SPRINGDALE, Pa. — Residents in a small southwestern Pennsylvania town are facing the prospect of a 47-acre data center facility on their doorstep.

“Right here behind this fence is where they want to put up the data center, and as you can see, there’s houses right across the street, roughly 100 feet,” said lifelong Springdale borough resident Cathy Mager, stretching her arms to show the distance from the development site’s perimeter to a line of houses across Porter Street. 

“We don’t want it,” she told States Newsroom on Oct. 19

The scenario is playing out around the United States. Both Democratic and Republican candidates during the heated midterm election cycle have had to navigate deep voter resentment of the massive advanced computer server farm developments that will power artificial intelligence.

“The issue has blown up over the last year,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology. “It wasn’t that long ago politicians were fighting to bring data centers to their communities. Now these facilities are completely controversial, and many people don’t want them in their neighborhood. So public opinion has changed very rapidly on this issue.”

53 years with a power plant

Mager is among a few dozen residents in Springdale, in northeastern Allegheny County, who formed the group Save Allegheny Valley Environment to protest the proposed data center development on the community’s riverfront site of a coal-fired power plant that went offline in 2022.

“We’ve already lived for 53 years under that power plant,” said Vicki Wanamaker, 66, a lifelong Springdale resident who lives about a 10th of a mile from the fencing around the site.

She’s worried now about the noise a data center would bring to the neighborhood, with its water coolers running and back-up diesel generators on site, and whether she would experience electricity shortages. 

Springdale’s council voted 5-2 in December to approve a conditional use permit for the project by Dynamo DC, a company with a Springdale-based address that “builds AI data centers on environmentally remediated brownfield sites,” according to its website. Residents are now asking Allegheny County to stop further land use plans.

Dynamo DC spokesperson Brian Regli said the developers will use “acoustical shielding” to keep noise well below ordinance levels.

The hyperscale data center will recycle 500,000 gallons of water in a closed-loop system to cool the servers, he told States Newsroom during an interview in late October. The facility is planned to handle up to 240 megawatts, which it will pull from a regional electricity grid, Regli said. 

Dynamo DC has not yet identified which company or contractors will actually use the data center. The company plans for the data center to go online by 2029.

Regli said the company is exploring “environmentally conscious” fuels for the diesel back-up generators. The amount of back-up power needed for the site will ultimately depend on how the data center is used.

Some uses “may need a fraction of the backup power that we put forward,” he said. “But you know, if this is a critical facility, let’s say it is being used by the military — which I doubt that the center would become that, but let’s use that as an example — you’re going to want to have as robust of a backup infrastructure as you can,” Regli said.

Amie Downs, of Caveat Communications, which is providing communications for Springdale, said the borough “was able to negotiate a number of other provisions that benefit the community and its taxpayers that relate to noise, lighting, traffic, landscaping, and other requirements, imposing stricter standards than the borough’s ordinances otherwise required.” 

Thousands of data centers planned

Data centers are a linchpin of the modern internet, but the scale needed for advanced computing is new.

There are 1,394 data centers already operating around the United States, and they carry a combined capacity of 64,764 megawatts. 

As of October, 2,841 more data centers are planned and would add 413,152 megawatts of additional capacity, according to the energy market firm Cleanview’s data center project tracker.

“What we’re seeing now is huge facilities that are being built. These are data centers that occupy the size of several football fields,” said West, who also publishes the progressive organization’s TechTank and is a senior fellow on governance studies. “They require a lot of energy. Some of them require water as well. So the size of the data centers creates public anxiety and worry.”

Sixty-three percent of American adults say they don’t want a data center built in their community, according to a late August poll published by YouGov and The Economist.

A CNN poll conducted in mid-September found nearly two-thirds of registered voters surveyed said AI and data center development will be an extremely or very important factor in their vote this midterm election. The poll also found a partisan divide: Democrats are 26 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say they’re very concerned about data centers, according to the results.

From Trump on down

The issue is permeating politics and races at the federal, state and local levels.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday wrote on his Truth Social platform that data centers “are mandated by me to make their own electricity.”  

“If companies want to make their Data Centers popular, pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend.’ … MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!” he wrote.

The statement is a pivot from his late August post, when he called opponents of data center developments “backwards and poor.” 

 

Everyone is talking about data centers ahead of the midterm elections. I heard from residents in a Pennsylvania neighborhood where a hyperscale data center is proposed for just outside their doorsteps. Read more: www.newsfromthestates.com/article/we-d…

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— Ashley Murray (@ashleymurray.bsky.social) October 26, 2026 at 5:02 PM

 

Resentment against the large-scale projects has become a dominant issue in hotly contested U.S. Senate races that will determine party control for the closely divided upper chamber.

A Democratic-backed political action committee poured $2.5 million in late October into ad campaigns depicting incumbent Republican U.S. Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and John Husted of Ohio as friends of the tech industry and AI developers. 

States Newsroom did not immediately receive a response for comment about the new ads from Husted’s and Marshall’s reelection campaigns. 

Marshall told the publication Semafor in July that he was supportive of data center moratoriums. Husted blamed Senate Democrats for blocking a procedural vote in late September on a House-passed bill that aimed to regulate electricity costs associated with large-scale data center projects. 

Not all Democrats voted against the measure. Democratic senators who voted for it included Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, where Osoff is seeking reelection; Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor; and New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, who is not seeking another term. 

West said anxiety about data centers exists on both sides of the aisle, but that it’s become a “partisan issue in the election because Republicans historically have been more pro-business.”

“Democrats are now using that past support for tax breaks against Republican officials,” he said, pointing to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pause on data center development after rapid growth. Abbott is seeking reelection this November.

But party lines on the issue blur, West noted.

Pennsylvania politics

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who is seeking reelection, has touted the commonwealth’s infrastructure and workforce as ripe for hyperscale data center and AI development, and until recently provided a fast-track permitting path. 

In June 2025, he joined state leaders from both sides of the aisle to announce a $20 billion investment by Amazon Web Services for two development sites, including a 1,200-acre site in northeast Pennsylvania that would reportedly consume as much energy as 900,000 homes and require millions of gallons of cooling water each day. 

The technologies, he said, “should be developed by the hands of a Pennsylvania worker…not in communist China,” according to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. 

Under pressure from grassroots opposition and from his Republican challenger, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, Shapiro signed an executive order in August 2026 mandating energy usage and transparency requirements on “greedy” data center developers.

In Pennsylvania state politics, Hadley Haas, a Democrat vying to unseat Republican state Rep. Valerie Gaydos in the 44th House District, said data center regulations have become a main issue in her campaign. 

“There’s just a generalized anxiety, I would say, about AI and data centers, especially around the cost of utilities,” Haas told States Newsroom. “Sometimes people will bring up water consumption or noise and that kind of thing. But mostly, they’re concerned about the cost implications.” 

Haas said her platform includes “guardrails” on data center development. She accused her opponent of flip-flopping on the issue — voting “no” in March on a data center regulation bill in the Democratic-led Statehouse, but then announcing support for a 180-day pause proposal in July.

“People started to see actual data that this was an issue that was a concern for people, and that’s when we saw more of the Republicans starting to chime in,” she said.

States Newsroom reached out to Gaydos’ campaign for comment but did not receive a reply.

Pennsylvania’s 44th House District occupies the west side of Allegheny County, where the 15-member countywide council voted unanimously in September to ban the development of data centers over 25 megawatts on any county-owned land, including vast tracts of park land.

Council member Kathleen Madonna-Emmerling, who represents a portion of the county’s western side, said ,“It’s important we do this proactively because it gives us the strong legal foundation to deny those permits without discriminating against a certain type of business.”

States Newsroom reached out to all members of the Springdale borough council for comment but did not hear back.

West said he expects “this issue is going to stay on the political scene for several years as people debate how we should handle these facilities.” 

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and a group of environmental organizations announced a settlement agreement Monday that would require stricter environmental impact assessments of future data center developments and initiate a statewide review of how data centers use the state’s resources. 

In June, the Sierra Club and Midwest Environmental Advocates sued the DNR in Ozaukee County court, arguing that the agency approved the permits for Vantage’s massive data center currently under construction in Port Washington without conducting a proper environmental impact statement. 

“AI data centers are massive, thirsty, energy hogs and have popped up all over Wisconsin,” Elizabeth Ward, director of the Wisconsin chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “They could completely change our landscape and use unprecedented amounts of water and energy. Wisconsinites and our regulators need to understand the impacts and opportunities to reduce harm before allowing data centers to move forward. Wisconsinites deserve an informed, transparent process for decisions that could shape their communities and environment for decades.

A report this summer by the state Public Service Commission found that the Port Washington data center and data centers being built by Microsoft in Mount Pleasant and Meta in Beaver Dam are set to be responsible for a 40% increase in statewide energy demand over the next six years. 

As part of the settlement agreement in the lawsuit, the DNR will conduct full environmental impact statements of individual data center proposals moving forward and complete a statewide strategic analysis of how data centers consume resources. 

State law and the DNR’s administrative rules allow the agency to conduct such an analysis when conflicts arise over resource demands for a  “complicated or complex issue; an issue that is new to the state; an issue or policy that will likely lead to future department actions that will require an environmental impact statement; issues for which there is a high potential for legislation or new department policy and the planning and development of controversial resource-oriented projects.”

“What started as a lawsuit over the environmental review of one data center has become an opportunity to address the data center issue on a much bigger scale,” MEA attorney Michael Greif said. “Looking at these impacts holistically is important because the impacts of data centers are statewide. State regulators will now have to examine the cumulative impacts of data center development across Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin will become one of a few states assessing the statewide impacts of data centers on their resources. In July, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order that initiated a similar analysis and last December, the Maryland Legislature enacted a law that requires a number of state agencies to study “the likely environmental, energy, and economic impacts of data center development.”

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued a notice of violation to the Enbridge Energy Company for incidents in Iron and Ashland counties, where the company is working on a controversial reroute of its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline. 

The notice includes violations of permit conditions of the reroute construction project, and violations of state environmental laws for the unpermitted construction of a bypass around the Saxon Line 5 spill site. It covers laws involving state water quality, wetlands, navigable waterways, air quality, storm water and endangered resources protection.

The violations are alleged to have occurred from March 30 through Sept. 21 of this year. In August, a section of the pipeline leaked natural gas liquid near the town of Saxon, with drone video of the leak showing plumes of smokey vapor pouring out of an area where trucks and equipment were parked. Enbridge said that the leak occurred when an unoccupied truck rolled over an open excavation site near a valve project. Environmental groups fear that the leak could have been the largest of its kind in Wisconsin history.

 

 

The violation notice sets an enforcement conference, which is a standard step where the DNR and Enbridge will discuss the alleged violations. After the conference, the DNR can take further enforcement action such as issuing citations, referring the case to the Wisconsin Department of Justice for prosecution to seek forfeitures, or other court-related actions. 

A DNR press release notes that the notice of violation is separate from Enbridge’s responsibility under the spills law to respond to hazardous substances which may have been released during the August leak.

“These allegations are numerous and serious,” said Clean Wisconsin Attorney Evan Feinauer in a statement. “The DNR must now use the full force of its enforcement authority to hold Enbridge accountable and secure relief that addresses the significant harm to our environment Enbridge has caused.”

This article was updated with comment from Clean Wisconsin.

A factory farm in Pierce County filed a lawsuit late last month appealing an administrative law judge’s decision that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources didn’t include enough groundwater protections when approving a permit allowing the farm to expand from 1,700 to 6,500 cows. 

The Ridge Breeze Dairy in Maiden Rock has long been the subject of local activism against the expansion, which is expected to generate 78 million gallons of manure every year. The initial DNR permit process drew significant public participation. 

The dairy is owned by the Appleton-based Breeze Dairy Group, which operates a number of farms in the state — some with a history of manure spills. 

Communities across Wisconsin are facing the effects of massive factory farms on their local water, particularly rural areas where residents get their drinking water from private wells. The groundwater around the Ridge Breeze site already has elevated nitrate levels, which have been linked to blue-baby syndrome, thyroid disease and colon cancer.

The DNR approved the expansion permit in February 2025. During the application process, the agency had to send the permit back to the farm operators once because it named nearby properties as sites for planned manure spreading although those property owners were never contacted.

After the approval, a group of local residents and the advocacy group Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin filed a lawsuit alleging that the permit did not do enough to ensure that the area groundwater was protected. 

Two days of hearings were held in Eau Claire in March and in August Administrative Law Judge Angela Chaput Foy ruled in favor of the residents, sending the permit back to the DNR to include a process through which the agency can verify that the farm isn’t harming the groundwater. 

“By omitting a mechanism to verify actual compliance, the Department has issued a mandate while simultaneously denying itself the tools or data necessary to know whether that mandate is broken,” Chaput Foy wrote.

In the lawsuit, filed Sept. 23 in Outagamie County Circuit Court, the farm argues that it’s “aggrieved” by being forced to verify it is following the law, mostly because it would have to pay the cost of digging groundwater monitoring wells. 

In recent years, Wisconsin factory farms and their allied advocacy groups have also filed lawsuits that argue the DNR lacks the authority to regulate their pollutants at all. 

Ridge Breeze argues that state law doesn’t include a mechanism through which the DNR can verify compliance with groundwater standards in a factory farm’s permit. 

“The ALJ concludes that the lack of mechanisms in the Permit to verify that Ridge Breeze’s practices comply with the standards is inherently contradictory to the mandate to assure compliance with those standards,” the lawsuit states. “The Decision thus improperly conflates the statutory requirement to assure compliance with a (non-existent) obligation to prescribe conditions that verify compliance. Nothing in [state statute] requires the DNR to require groundwater monitoring or some other mechanism to ‘verify’ compliance or detect non-compliance.”

The dairy points to parts of Chaput Foy’s decision in which she finds that the provisions included in the initial permit should be strong enough to protect the groundwater. 

“By disregarding substantial record evidence that showed the terms prescribed in the Permit were reasonable and sufficient to assure compliance with groundwater standards — including the ALJ’s own conclusion that the permit ‘sets Ridge Breeze up for anticipated compliance’ — the Decision is outside the range of discretion conferred upon DNR and is unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious, and should be reversed and/or remanded to the agency,” the lawsuit states. 

Danny Akenson, an organizer with GROWW, said in a statement that Ridge Breeze appealing the decision shows the farm cares more about its bottom line than being a good neighbor. 

“We fought for three years to make sure the state has a way to determine whether Ridge Breeze is contaminating our groundwater, and the judge agreed with us,” Akenson said. “Factory farm special interests care more about protecting corporate profits than protecting the groundwater Wisconsin families rely on. Ridge Breeze may have deep pockets for legal fees, but we’re organized, and we’re not going to let them off the hook.”

The Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission is condemning what it calls a lack of communication between state agencies and tribal communities after nine wolves were trapped and euthanized in Price County. In a press release, the commission described the wolves as a pack consisting of four pups, three yearlings, and two adults. 

“This action damages existing relationships and fractures trust,” said GLIFWC Executive Administrator Jason Schlender in a statement. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said late last week that the wolves posed a threat to humans following incidents reported in July 2025 and August 2026. Non-lethal measures were unsuccessful in deterring the wolves, a DNR spokesperson said, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

“We remind the WDNR and USDA Wildlife Services to involve GLIFWC and its member tribes in the decision-making process,” Schlender said in his statement. Wolves represent powerful symbols, spirits and teachers for many tribal communities. “Simply handing us the remains of our relatives after killing them does not constitute meaningful consultation.”

In 2021, when the DNR held a controversial wolf hunt, tribal communities opted not to hunt wolves on their lands. A quota of 200 wolves had been set by the DNR, a certain portion of which was allocated to tribal communities. Hunters in the rest of the state exceeded the quota in less than three days. 

The killing of the nine wolves represents the first time wolves were killed by officials in Wisconsin since a 2022 court ruling returning the animals to the Endangered Species List.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list. 

Wolves have come into conflict with rural and farming communities in Wisconsin, killing livestock and pets and triggering a campaign to restart Wisconsin’s wolf hunt. Wolf attacks on humans are rare, and only two fatal wolf attacks on humans have been documented in the last 20 years. 

Randy Johnson, the DNR’s large carnivore specialist, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that efforts to chase off the wolves using sound, lights and hazing were unsuccessful, and that “reports demonstrated a pattern of behavioral escalation, with the wolves showing less response to hazing and more acclimation to human presence.”

Investigative reports obtained by the Wisconsin Examiner describe three separate complaints made in August. The complaints describe wolves, sometimes collared, coming within close proximity of properties, such as in yards, driveways, or grassy areas. One of the reports mentioned chicken depredations. Another report stated that a wolf had come within 20 yards of a man mowing brush on his tractor in an effort to deter the wolves. The third report mentioned a person who saw a wolf near  five-gallon bait bucket for bears. The reports described the wolves as unafraid of people, and said efforts to deter them had been ineffective.

The Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission states that it was left out of the decision to euthanize the wolves, and that the Wisconsin DNR and federal government had met multiple times since 2025. “At no time during that period did WDNR or federal representatives contact GLIFWC staff to inform them of reported threats, share data, or provide decision-making criteria, bypassing consultation with GLIFWC and its member tribes,” the commission stated. 

It added that courts have ruled that the state of Wisconsin is required to co-manage resources within ceded Indigenous territories, such as those where the nine wolves were killed. This cooperation was reaffirmed in an executive order from Gov. Tony Evers in 2019, directing state agencies to consult with tribal governments on “matters that may directly or indirectly impact tribal nations.”

The commission says in its statement that the gray wolf is  known to the the Lake Superior Ojibwe as Ma’iingan, is considered a clan relative, and is a key cultural figure that has been mistreated and misunderstood. 

“People are often afraid of wolves, and wolves are too often mischaracterized,” said Conrad St. John, St. Croix tribal chairman and Voigt Intertribal Task Force chair. “Our elders relay that our communities have co-existed with Ma’iingan since the very beginning and we still don’t have any documented cases of attacks on humans in Wisconsin.”

Alex Bohman, GLIFWC biological services director, said that wolves strengthen deer populations by removing sick, weak, or old animals. “Tribes have coexisted with wolves for hundreds of years and can bring traditional ecological knowledge, as well as western science and data to these discussions.” Bohman said that state and federal agencies should engage with the commission and its member tribes on wolf management. “Ideally, this will lead to agreement on the most appropriate course of action,” she said.

An aquifer breach has occurred in northern Wisconsin, along the reroute path of the Enbridge Line 5 oil and gas pipeline. In a statement, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said that “a flow of water was observed following the direct installation of pipe beneath the Marengo River.”

Kellner said that Enbridge is working with the Department of Natural Resources “and other engineering and environmental specialists to determine next steps.” The breach was first reported by Northern News Now.

It’s unclear how much water was released due to the breach. The DNR didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

In August, a section of Line 5 released more than 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquid after an unoccupied truck rolled and damaged the pipeline. WPR reported that the leak was the largest of its kind for both Enbridge and the state of Wisconsin. 

Enbridge previously  breached an aquifer while building the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota. The breach led to an uncontrolled release of hundreds of millions of gallons of groundwater. Minnesota’s attorney general filed charges against the company in that case. 

Line 5 is a decades-old pipeline that carries up to 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids daily from Ontario to the southern Unites States. In 2019, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa sued Enbridge to shut the pipeline down and to expel the Canadian-owned company from tribal lands. 

Enbridge has since begun work on rerouting Line 5 around the reservation, a move that has been contested by tribal communities and environmental groups as endangering ecosystems and natural resources. Legal battles over the pipeline’s future continue in federal court. Advocates have called on the Wisconsin DNR to revoke the permits granted to Enbridge to carry out the reroute.

On Tuesday, a DNR spokesperson sent an emailed statement to Wisconsin Examiner, stating that the state agency is monitoring the groundwater release. The breach occurred during the installation of a new section of pipeline. The spokesperson added that the area’s hydrology is complex and that “it is unknown if this event is caused by a aquifer breach. The flow rate for the release is 5% of the flow rates of confirmed aquifer breaches in other states involving similar projects.

This article was updated with comment from the Department of Natural Resources.

 

While gray wolves in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region have been considered recovered by the federal government since the early 2000s, wolves currently continue to be listed as endangered in Wisconsin and Michigan, and threatened in Minnesota.  Delisting was intended to give states and tribes flexibility to manage wolf populations when wolves are no longer at risk of extinction. There has been a complicated history of delisting and relisting in the Great Lakes region, between 2007 –2022.  Each time the federal government attempted to delist wolves in the region, some group opposing delisting has filed lawsuits and managed to get wolves relisted as endangered (or threatened in Minnesota).

Tom Tiffany, as a member of the Wisconsin Assembly, the state Senate, , and as a member of Congress, has been an especially vocal supporter of  intense management of the state wolf population, and has attempted to delist wolves through congressional action. But Tiffany’s own rhetoric, exaggerations and misleading comments have not been useful at attaining delisting, and may have emboldened efforts to challenge such delistings through the courts.

As an Assembly member, Tiffany helped co-author a wolf hunting bill in 2012 that forced DNR to hold a wolf hunting and trapping season whenever wolves were not listed as threatened or endangered.  Unlike most hunting seasons that allowed DNR broad authority to regulate the harvest, the legislated wolf hunting season represented a major political overreach, which may have been a factor that resulted in wolves being relisted at the end of 2014.

In 2018, as a state senator, Tiffany attempted to defund wolf conservation in Wisconsin until federal delisting occurred.  Such defunding would have made it difficult to determine wolf abundance and the sound scientific management of the wolf population to allow delisting to occur. Luckily the bill to defund wolf conservation did not pass.

Tiffany has frequently made false claims about wolf attacks on people, exploding wolf population, and exploding rates of depredations on pets and livestock.  No wolf attack on humans has been documented in Wisconsin, and Tiffany’s references to attacks are cases of wolves losing fear of people and displaying bold behavior, but none have resulted in physical attacks on people. Depredations on pets and livestock peaked in Wisconsin in 2010, and have declined since then.  Most years less than 10% of state wolf packs attack pets or livestock, and wolf depredation represents much less than 1% of all the things that kill cattle in Wisconsin.  The wolf population in Wisconsin has mostly stabilized at 1,000-1,200 wolves since 2018, and is not increasing exponentially as often suggested by Tiffany

In the U.S. Congress, Tiffany has tried in two bills to attempt nationwide gray wolf delisting.  The bills included “Trust the Science Act” and “Pet and Livestock Protection Act.” Neither bill has succeeded thus far.  In support of these bills, Tiffany has insisted the Wisconsin DNR is very capable of managing the state wolf population.  But at an open house event in Wisconsin, after running for governor, he called the state wolf plan passed by the Wisconsin DNR “not a wolf management plan” and an “impediment to management of the wolf.”  Tiffany totally rejects the carefully crafted and science-informed wolf plan developed by the Wisconsin DNR over a three-year period and approved in 2023.  Tiffany has implied that major reductions are needed to reduce wolves to 350 or 500 wolves.  This would require very intense controls and eliminating wolves from 60-70 % of their range in Wisconsin.  Such intense controls would look more like the extermination programs that caused wolves to become endangered, and not like the proper management of a recovered wolf population. While Tiffany adds his name to the “Trust the Science Act”, he certainly shows no trust for scientific estimates of the state wolf population, or the science-based state wolf management plan.  

Wolves in the Great Lakes states should be delisted, and state and tribal wildlife agencies should be authorized to manage local wolf populations. Some farmers have had extensive problems with wolves and more flexible management including removal of problem wolves by government agents and landowners will help reduce conflicts.  The Wisconsin DNR has a well-designed wolf management plan, which allows some level of hunting and trapping as is required by law, but the plan also focuses on ecological and cultural benefits of wolves, while still helping reduce conflicts. 

Yes, Wisconsin DNR can manage wolves, and delisting and sound management can best be achieved if politicians such as Tom Tiffany stay out of the way.

Following President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this month to remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list, Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election will determine the direction of future management of the wolf population in the state. 

There are currently about 4,000 wolves across Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources estimating the state population number at about 1,162 wolves. The return of the wolf to the state is seen as a conservation success story after the animal’s extirpation in the 1950s. 

Trump attempted to delist the wolf during his first term in 2020, but a federal judge reversed that decision two years later. During the two years in which the wolf was delisted, Wisconsin held a controversial hunt of the animal in 2021 in which hunters surpassed the DNR’s quota in less than three days. A state law enacted in 2012 requires that Wisconsin hold a wolf hunt whenever the animal is not on the endangered species list. 

The question of Wisconsin’s wolf policy is one of the most heated in the state’s conservation politics. Farmers and residents in the northern part of the state, where most of the wolf population lives, are often more wary of living near the predator. But conservationists and the state’s Native American tribes have sought to protect the wolf as an important part of the ecosystem. 

During his time in Congress and the state Legislature, Republican candidate Tom Tiffany has regularly been a vocal advocate for hunting wolves. 

“His big priority is wolves. He wants to hunt wolves. I’m not kidding. He’s talked to me about it many times on the House floor,” Michigan Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens said on CNN last month. 

As a state legislator, Tiffany was a co-sponsor of a bill to mandate a wolf hunt and the first piece of legislation he ever introduced in Congress was a bill that would have removed the wolf from the endangered species list across the Midwest. 

After Trump’s executive order, Tiffany said in a statement that wolves are interacting too often with farmers and families in Wisconsin so they must be hunted. 

“Farmers are dealing with livestock depredations, families are losing pets, and wolves are showing up closer to homes,” Tiffany said. “Wisconsin has successfully managed wildlife for generations. It is time to get out-of-state judges and bureaucrats out of the way and let Wisconsin responsibly manage its wolf population.”

So far this year, Wisconsin has had 63 confirmed wolf depredations of livestock, pets and hunting dogs, according to DNR data. 

Tiffany’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

Democratic candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive and a former Milwaukee-area state representative, has never represented a part of the state with a wolf population. After Trump’s delisting order, he told Wisconsin Public Radio he supports “commonsense efforts” to return management of the animal to the state. 

“While other parts of the country have different wolf populations and management needs, we need our agriculture, tribal, scientific, and impacted communities to come together to create a solution that works for Wisconsin,” Crowley said. “It’s time to follow the science and give impacted communities a seat at the table as we work together to be responsible stewards of Wisconsin’s gray wolf population.”

The decision over delisting will be made by the White House, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the federal court system. Whoever Wisconsin’s next governor is will influence the state’s wolf policy through his power to sign legislation and appoint people to lead the Department of Natural Resources and sit on the Natural Resources Board. 

In 2023, the DNR and Natural Resources Board approved the first update to Wisconsin’s wolf management plan since the animal returned in the 1990s. Under the previous plan, the state set a “population goal” at 350 wolves, which at the time was seen as an aspirational aim as the state worked to reestablish the population. 

In the decades since that initial plan, the population far surpassed the goal. Anti-wolf advocates began to see that number as their preferred ceiling on the state’s wolf population. Under the current plan, the DNR decided not to set a specific numerical population goal but instead divided the state into zones in which policymakers will assess the biological, social and cultural factors to determine if the local population should be decreased, maintained or allowed to grow. 

The state uses a similar method for managing a number of other animals in the state, including bears. 

Republicans and their allies among hunting and farming organizations have vehemently objected to the method, repeatedly introducing legislation that would reinstitute the 350 wolf population goal. 

“Our policy says that our members would like to see a return to the population goal of 350, and we believe that even under the science the DNR has shown, that that’s a sustainable number,” Tyler Wenzlaff, director of national affairs for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We in no shape or form are advocating for their removal from the Wisconsin landscape. We know that they’re an integral part of the biological makeup of Wisconsin’s habitat, but we’d like to see some kind of return to a management where they’re controlled a little bit better.”

Wenzlaff said he’d like to see a “gradual decline” of the wolf population toward that number, particularly if Tiffany is the governor and Republicans maintain control of the Legislature. 

If Crowley wins and Democrats win majorities in the Legislature, Wenzlaff said the Farm Bureau would work to lobby environmental policymakers on the idea that the wolf has hit its biological and social carrying capacity in the state. 

“A wolf population beyond 1,200 to 1,300 is probably not socially acceptable either. And I think if you talk to the DNR, the current number has kind of hovered around this for a couple years now, so they believe that we’re at the biological carrying capacity,” he said. “And I think that anything more than that, you’ll start to see people start to lose that support for wolves once you start seeing animals being taken away, taken off their porch, or you start to see them out in the field when your son or daughter is waiting for the bus in the morning, it starts to get a little bit more real for people. And I think the expansion of the wolf habitat in the last wolf management plan will start to bring that home a little bit as the number increases.”

At a news conference earlier this month, Crowley said that while he believes the state can properly manage a wolf hunt with input from every side of the debate, Tiffany would go much further. 

“I do believe that we want to make sure that people can enjoy gaming and different types of recreational outdoor activities here in the state of Wisconsin,” Crowley said. “But I do believe you still need guardrails and making sure that people will be able to hunt wolves the way that they need to, but also making sure that we’re protecting this particular species as much as possible as well. And so, I do think that Congressman Tom Tiffany is going much further than I would like to go when it comes down to wolf delisting.”

Melissa Smith, executive director of the pro-wolf Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance, said in a statement that she would have preferred that Crowley take a strong stance against the delisting. Still, his position is  preferable to the lengths to which Tiffany would go. 

“Tom Tiffany has made stripping wolves of federal protection the centerpiece of his time in Congress, possibly being one of the most anti-wolf legislators in office right now,” Smith said. “While Wisconsin families are worried about the skyrocketing cost of living, he’s spent his energy on an issue that touches a few dozen of the state’s 58,000 farms. We expect these attacks on wolves to only intensify if given the power of the governorship.”

“David Crowley has also said he supports state management,” she added, “but he’s committed to following the science, and talked about bringing tribes, scientists and affected communities to the table and we’ll hold him to that. It’s clear Wisconsinites value wolves and what they bring to our state, and we look forward to working with the next governor to make sure that’s reflected in how they’re managed.”

The Trump administration’s top wildlife official issued a directive last week that expands a recent rollback of endangered species protections much further than the feds had told the public.

Individuals and industries may kill endangered animals in the course of logging projects, developments and other activities, it said — so long as the activity’s purpose isn’t killing species.

The memo issued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik is the most drastic move yet in the Trump administration’s campaign to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act. 

Wildlife advocates and experts said the nation’s bedrock wildlife conservation law would offer few safeguards under the new federal guidelines. 

“Unless you’re wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘I’m here to draw the blood of endangered species,’ you’re basically off the hook,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation nonprofit. “Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, go crazy, we’re not gonna prosecute you.”

Chris Servheen, who served as grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 35 years, said the agency’s current approach to the endangered species law is “ridiculously extreme.”

“It’s essentially going to be a meaningless law, and it will have no protection whatsoever for species,” he said. “It’s like taking the four wheels off your car and saying it’s still your car.”

Earlier this year, the Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies finalized a rule excluding the destruction of habitat from the definition of “harm” covered by the law. As long as chopping trees or draining a wetland didn’t directly kill animals, the feds said, those actions were legal even if they led to a species’ demise. 

Now, Nesvik is instructing wildlife officials that even the direct killing of endangered animals does not constitute an illegal “take” as long the action was not “intentionally directed at a particular animal or animals.” Its instructions to staff on how to implement the new rule take effect immediately. 

“A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” he wrote. “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them.”

The memo could unravel a longstanding framework in which developers and other industries undergo an environmental analysis for their projects’ impacts to endangered species, and obtain permits accounting for that harm. Wildlife advocates warned that industries using the agency’s new directive to forgo permits may still face citizen lawsuits, and a new administration could reinstate the previous interpretation of the law.

The Fish and Wildlife Service forwarded a Stateline request for comment to the Department of the Interior, which did not grant an interview request.

The memo, sent last Monday to agency staff across the country, quickly raised alarms after it was leaked to the public. 

“This is an incredibly sneaky and disingenuous way of going about things,” said Ben Levitan, senior attorney with the biodiversity defense program at Earthjustice, a legal conservation nonprofit. “They led everyone to believe they were doing one thing with the rescission of the definition of harm, and now they’ve issued a memo saying, ‘What we actually meant was this.’”

A coalition of attorneys general, tribes and environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act. Advocates said the Nesvik memo will open up a new battle ground in the ongoing legal fight, but it’s too early to say if that will come in the form of separate lawsuits. 

Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation nonprofit, noted that the “harm” rule and Nesvik’s memo draw heavily from the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in a landmark 1995 case. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that habitat destruction constitutes harm to wildlife under the Endangered Species Act. But Scalia disagreed, saying that the “take” of wildlife describes actions “done directly and intentionally (not indirectly and by accident) to particular animals (not populations of animals).”

“(Nesvik’s) decision in every aspect of it entirely relies on Scalia’s dissent,” she said. “It’s reducing the scope of (endangered species protections) to an absurdly narrow interpretation that is inconsistent with what Congress intended.”   

While some industry groups supported the “harm” rule in public comments, few of the organizations or lawmakers who backed that change have made public statements on Nesvik’s memo about how it will be applied. But some conservatives praised the decision.

“It will shield innocent people from litigation by the country’s largest law firm, the Department of Justice,” William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during Trump’s first term, told Cowboy State Daily.

Wildlife advocates said the memo could allow developers or logging companies to knowingly chop down a forest filled with endangered owls or bats, so long as the purpose of their action was timber harvest. 

“(The memo) says you can knowingly kill an endangered species as long as you’re not killing it for the sake of killing it,” said Kate Groetzinger, communications director with the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. “This basically is a blank check to companies, landowners, developers, loggers — anyone operating in endangered species habitat — to both destroy that habitat and kill the animals and literally face no consequences.”   

Servheen, the former grizzly bear recovery coordinator, said the memo will allow hunters to gun down endangered species, as long as they later claim they mistook a grizzly bear for a black bear or a similar failure of species identification. 

“This tells law enforcement that they have no ability to prosecute somebody who kills a grizzly bear,” he said. “(Hunters) are basically relieved of any responsibility of what they’re shooting, you can do whatever you want and say ‘I didn’t mean to.’ It makes the outdoors a pretty dangerous place now.”

The memo could also limit environmental reviews of potentially harmful projects, some advocates warned. For instance, a new road through Florida panther territory may no longer need an environmental analysis if increased vehicle collisions with panthers are no longer considered “take” by federal wildlife officials, Davenport said. 

During the rulemaking process for the “harm” definition, federal officials argued that the change would empower states to protect wildlife under their own laws. But experts say state wildlife agencies lack the authority, resources and expertise to replace federal oversight. 

Wildlife officials in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, New Jersey, Vermont and Wyoming submitted public comments expressing concern with the proposal, as did the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies, a nonprofit that represents state wildlife managers. 

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

The Line 5 oil and natural gas pipeline across northern Wisconsin went back online Monday, three weeks after a broken valve caused 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquids to spill into the nearby Iron County town of Saxon, the pipeline’s operator Enbridge said in a news release. 

The spill occurred Aug. 25 when a truck rolled forward and broke the valve as crews worked on the controversial reroute of Line 5’s path across the state from Canada. Enbridge immediately began working to bypass the broken valve and get the pipeline back up and running despite warnings from the state Department of Natural Resources that it was doing that construction without the proper permitting. 

The DNR issued a notice of noncompliance to Enbridge last week ordering it to halt its work. Despite that warning, Enbridge completed the work and said in its news release that “work continues at the site focused on safe access, environmental testing and remediation.” The company said it has worked closely with federal and local agencies to protect health and safety and that “we continue to work” with the DNR on the “relevant permitting and separately on environmental conditions at the incident site.” 

“Ongoing environmental monitoring at the site continues,” Enbridge stated. “Wildlife has not been impacted. Testing of surface water and from a nearby residential well continues to show no impacts. Water monitoring wells continue to show no contamination. Soil and water monitoring are in place, as are plans to test, remove and properly dispose of the soil in the trench.”

Since the spill, the company has argued it needs to get the pipeline back up and running as soon as possible because the fossil fuels it transports are too important. 

“Line 5 is critical infrastructure, securely supplying 10 refineries and propane production facilities that deliver energy to millions of people in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions,” the company news release states. 

Meanwhile, environmental activists, members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and elected officials have continued to argue that the spill is confirmation that the pipeline has always been a risk to Wisconsin’s environment and should be permanently shut down.

For more than a year, the U.S. Department of Energy has repeatedly extended the lifespan of a coal plant in West Olive, Michigan, arguing the power generated at the facility was needed to help address a national energy emergency.

However, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a ruling issued Friday, said it was unpersuaded by the department’s justifications for keeping the J.H. Campbell Coal Plant online, determining that the department had exceeded the emergency authority granted by the Federal Power Act.

“There is no dispute that for almost a century states have exercised authority, preserved by the Federal Power Act, to regulate in-state power plants for the economic and environmental benefit of their citizens,” Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for the panel. “It is the states — informed by federal, regional, and load-serving entities’ assessments of available supply and reliability needs — that bear the responsibility to plan for and avert reliability risks on an ongoing basis. To that end, states decide which generation resources must be built, expanded, reduced, or shut down.”

The panel ultimately vacated the order.

The Campbell plant’s owner, Consumers Energy, announced a plan to retire the facility in 2021. The Michigan Public Service Commission, which oversees energy companies within the state, and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the energy grid operator for the central United States, each signed off on the plant’s retirement, with MISO determining the move would not violate its reliability criteria.

“The Department’s position would empower it to pick its preferred power sources in Michigan — or, presumably, any other state — and order them to operate without regard to the multiple procedural and substantive constraints built into state reliability planning processes,” Pillard wrote, determining that the department’s emergency authority “is best read to apply where the Department identifies a risk of substantial harm from inadequate electricity supply that calls for immediate action by DOE in particular.”

In addition to the Campbell plant, the Trump Administration extended the operation of five other plants in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Washington.

Retiring the Campbell plant was expected to save Mchigan residents $600 million by 2040. Consumers Energy’s quarterly report filed on June 30 notes that keeping the plant online has cost the company $259 million after factoring in the $239 million in revenue it received by selling power from the plant to MISO.

Consumers Energy Media Relations Specialist Brian Wheeler told Michigan Advance the company is reviewing the court’s ruling. 

“While that happens, we are continuing to comply with the current 90-day Department of Energy order that keeps the Campbell plant operating,” Wheeler said in an email. “Ultimately, we will follow the law and work to ensure that everyone who benefits from power from the Campbell plant across the Midwest pays their fair share.”

Consumers Energy is seeking to recover the cost of keeping the plant open from ratepayers in Michigan, as well as energy customers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, challenged the Department of Energy’s order and its subsequent extensions on behalf of the people of Michigan. Friday marked the first time a decision had been made on any of those challenges. 

“I am relieved that the court saw through this facade and threw out the DOE’s order that had zero basis in reality,” Nessel said in a statement. “My office has been fighting this unlawful political stunt at every turn, and this ruling proves what we have been saying all along: this administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law against the best interests of Michigan residents. We remain committed to fighting these nonsensical orders and protecting our ratepayers.”

Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Clean Air Task Force and the Environmental Defense Fund also petitioned the court to set aside the order.

In the court’s ruling, Pillard notes that the U.S. Department of Energy order it reviewed had already expired, as each renewal has extended the plant’s lifespan by 90 days.

Earthjustice attorney Michael Lenoff, in an interview with the Advance, called on the department to follow the law and rescind its most recent order extending the plant’s operations through Nov. 14.

“If it doesn’t and continues to issue these unlawful emergency orders, we will challenge them in court,” Lenoff said.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has told the oil and gas company Enbridge to halt construction on the Line 5 pipeline across northern Wisconsin after a massive spill of natural gas liquids in Iron County late last month. 

The spill, which occurred near the town of Saxon and at 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquids was the largest in the company’s history, was caused when an unoccupied truck rolled over a valve while crews were doing construction work. The company is in the process of rerouting Line 5 off the Bad River tribe’s reservation — a controversial project which has triggered numerous challenges to the DNR and federal permits. 

Since the spill, environmental activists, tribal members, candidates for office and elected officials in both Wisconsin and Michigan have renewed their calls for the pipeline to be shut down. 

After the spill, Enbridge began working to bypass the damaged valve so the pipeline could again be used to transport Canadian oil and gas. On Wednesday, the DNR issued a notice of noncompliance to the company, noting that Enbridge was constructing the bypass without the proper permits from the DNR. 

In the notice, and in an accompanying letter from DNR Secretary Karen Hyun, the agency said that it had told the company on three separate occasions it could not conduct the bypass work without approval from the state, and possibly from both the county and federal governments. 

The notice states that the bypass construction involves matting placed in nearby wetlands and close to Spoon Creek, which is considered a navigable waterway regulated by state law. 

In her letter, Hyun said she was “deeply concerned and incredibly frustrated” by Enbridge’s actions, especially the potentially harmful effects caused by the “significant discharge” of pollutants known as volatile organic compounds — which can be harmful to people’s health and the local environment. 

“Enbridge has continued to add to the growing list of environmental concerns and violations, demonstrating disregard for the environment, human health, and the statutory authority of the department,” she wrote. “Regarding the Line 5 reroute construction, Enbridge has caused additional discharges to the environment since my earlier letter, which have caused continued frustration and profound unease for the department and the people of Wisconsin. Additionally, at the location of the Line 5 Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) spill on August 25, Enbridge has made the decision to start unpermitted construction of a bypass, despite the extensive efforts of the DNR to educate Enbridge on the necessary permits and approvals for this bypass construction and a commitment to review submitted materials in a timely matter. Based on this pattern of noncompliance demonstrated by Enbridge, my concern over the environmental impacts of Enbridge’s activities over the past weeks has only heightened.”

In a statement, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said the company is working “around the clock” to clean up the spill site and return the pipeline to service. 

“Enbridge continues working towards both priorities related to the third-party line strike near Saxon, Wis. — the safe control and remediation of the incident site and completing a temporary bypass to allow the pipeline to return to service, which will help resolve energy supply disruptions,” she said. “Around the clock work on both priorities is being done in parallel. Line 5 is critical infrastructure delivering energy to millions of people in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. We continue to work with the Wisconsin DNR on relevant permitting and separately on environmental conditions at the incident site.”

Rob Lee, an attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates who has worked on the challenges to Enbridge’s Line 5 permits, said that the company doesn’t get to decide that restoring the pipeline is more important than following state law. 

“Enbridge knew it needed authorization before it started this work. The DNR told the company that repeatedly. Enbridge went ahead anyway. That shows extraordinary disregard for Wisconsin’s environmental laws and for the state agency charged with enforcing them,” Lee said. ““Enbridge cannot simply decide that getting Line 5 back in service is more important than following Wisconsin law. They’ve been out there moving earth, crossing waterways and disturbing wetlands without permits. They need to stop treating environmental requirements as obstacles to work around and start following the law. If they don’t, DNR should revoke the permits for the reroute.”

A coalition of state attorneys general filed a pair of lawsuits Wednesday challenging the Trump administration’s rollbacks of protections for endangered species. 

The lawsuits, filed by 20 states and the District of Columbia, seek to reinstate rules that protect the habitat that endangered species depend on to survive. 

Under President Donald Trump, federal agencies have changed their interpretation of “harm” under the endangered species law to include only actions that directly injure or kill animals. For decades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies had taken a broader position that the law also banned the destruction of forests, streams and wetlands that those animals depend on for nesting, mating and raising young. 

“The federal government’s attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act threatens the habitats of orcas, sockeye salmon, and other endangered species that are part of our economy, culture, and way of life,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, said in a news release. 

A second lawsuit challenges a pair of new rules that change the process for federal wildlife officials to designate “critical habitat.” The rules reduce protections for newly listed threatened species and make it easier for officials to decline to list certain lands as critical. 

“For over half a century, the (Endangered Species Act) has stood as a bipartisan example of what it means to protect an irreplaceable part of our planet, but these new rules attempt to destroy longstanding and integral regulatory protections and open the door to further species decline and possible extinctions,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said in a statement. 

The lawsuits argue that the rollbacks enacted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service violate two key federal laws, the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. According to Bonta’s press release, the rules ignore not just the purpose and history of the Endangered Species Act but also numerous court rulings and the law’s “overall precautionary approach.”

The lawsuits are led by Brown and Bonta, along with the attorneys general of Maryland and Massachusetts. The suits were also joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

The lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

In a statement, the Department of the Interior vowed to “vigorously defend its authority” to manage endangered species under the new guidelines.

“This lawsuit seeks to preserve a decades-old regulatory overreach that expanded the Endangered Species Act beyond the authority granted by Congress,” the agency said, according to Reuters. 

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

A legislative study committee on restoring floodplains across the state began its work Tuesday with an all-day meeting in which committee members heard from a number of scientists, state Department of Natural Resources staff and policy experts on the flood management landscape. 

Floodplains exist in flat areas along waterways marking where the water rises to during a flood event. Historically, waterways have been diverted, deepened or stifled to shrink these floodplains for development, navigability and agriculture — often making the effect of a flood more harmful and harming the health of the overall watershed. 

The committee is beginning its work to assess how floodplains can be restored to improve watershed health, restore wetland habitats and better control flooding as climate change has made floods more common and more severe. 

“Why are floodplains important? They promote habitat and biodiversity,” Tracy Hames of the Wisconsin Wetland Association said. “They’re really important for maintaining public health and safety.”

Among the benefits of floodplains, Hames said, are reducing erosion, improving water quality and filtering out nitrate pollution, stopping sediment from flowing downstream and protecting waterways against drought. 

To restore a floodplain, policymakers can remove dams and levees, let waterways return to their original meandering paths, reconnect waterways to nearby wetlands and promote the growth of native plants. But waterways across the country are governed by the Federal Emergency Management Program’s flood insurance program, limiting the tools available to the state.

The committee is made up of state  Sens. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) and Jodi Habush-Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay), state Reps. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point) and local government officials, non-profit staff and policy experts. 

The meeting Tuesday focused on presentations explaining what a floodplain is, what policy tools are available to restore them, the existing state and federal regulatory landscape and how proposed floodplain projects should be analysed for viability. 

Lawmakers have already been working on proposals for floodplain restoration. During the most recent legislative session, Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) began writing a bill that would allow the DNR and local governments to work together to approve and fund floodplain restoration projects. Under a preliminary draft of the Novak bill, local governments would have to approve projects before the DNR could authorize them.

In recent years, lawmakers of both parties have been supportive of wetland restoration projects. While floodplain restoration is subject to stricter regulations, there appears to be a path forward for future legislation. 

“Land use in floodplains is subject to extensive regulation under federal, state, and local laws. Broadly, these laws seek to mitigate risks to life and property and reduce costs associated with flood response,” the Wisconsin Legislative Council wrote in an introductory brief for the committee. “However, these laws may also pose burdens to floodplain restoration projects, which have garnered bipartisan interest in recent years due to their ability to improve flood storage and support other ecosystem services.”

State leaders are breathing a sigh of relief that the Trump administration’s threats to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency have subsided. 

But experts say there’s still confusion about President Donald Trump’s decisions to approve or deny disaster declarations, leaving states with uncertainty about whether they can expect federal recovery funds.

“The foundation (at FEMA) seems stronger than it did six months ago, but this is an unreliable administration when it comes to the fair and equitable distribution of disaster funds,” said Juliette Kayyem, faculty chair of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a former Obama administration official.

Trump has long called on states to take on a larger role in responding to disasters, and suggested early in his second term that FEMA might “go away” entirely. Kristi Noem, who served as Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security until she was fired in March, pledged at one point to “eliminate” FEMA, and slashed the agency’s spending and staffing during her tenure. 

Last month, the Senate confirmed Cameron Hamilton to serve as FEMA’s administrator, making him the first permanent agency leader during Trump’s second term. Hamilton, once a FEMA critic, had previously served as acting administrator, but was fired in May 2025 after saying he had become convinced the agency should not be eliminated. 

Experts say Hamilton’s return and Noem’s departure are signs of stability for FEMA. 

“It’s basically a return to regular order,” said Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA’s administrator under President Barack Obama. “They’re filling positions and reestablishing programs that got cut during the purge.”

State emergency managers say the leadership changes are welcome developments. 

“(Hamilton) he has the right attitude as far as supporting his employees and supporting the states,” said Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security. “I have a positive feel for that.”

Budd also serves as president of the National Emergency Management Association, a nonprofit comprising state and territorial emergency officials.

While FEMA appears to be safe from the most drastic threats, states still face uncertainty over some agency programs they have long relied on. The agency has said that states must comply with Trump’s voting and immigration policies in order to qualify for Homeland Security Grant Program funding. A coalition of states and municipalities have sued, saying they stand to lose out on millions of dollars they need to prepare for terrorist and other security threats. 

The White House press office did not respond to a Stateline interview request. 

Trump decisions

Experts say the biggest challenge for emergency managers is the lack of clarity around Trump’s disaster approvals. While FEMA has clear thresholds that determine which disasters qualify for federal aid, the president has full discretion to approve or deny those requests for help.

Trump has been far more willing to grant disaster declarations for Republican-led states, at 89%, while Democratic-led states have seen only 23% of their requests approved, a Politico analysis found in March. 

Trump overruled the recommendations of his own agencies when he rejected federal aid for four Democratic-led states in July, Politico reported. 

“The bad news is you have a very unreliable administration and a very political president,” said Kayyem, of Harvard. “When it comes to states’ expectations, we can’t know what this White House will do.”

But some emergency management veterans said the denials aren’t a clear-cut case of political retribution. Fugate, the former FEMA administrator under Obama, noted that many of the disaster requests Trump rejected were snow-related. Trump’s administration has pushed to eliminate snow assistance from FEMA disaster aid, arguing that states should not receive federal reimbursement for plowing their own roads. Many of the northern states that have experienced snow disasters are represented by Democrats. 

For other disasters, Fugate said, Trump has a higher bar for granting federal recovery funds. 

“The administration’s been very clear they’re wanting to raise thresholds, even if they haven’t formally changed the numbers,” he said. “I’ve not seen them deny catastrophic disasters, major disasters. It’s the smaller marginal disasters that are really judgment calls.”

While saying he “ain’t a big fan” of the Trump administration, Fugate said shifting the financial burden for disaster relief from the feds back to the states has been a longtime discussion among both parties. 

Still, emergency managers said the White House should provide more clarity about what the new thresholds are and give states time to prepare for a bigger role. 

“There’s really never been feedback about why a disaster was denied,” said Budd, the Wyoming official. “That’s something I would hope to see in the future, creating more clarity in what exactly are we looking at when we go through the process of trying to request a major disaster declaration.”

State money

Some states have begun preparing for a drawback of FEMA support. Tennessee lawmakers established a statewide recovery fund intended to help communities hit by disasters that don’t qualify for federal aid. While Republican Gov. Bill Lee requested $100 million to create the fund, lawmakers ultimately approved $44.2 million earlier this year. Some legislators fear that won’t go very far. 

“Cutting it by more than half shows the State can’t afford for FEMA to cut back its support, much less to stop supporting states altogether,” state Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat, told the Tennessee Lookout in a statement. “Funded at its current level, this fund can only really fill a few gaps where FEMA is too slow or too rigid.”

Budd, the president of the emergency managers’ group, said other states are considering similar funds. 

“These are the types of programs that we as states need to look at, and something that I will have conversations about with our legislators in the future,” she said. 

But as states look at making those investments, Budd called on the White House to give them more time. 

“The very hard part about saying states need to do more is that it cannot happen overnight,” she said. “It will take time for states and lawmakers to build that.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

Officials in Page, Arizona, a small city near the Glen Canyon Dam, passed a land sale agreement last fall that establishes a framework for future construction of a data center.

The sale of the 500-acre parcel about a mile away from the Colorado River’s Horseshoe Bend — one of the most visited natural landmarks in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area — to Huntley LLC for $7 million specifies that the company intends to build a 1 gigawatt data center.

Residents have been pushing back and launched a petition earlier this year to stop the planned data center from being built. 

About 5 miles south of the city, a group of tribal leaders began to take notice. The proposed data center borders the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation, located in the northwest corner of the Navajo Reservation. 

Like most of Arizona, the community has run into challenges from severe drought conditions this year. After learning how much water it could take to cool the thousands of servers housed in the massive facilities, members of the tribe grew increasingly concerned about the proposed data center.

The LeChee Chapter also passed a resolution opposing Page’s decision to sell the land to the developers. 

“Water is precious to us,” said Irene Whitekiller, president of the LeChee Chapter. “ … Water is used for everything, like with holy water in church and traditional ceremonies. But with a data center coming in, it’s going to take a lot.”

Data center developments are continuing to spread throughout the country as the demand for digital processing power grows — especially as artificial intelligence systems become more prevalent. But in addition to concerned residents, some federal, state and local officials are worried about how data centers could drive up utility bills, strain water resources and hurt the environment.

And now, tribal communities are grappling with the fact that more developers are eyeing their land for future data center projects.

“Because of the history with treaties, removal actions and those sorts of things, tribal lands are probably more pristine and not as developed as other state, federal or local government lands,” said Tana Fitzpatrick, the associate vice president of tribal relations at the University of Oklahoma and a member of the Crow Tribe in Montana and a descendent of the Lakota Sioux, Ponca and Chickasaw nations. 

“That might be one of the reasons why tribes are finding that people are coming and wanting to build data centers on their lands.”

Some tribal leaders are also concerned about President Donald Trump’s ability to alter regulations related to federal lands. While most of Trump’s executive orders don’t apply to federal land belonging to Native nations or reservations, Whitekiller said that could change.

In July, for instance, Trump issued two executive orders to revise the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Bears Ears National Monument so the lands could be “put to a higher-priority use,” such as extracting minerals to invest in national security. The orders faced backlash from environmental advocacy groups and Native nations.

“We’re trying to educate our people to say no to this kind of thing (data centers) because we want the land the way it is. This is a federal land that we live on, but Trump doesn’t respect that,” Whitekiller said.

In March, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma became one of the first Native nations to enact a complete moratorium on data centers. Honor the Earth, a national nonprofit organization advocating for the protection of Indigenous sovereignty and the environment, has helped communities like the Seminole Nation organize against data center development on their land.

Some companies see tribal land as a regulatory dream, said Ashley Leitka, an enrolled member of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the director of the department of sovereignty and self-determination at Honor the Earth. She is also part of the Oglala and Sicangu Lakota nations.

While municipalities are pushing back against data center developers by tightening codes and enforcing stricter regulations, she said some companies are hoping that tribal nations will be more lenient. As sovereign, self-governing nations, tribes are not required to follow all state and local laws.

“These companies are really preying upon the lack of economic diversity in our tribal nations,” Leitka said. “The reality is our tribal leaders are given a mandate to care for their nations, and whenever there’s opportunities, it’s pretty difficult for them to assert why they would not consider it. I just think it’s several things happening at the same time — that makes tribal nations prime targets.”

A handful of other tribes have taken action against data centers. In July, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma’s Business Committee formally declared its opposition to construction and operation of data centers on its lands. 

And in August, following a report detailing the impact of data centers on economy and environment, the Cherokee Nation announced it would be banning hyperscale data center development on tribally owned and trust lands, according to the nation’s official news site.

However, some tribes are considering how data centers could help their people. Colusa Indian Energy, for instance, has become one of the only tribally owned microgrid companies helping lead data center partnerships with Native nations.  

And in the past few years, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs has encouraged tribes to consider data center projects by offering financial and technical resources to assist.

Data centers are a significant way to bring economic opportunities to tribal communities, said Eric Mahroum, the office’s director. Mahroum said data centers also offer a number of jobs to community members.

“I think that’s why a lot of private companies are approaching tribal lands and the tribal governments to partner with them,” he said. “And we’re here to help them with that. I’ll be the first to say that there’s a lot of private companies and a lot of bad players that want to take advantage of the tribes. But then there’s a lot of great players that want to help the tribes.”

As more communities push data center developers out and states consider rescinding tax breaks, some of the country’s top tech developers and data center companies see tribal land as an easier option.

Microsoft, for instance, recently proposed a data center project in Fernley, Nevada, about a 10-minute drive from the boundary of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, according to Honor the Earth’s Data Center Tracker. The company’s community-first AI initiative outlines steps Microsoft will take to be a “good neighbor” in the communities where they build, according to an unsigned written statement from the company.

In the meantime, tribal leaders have expressed the need to continue studying the impacts of data centers through task forces. And now, more Native nations are considering moratoriums to allow time for more discussions, said Fitzpatrick, of the University of Oklahoma.

“In general, every tribe is their own sovereign nation,” Fitzpatrick said. “Regardless of the issue, every tribe is going to have their own ways of governing, choosing their priorities and looking at their citizens’ priorities.”