Markey Presses EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Decision to Undermine Clean Air Act to Prop Up AI Data Centers

Letter Text (PDF)

Boston (September 25, 2025) - Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and Co-Chair of the Senate Environmental Justice Caucus, today wrote to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator (EPA) Lee Zeldin in opposition to Zeldin's decision to allow major polluting facilities-including data centers and associated power generation infrastructure-to start pre-construction activities without securing the air quality permits required under federal law.

The New Source Review (NSR) program was established by Congress as part of the Clean Air Act in 1977, which requires that polluting facilities obtain permits before they are built or expanded. This allows EPA to assess and minimize the harm that these facilities will pose to the health and well-being of the environment and surrounding communities. According to reports, Administrator Zeldin is now deciding whether to follow the permitting requirements on a "case-by-case basis," despite the lack of public guidance or a notice and comment period, in order to allow more data centers and similar facilities to be built in Americans' neighborhoods.

Senator Markey writes, "Your decision to undermine key Clean Air Act protections not only flouts the law but openly does so at the expense of public health, especially as communities choke on pollution from the expansion of power generation meant solely to power data centers for AI."

Senator Markey continues, "Your continued decimation of our environmental laws is a terrible deal for Americans, enabling more pollution and more data centers in our back yards, all so Big Tech can reap bigger profits. Allowing companies to begin construction on facilities that will eventually increase pollution without requiring any permitting intentionally undermines the NSR program and signals to industry that public health and environmental protections are now negotiable in the name of their profits. Facilitating high-emissions infrastructure under the banner of AI development neither relieves the EPA of its legal obligations to enforce environmental safeguards nor justifies the sidelining of public participation, cumulative impact analysis, and pollution control requirements."

Senator Markey requests answers to the following questions by October 6, 2025:

1. With respect to the NSR permitting program, what has changed, who approved it, and where is it written? Please produce the guidance and the approval record.
2. What law or rule lets construction start before air permits are issued? Please produce any legal analysis on which you are relying.
3. What counts as "pre-construction" under your approach? Please identify what EPA is allowing (and not allowing) before permits are issued.
4. Which projects have proceeded under this new approach so far? Please identify any projects, including their location, expected emissions, controls, and permit status.
5. How will the public find out and be heard before ground breaks? Will you post each decision and modeling files and allow a comment period? How does EPA's adoption of its new approach comply with the Administrative Procedure Act?
6. If pollution ends up higher than expected-or a project later triggers NSR-what happens? Will you stop operations, require retrofits, and assess penalties?

Senator Markey is an outspoken critic of the Trump administration's "race to the bottom" regulatory approach for AI data centers and a leader in advocating for stronger monitoring and mitigation of environmental and health impacts associated with irresponsible data center buildout.

• In July, Senator Markey hosted a roundtable discussion titled The Data Center Next Door: Hidden Costs and Harms of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptomining to highlight the adverse environmental, health, climate, and energy cost impacts of data center proliferation in communities across the United States, and to condemn the deregulatory actions set forth in President Trump's AI Action Plan.
• On the day of his roundtable in July, Senator Markey also released a storybook to spotlight the experiences of American families living with data centers in their backyard.
• In February 2024, Senator Markey introduced his Artificial Intelligence (AI) Environmental Impacts Act, legislation that would create standards to measure and report the full range of artificial intelligence's (AI) environmental impacts.

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