Climate Justice Alliance

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WASHINGTON – Nearly 120 community, labor, climate and environmental justice organizations representing millions of people across the country today urged Congress to reject efforts to fast-track artificial intelligence or data centers through permitting reform or other must-pass legislation.

Despite growing nationwide opposition, data center expansion is moving ahead without basic safeguards or meaningful community consent. The data center boom is driving up electricity bills, straining water supplies, and worsening pollution from diesel generators and fossil-fuel-powered grids, while deepening environmental injustice by concentrating facilities in low-income communities and communities of color already overburdened by pollution and limited resources.

The letter sent to congressional leaders today is backed by environmental justice leaders on the frontlines, including Memphis-based Young, Gifted & Green and Memphis Community Against Pollution. Those groups are fighting an xAI data center and working to ensure their efforts inform communities facing similar developments, serving as both a warning and a model for action.

“Our democratic process was sidelined when our most powerful leaders both elected and unelected championed a data center while community voices were shut out,” said LaTricea D. Adams, CEO and president, Young, Gifted & Green. “What happens in Memphis can happen in cities and states across the country. We need the U.S. Congress to do its job now to preserve and protect our rights as constituents and fight for our democracy.”

“Perpetuating the long-standing practice of environmental injustice costs our families their human right to clean air while burdening our bodies with illness that impact everything from breathing to birthings,” said KeShaun Pearson, executive director of Memphis Community Against Coalition. “Congress must put an end to the continual sacrificing of majority Black families and futures like ours. We deserve a healthy environment that doesn’t harm our communities and our planet for corporate gain.”

The letter warns that data center developers are replicating the fossil fuel industry’s long-standing pattern of targeting low-income communities, Tribal communities and communities of color. Nearly half of U.S. data centers are already located in these areas, deepening cumulative pollution burdens, raising utility costs and straining infrastructure in communities with the least resources to respond.

“Congress must not let Big Tech block oversight and hide data centers’ real harms from the public, including their immense energy and water use, dangerous pollution and rising local costs,” said Camden Weber, senior climate and energy policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Data center giants spend consumers’ money to gut regulations, buy up utilities and avoid accountability, enriching billionaires while shifting risks to everyone else. Members of Congress are supposed to represent their communities, not strip the people who elected them of the power to protect themselves from these massive operations moving into their neighborhoods.”

“We’ve seen this playbook before: strip away safeguards, sideline public input, and call it progress. But there is nothing ‘clean’ or responsible about an industry that drives up our energy bills, drains our water, and concentrates pollution in our communities,” said Mar Zepeda Salazar, legislative director at Climate Justice Alliance. “If lawmakers move forward with a deregulatory approach, what guarantees are there that anyone will be held accountable—to the law, to public health, or to the people most impacted? Our communities should not be forced to subsidize corporate growth with their health, their land, and their futures. Real progress means durable and enforceable protections, community consent, and investment that doesn’t come at the cost of environmental justice.”

“All communities deserve to have a say in what is being built in their backyards, especially for environmental justice communities facing a legacy of dangerous facilities polluting their neighborhoods,” said Yosef Robele, federal policy manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. “This is even more important now as harmful, undemocratic practices are being employed in the build-out of data center projects, such as using non-disclosure agreements that keep communities in the dark. These facilities often bypass necessary guardrails of both public input and impact analysis, threatening the health and safety of communities by polluting the air and water, while also guzzling critical water resources. This highlights the need for Congress to reject legislation that fast-tracks data center development, and to protect and strengthen bedrock laws like NEPA that protect communities’ rights, resources, and health.”

“It is time for Congress to stand up to Big Tech and reject these dangerous permitting rollbacks,” said Jim Walsh, policy director of Food & Water Watch. “Communities should not have to sacrifice their water so multibillion dollar companies can build data centers faster with less accountability, especially at a time when we are facing a water supply crisis across the United States. Rather than fast tracking these projects, Congress should listen to communities around the country that are rejecting the massive expansion of data centers and put the brakes on these projects so we can better understand the impacts on scarce water supplies and communities that depend on this essential resource.”

“Using permitting reform and other legislation to fast track the data center boom is a slap in the face to local communities who will be the ones to pay the price. No amount of giveaways to data center projects will stave off irreversible harm, including rising electricity costs and polluted environments,” said Raena Garcia, senior energy campaigner from Friends of the Earth U.S. “If Congress is truly committed to protecting our people and the planet, they will halt altogether the attempts from both the Big Oil and Big Tech industries to scale up data centers without meaningful protections.”

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Following the Trump administration’s decision to invoke the Defense Production Act to subsidize fossil fuel expansion under the guise of an “energy emergency”, Mar Zepeda, Legislative Director for CJA, issued the following statement: 

“This decision is not a solution to the rising costs, climate disasters, and public health challenges communities are facing. Rather, this is a continuation of false proclamations designed to lock the United States into deeper fossil fuel dependence while maintaining a system that profits from pollution and extraction. 

This action builds on a broader pattern of public giveaways to an already profitable industry, including billions in federal subsidies that shift financial risk away from corporations and onto taxpayers. At a time when the U.S. is already one of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, doubling down on oil, gas, and coal will not deliver energy security or affordability. It will instead entrench price volatility, delay the transition to stable, community-centered clean energy, and deepen the climate crisis.

At its core, this is about the continued consolidation of wealth and power. By invoking emergency authorities to fast-track fossil fuel expansion, the administration is sidelining public input, weakening accountability, and concentrating decision-making in the hands of corporate actors. This undermines democratic governance and strips communities of their right to shape their own energy futures.

From an environmental justice perspective, the impacts are stark. These investments will concentrate pollution in frontline and low-income communities that are already overburdened, increasing risks to public health while driving up economic costs. At the same time, they deepen global inequities, locking countries into cycles of fossil fuel dependence, volatility, and debt.

Fossil fuel corporations are not passive in this system. They actively shape and defend it, using financial and legal tools to protect profits and limit democratic decision-making.

This is not energy security. It is wealth consolidation at the expense of communities and the planet. A just energy future requires investing in community-led solutions that reduce pollution, lower costs, and protect the health and self-determination of all people.”

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Cameron Steinback has taken a long journey from beginning his career as a teacher to Climate Justice Program Manager for Front and Centered in Washington State. In late 2025, he found himself in a data-center roundtable convened by Washington state Governor Bob Ferguson. It was an “experience” for someone who still considers himself new to the policy landscape. 

The following is from our conversation on January 15th, 2026. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

~

Mark Chavez

How did you get from Hayward, California to being the Climate Justice Program Manager of a nonprofit in Seattle? 

Cameron Steinback

I have always enjoyed and been encouraged to try and do many things from sports to various educational and artistic activities. That was something that was instilled by family members and my elders: from horseback riding and Black rodeo shows to museums and science centers, and enjoying the mountains up in the Sierra Nevada and the beaches and coastlines in California. 

So when I chose my educational pursuits, science, exploring and understanding the natural world were definitely motivating factors. Through my undergraduate work and my first professional experiences, a lot of them centered around schools and working with young people because I had so many great experiences being out and learning in those spaces, being shaped by those educators in the classroom as well as in those outdoor learning environments just instilled the love and appreciation for those people and places. 

At the same time, I have also very much taken pride in the movements that Black folks have shaped on this continent for generations upon generations. From a very early age, going to MLK marches in the Bay Area, being exposed and understanding what my parents’ generation lived and experienced as teenagers and adults during the Black Power movement, and being proud of my connection to that history gave me the confidence to go out into a lot of new and different spaces and places. So with all of that, education became a natural place for me. I worked in public schools  in Oakland, California, and Atlanta, Georgia, in the first part of my teaching career. From there I transitioned to teaching in museums and science centers in the Bay Area. The last focus was on doing ocean conservation, marine mammal and climate change education to everyone from kindergarteners up to university students from different parts of the country. 

I came to Seattle after that because I wanted to take my next step in my educational career. I wanted to see what else could unfold. And through the excitement and joy that I get from teaching young people, I built up enough skill that I was like, “How can I shape the next educators?” How can I continue to build upon the joy and the experience of teaching and connecting people to the parts of the world that sustain us, that let us thrive, and speak to the inequity of people’s access to and relationship with healthy environments, or the burdens of climate change on Black, brown, and poor folks all over the world. I wanted to take that next step, and [think about] how I could shape educators. So I came to Seattle for a graduate program at Antioch University concentrating on urban environmental education, which at that time was a confluence of so much of what I cared about, learning about environmental justice and climate justice, with education as a tool for community agency and civic action, [I was thinking] how do we take our knowledge and understanding to actually continue to shape the world into the place that we want and to need it to be. 

From that graduate school experience, I got experience working with a land-use policy organization. I never thought of policy as part of what would be my professional pathway. But by virtue of the kind of things that I ended up doing next, which was working with an environmental education organization here in Seattle, creating new science-based curriculum, that did not just focus on the science, but tied it to the narratives of people and social movements for climate justice. 

We cannot solve environmental issues without solving social issues. They’re intertwined, they’re interconnected, and the solutions lie in how we grapple with both. 

I started seeking out roles and positions where I could continue to leverage my educational skills and build upon my policy knowledge, and it just so happened that Front and Centered was looking for a climate justice program manager. I read the description, read the kind of policy sphere in which Front and Centered works and operates. I recognized the value of community education, community activation, it’s a key part of how they do that work. I’m like, yeah, I’m an educator. I can do that stuff. I don’t have the deep policy experience, but I’m just going to put my name in the hat because you’ve got to give yourself a shot. You’ve got to give yourself a chance.

MC

If you went back to Hayward and you ran into somebody you haven’t seen in decades, how would you describe Front and Centered to them? 

CS

I’d describe it in a lot of the same ways that I’ve described it in Washington. Front and Centered is an organization that aims to advance climate and environmental justice in Washington State, in part by supporting a statewide coalition of organizations that represent and serve “frontline communities.” That means the people who are most impacted by environmental harm and policymaking, the people who are hit first and worst by the impacts of climate change. These communities are literally at the front and center of the work we do to undo those harms and create a just future. Whatever the ways in which that happens – from creating and making policy, to holding state agencies and government accountable, to creating resources for folks to continue to be activated and working for justice in their communities – frontline communities are the ones to shape it.

MC

What are some of the key issues that Front and Centered is focused on moving into 2026? 

CS

One key legislative focus is the CURB Pollution Act and how we are taking the cumulative risk burden (CURB) of pollution that frontline communities already face and using that information to create clear boundaries in terms of where new polluting industries can and cannot go. We recognize that frontline communities have borne an inequitable, disproportionate measure of that pollution for far too long—a burden they shouldn’t have borne in the first place—and that no new polluting facilities should be permitted in or near those communities. That’s a very general summary of what the CURB Act is. 

We are advocating heavily and strongly for measures for affordability, specifically a bill to create a statewide energy assistance program, HB 1903 (Update: this bill was passed and signed into law on March 30th!). This new energy bill assistance program supplements existing programs run by utilities, and we hope will be a step closer to closing the assistance need gap. Energy costs are rising for everyone, for a lot of reasons, and we believe every person has a right to enough energy to thrive while not continuing to burden low-income households. And there’s a lot of other laws that need to be enacted to ensure we protect rate payers from continued increases as we make an energy transition. 

MC

You straddle these two places, where you grew up in the Bay Area and now Seattle, that have such deep ties to the tech industry. But as you mentioned ratepayer burden, I’m curious if you can share a little bit about the recent boom of data centers and AI and how you all have seen that unfolding in Washington. 

CS

There are so many things to talk about when it comes to artificial intelligence, data centers specifically, and probably the most important place to start is right at the resource consumption of these new facilities. The first interest for us for Environmental and Climate Justice: is there harm being done where these facilities are being sited. And that goes to the way in which Washington State has a permitting system set up. Is there appropriate and enough transparency, and access to assistance for communities to really understand what these permits are saying and what’s being put in, before the cranes and construction start moving in? The resource consumption of electricity, these things take a significant amount of energy every single day. Here in Washington, we are committed to a clean energy transformation, which is to move to an electricity supply free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. So at the same time we’re coming off of fossil fuels, we’re also increasing demand for electricity in which we need a continued rollout of renewable energy supply. There’s a pinch that happens in there. As utilities need to build out and update infrastructure, they can recoup some of those costs on rate payers. But if rate payers aren’t the driving force behind the demand, that’s an equity issue, right? We need to ensure that data centers are paying not just their fair share, but more explicitly paying for all of the new energy and new interconnection that their demand is pushing. 

Another important resource is, of course, water. Water has been and it’s going to continue to be, such an important Environmental Justice concern. The way in which water rights are established and distributed, to the ways dams and hydroelectric power blocks divert and impact fish passage, causes me quite a bit of concern 

I apologize if that feels like a little bit of a word salad, but there’s so many things that are going on in there. The first and foremost is protecting those resources from the exploitative nature of industry. Industry is going to find the best way to make it profitable for themselves and make the protection of people, lands, and waters optional. Let’s make sure those protections are first, front and center. 

MC

You were part of a six month data center working group convened by Washington’s Governor Bob Ferguson. How was that? What happened?

CS

That was an experience, as a person being new to the policy and political landscape. And for context, I’ll probably call myself new at this for the next five years. (laughing)

MC

Welcome.

CS

It was an important space for us to be at the table. Our coalition is concerned about Environmental and Climate Justice in all the ways that it shows up. So we recognize this is a place that is important, and we’re grateful for the invitation from the governor’s office to participate. 

It was the full spectrum of folks interested and involved in data centers. Everybody from people invested in the data center consortium, the lobby of folks who want to ensure that they have the best incentives and least amount of hindrance to their business model, to Google and Amazon Web Service, to electeds here in Washington state, to other groups that prioritize the public interest and environmental concerns, including folks representing the Yakama Nation were there as well. So a lot of people, right, at and around that table. And the charge, the responsibility given to this work group was to provide recommendations to the governor’s office around what could and should be done, as this was an emerging issue for Washington State and nationally. 

There are incentives for data centers that are already in Washington state law, in the form of tax incentives. So there was a subgroup focused on economic landscape of the data centers in Washington. The other subgroup focused on resource and environmental issues related to data centers. With two subgroups: one focused on tax,revenue, and economics, and the other one focused on resource and environmental concerns there was a lot to cover and an accelerated timeline over six months – with the facilitators’ charge to get recommendations done by the end of October 2025. 

So many questions were brought up. The pace was accelerated in ways in which it was hard to be confident that we would arrive at clear recommendations to the governor’s office that would alleviate a lot of the concerns, at least a lot of the concerns that came up from the folks who were working in the public interest and those butting against what kind of new restrictions that could or should be put in place, and have those restrictions immediately challenged by folks working on the pro data center side. 

One point that was explored was if data centers are receiving tax incentives, should those incentives be tied to certain efficiency mandates and what kind of energy was being brought onto the system? It is an imbalance that we incentivize industries that are straining our grid and potentially bringing non-renewable sources to the grid when we have a net zero law that requires us to reduce emission by 2045, 2050?

What eventually came out in the recommendations were not as bad as I felt going into the process. The findings established that there was need for clear guidelines from the legislature, more powers to the Utilities and Transportation Commission, and utilities to be able to set appropriate kinds of rates for these new large loads, to the transparency of the kind of connections that were being asked for from data centers. 

Right now, what’s being worked on for this legislative session are a couple of bills to clarify some of the things, to put in place some transparency, put in place some restrictions, so that if and when new data centers do come online, they’re not creating harm, and they’re in line with our commitments as a state to a clean energy transition. And of course, we’d like to see and ensure communities have a lot of say and control ultimately of where these facilities are built and the kind of benefits that can come from them. We’re in the 21st century, artificial intelligence is a tool. How significant a tool it’s going to continue to be is to be determined. I’m old enough to have enough awareness of the dot-com boom of the 90s and this industry is known for booms and busts. And it would be horrible if we as a state continue to allow a proliferation of these data centers in communities with a lot of flashy, maybe potentially short-term benefits, but long-term we could be left holding the bag. (Update: Through the 2026 short legislative session, a coalition of organizations led by the NW Energy Coalition worked hard to pass HB 2515, which would have brought comprehensive regulation on data centers in Washington state. It did not pass, but the process illuminated the challenges of such legislation and the determination to come back stronger in 2027.) 

MC

Were there any points that the people in favor of data centers brought to the table that you thought to yourself, “wow, I hadn’t thought of it that way?”

CS

When I talk about an idea that any new data center or new large load facility needs to bring its own clean energy. Right? So, that can look a lot of different ways from they’re paying for new infrastructure to go right here in Washington for the energy grid, or they get permission to build their own facility behind the meter to power themselves directly, or they go into a power purchase agreement to get power from Oregon or Montana or Idaho or something like that. 

And the part in that I hadn’t thought about, or it was like tying into all the different threads, was the thinking okay, so yeah, say they go into a power purchase agreement, who’s to say that power is not coming from a coal plant? or who’s to say that, say it is a renewable facility, but they may be operating under unfair labor practices, right now there’s not a collective bargaining agreement happening in that part of the country. You know, are we offloading the issue to someone else just to meet our goals? 

That was the piece I was like yeah, the Northwest power infrastructure, and where it all comes from, where it all is all sourced is complex and takes dedication to really understand the current needs and in capacities to how it’s maintained and upgraded for this new century. 

MC

Oh, there’s so much. I feel like we could keep going on this forever. I have a curveball. Do you still ski? 

CS

I do. I still consider myself a skier. It’s happening less and less for a number of reasons. You know, age. I put in my miles when I was young, so I’ve got early onset arthritis. But it’s become really prohibitively expensive for most folks. I could, but it’s so far from what I was able to grow up with, I was part of a great Black national ski club. I still love the sport. I invested in a lot of it. Yeah, I still ski. Sorry, that was a long answer

MC

Do you want to go up someday? I snowboard, but I won’t hold it against you that you’re a skier.

CS

Oh yeah for sure. I’d be down.

MC

What else do you do for fun? 

CS

Science fiction, short stories. I love short stories. For the past four years I’ve particularly been focused on Black, indigenous, people of color authors. First, it’s great, amazing creativity that I’ve always loved. Also the ways in which folks bring their culture and their own stories that have been passed down into these new ways of expression. Let’s see, let’s see. 

I made a commitment last year to learn to play the banjo. I’ve been inspired by different banjo musicians and how they’ve talked about the history of that instrument being a unique instrument of the Black diaspora in the Caribbean and the Americas, and how that’s been transformed throughout history. And there’s some great folks in Oakland and North Carolina, doing some really cool reclamation of that instrument. And then the cultural music that has been muddled by minstrelry, right? There’s a whole beautiful musical tradition and culture that was appropriated and turned into minstrelry. And so that’s why the banjo is associated with that, but it’s transcendent, it goes way, way before all that. So I’m enjoying learning to play the banjo. 

And getting my hands in the soil and dirt. I love gardening. Doing some great projects. A significant part of my family lives in Georgia now, and I go back there pretty frequently and try to get a wildflower meadow established and working on my mom’s legacy out there that she really wants to pass down to her grandchildren. 

MC

That’s awesome. Who’s a sci-fi author that people should know about? 

CS

I mean, I think everybody knows Octavia Butler. Probably another author that’s moved me with their books, N.K. Jemisin. Those are two that immediately come to mind. 

MC

So great talking to you, Cameron. I really appreciate it. 

CS

Thank you

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