensome red tape, unleashing American energy and advancing cooperative federalism,” the AP reported. President Donald Trump said this week on social media that communities without data centers will “end up being backwards and poor.”

Critics say the “minor” label is doing a lot of work. Data centers often stack diesel backup generators and still qualify as minor sources. Former EPA air-office deputy director Mike Koerber told the AP the proposal “continues efforts by the Trump administration to turn its back on the fundamental EPA principle of transparency,” and could leave residents in one state “completely in the dark” while a neighboring state still posts notices. Keri Powell of the Southern Environmental Law Center, which led a coalition of nearly 200 groups filing comments, said, “Data centers and other industrial sources should not be able to get their air pollution permits in secret.”

The Clean Air Act still makes states regulate construction “as necessary to assure” national air standards. EPA’s legal pitch, citing Loper Bright, is that Congress never wrote a public-comment mandate for minor NSR the way it did for big Prevention of Significant Deterioration permits. If the rule is finalized, the public’s next chance to talk is not a local hearing on a server warehouse. It is whatever each state chooses to keep, or a later fight over that state’s SIP. The machines still need power. The question EPA is asking is whether you have to be told before the permit prints.

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