In recent months, the Trump administration has opened a deregulatory floodgate in the name of building more data centers. Among other things, this has involved ordering rollbacks of clean water regulations and opening up public lands to coal mining. In September, the EPA announced it would be prioritizing the regulatory review of new chemicals used in data centers or related projects. Helping to lead that charge at the agency are several former chemical industry executives, lobbyists, and lawyers. “We inherited a massive backlog of new chemical reviews from the Biden Administration which is getting in the way of projects as it pertains to data center and artificial intelligence projects,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.