Three environmental groups hit two West Side data center developers with a federal lawsuit two months after threatening to sue the companies if they did not correct their clean air law violations.

The Environmental Integrity Project, Sierra Club and Public Citizen say Denver-based Vantage and Houston-based VoltaGrid allegedly “failed to make any progress to address the violations” to the Clean Air Act, spurring the environmental groups to file the lawsuit in federal court in San Antonio.

The groups say the West Side data center campuses will be powered by two gas-fired power plants that have the potential to emit thousands of tons of pollutants into an already smoggy part of San Antonio – but the violation comes from the companies’ failure to obtain proper permitting and to allow public input.

“Communities should not have to suffer excessive amounts of air pollution from data centers and power plants that fail to follow the Clean Air Act,” said Mary Greene, director of enforcement at the Environmental Integrity Project. “Industrial development at this scale requires public input and stringent permits that prioritize health and air quality over the unbridled race for an economic edge.”

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The groups say Vantage and VoltaGrid are building and partially operating the plants with permits for minor sources of pollution, while their generators are actually major pollution sources under the law.

The Environmental Protection Agency requires major source permits for any operation emitting 100 tons of air pollutants a year. Such permits require the best available pollution control technology, pollution monitoring and public participation.

The environmental groups have estimated that the two power plants could emit 5,600 tons per year of nitrogen oxides and 323 tons per year of volatile organic compounds, which create smog, as well as cancer-causing gases, including 1,190 tons of carbon monoxide per year.

Despite the scope of the project and its potential pollutants, Vantage and VoltaGrid obtained minor source permits, which are less effective for pollution control and do not give the public opportunity to weigh in and object. The environmental groups said this was “exploiting Texas’ fast-track approval process for minor sources.”

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“Texans increasingly distrust data center developers, and for good reason,” said Nandan Joshi, attorney with Public Citizen’s litigation group. “Texans deserve to hear from developers about the pollution their facilities produce in local communities. The rush to build data centers should not come at the expense of public input and community health.”

Vantage and VoltaGrid did not respond immediately to request for comments.

The two gas-fired plants that will power the data center campuses collectively have a capacity of 405 megawatts, enough energy to power 101,250 homes or nearly 20% of San Antonio’s homes. The campus also is equipped with 151 backup diesel generators that can provide 455 megawatts of generation capacity in case of an outage.

All of this is off-grid energy generation, meaning that the entirety of the energy produced will go toward operating the data centers rather than the Texas grid.

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The West Side area where the project is located, at 14270 Omicron Drive and 5207 Rogers Road, already is failing federal standards for smog, the environmental groups said.

“Vantage and VoltaGrid want to come into this Texas neighborhood and dump thousands of tons of air pollutants into an already smoggy community – and they want to do it without the proper permits or even hearing what impacted people have to say,” said John Smith, senior attorney for the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. “Our lawsuit sends a clear sign that we cannot allow the AI industry to go rogue with our health and future.”

The lawsuit filed Monday comes after the groups on July 22 sent out a notice of the groups’ intent to sue due to the Clean Air Act violations to the companies, the EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

In the letter, the environmental groups gave the companies 60 days to resolve their alleged violations.

The groups have said that VoltaGrid and Vantage could be fined up to $124,426 per day for the more than two years of construction and operation without proper permitting.

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This article originally published at Environmental groups sue San Antonio data center developers over power plant permits.