A developer withdrew from Boulder City's process and secured a federal land use permit from the Bureau of Land Management for an adjacent El Dorado Valley parcel. Residents are organizing against the federal route.
Townsite Solar Two, a data-center vehicle tied to Skylar Capital Management, withdrew its application from Boulder City earlier this year and secured a right-of-way grant from the Bureau of Land Management instead, according to local reporting from the Las Vegas Sun and News3LV. The project that residents organized against at city hall is now reviewing under a federal process in which those same residents have no formal vote.
Resident Janelle Sorenson told News3LV that the federal route is a way around the town that organized against the project, and resident Brynn DeLorimier made the same point to the same outlet. City spokesperson Lisa LaPlante told the Las Vegas Sun that infrastructure strain is the city's core concern. Boulder City's constraints are the reason that concern matters: the town borders Hoover Dam, runs on the transmission and water limits that come with it, and has historically resisted large new power users.
The proposed project is roughly 170 megawatts by trade-press measure, a large load for a single parcel of El Dorado Valley, just outside Boulder City, where water and power budgets are already the political question. The history of the site tells the strategy. It was first pitched on city-owned land, then moved to a federal parcel after the city-land application was withdrawn, and the federal right-of-way grant followed months later. The News3LV reporting frames the BLM approval as the trigger that re-energized resident opposition.
A BLM right-of-way moves the decision into a federal environmental review, where the public-comment record replaces the council vote as the moment residents can shape the outcome. Conditions attached to the grant, including water use, transmission tie-in, hours of construction, and mitigation requirements, become the actual fights. According to Nevada News and Views, that is where the local opposition has now moved. Resident organizing reported by The Cool Down is increasingly aimed at the federal record.
Western towns have tried to throttle new data-center construction because of water or power constraints, and developers have often found workarounds. El Dorado Valley shows the workaround clearly: a project switching from a city land-use track to a federal right-of-way for land in the same physical footprint. The city vote disappears; the federal review takes its place.
The specific BLM right-of-way parcel, acreage, and grant term have not been confirmed in the local or trade reporting reviewed here. The 170-megawatt load is a trade-press figure rather than a final filing. The next inflection point is the BLM environmental review schedule, the public-comment window, and whatever conditions come attached to the grant itself.