Two state legislators from Memphis are vying for the District 9 congressional seat based partially on their track record on sensitive environmental issues.
The Republican nominee, state Sen. Brent Taylor, recently sponsored two consequential bills for Tennessee’s air and water quality.
Last year, Taylor sponsored legislation to remove regulations for most of the state’s wetlands likely in the path of construction.
“Today’s the day we take this wetlands bill and flick that booger off our finger,” Taylor said during a senate hearing in early 2025.
Tennessee’s wetlands are an extension of creeks, rivers and aquifers, housing dense biodiversity and offering powerful controls to flooding and drought. Many swamps and bottomland forests were destroyed during European colonization, but Tennessee set up protections for wetlands in 1971.
Courtesy Byron Jorjorian/The Nature Conservancy Bottomland hardwood forests are also known as “river swamps,” a type of wetland that improves water quality and hosts wildlife.
The new law eliminated many of those regulations and cut reporting requirements to the state’s environmental agency — reducing the state’s ability to track future wetland loss. Multiple state agencies opposed the bill in 2024 but stayed silent when the bill resurfaced last year.
Taylor passed the bill with Rep. Kevin Vaughan, R-Collierville, a Memphis-area developer who was involved in a project that illegally filled a wetland.
Taylor deregulated private power plants for data centers
This year, both Taylor and his opponent, the Democratic nominee and state Rep. Justin J. Pearson, sponsored bills regarding data centers. Only Taylor’s bill passed.
The legislation removed regulations on what’s called “behind-the-meter” power, allowing facilities like Elon Musk’s xAI to create their own private gas plants instead of purchasing power through a utility.
“Data centers can buy power from independent power producers, like on-site generators,” Taylor said at a senate hearing earlier this year. He argued that the bill’s intent was to shield consumers from the costs of data centers.
The legislation may lead to a surge in pollution as developers rapidly build out data centers. It allows facility owners to build or purchase from private power plants with no state oversight or requirements for clean energy.
Near Chattanooga, one developer plans to build a data center with two forms of on-site power: a 1-gigawatt gas plant, which is about how much power a typical nuclear reactor produces, along with a half-gigawatt biomass plant, which burns organic materials for electricity. Under this proposal, the plant would essentially act as a giant wood stove, burning upwards of 65,000 acres of forest annually for a single data center, according to a calculation by the Southern Environmental Law Center. Burning wood for electricity causes more climate pollution than burning methane gas, according to a study published April in the journal Nature Sustainability, along with significant air pollution.
Courtesy Christopher Blank/WKNO-FM xAI draws electricity from gas turbines sited next to the “Colossus 1” data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
Taylor’s legislation passed easily with the Republican supermajority.
Taylor has aligned his policies for Congress with President Donald Trump. He plans to expand “domestic oil, natural gas and nuclear power” and “support voluntary farmland preservation programs,” according to his campaign website, which does not mention any plans for environmental protections.
Taylor did not respond to a request for an interview from WPLN News.
Pearson supports moratorium, regulations on data centers
Pearson supports a statewide moratorium on large data centers. The state lawmaker told WPLN that laws to protect land and people’s health from data centers will have to come at the federal level, given the Tennessee GOP’s alignment with business interests. He said he’s already drafting legislation.
“We’re going to have to make sure the environment is protected. We’re going to have to make sure the workforce is protected,” Pearson said.
Pearson has also been vocal on a potential moratorium on data centers in Memphis. He sued the Memphis City Council after officials banned him from upcoming meetings, alleging a First Amendment violation.
Pearson first gained public attention while leading protests against a proposed oil pipeline in Memphis. He has continued to champion environmental causes as a community organizer and later in the statehouse.
In 2024, he proposed legislation to limit the use of AI by state agencies. He later sponsored bills to require the state environmental agency to create a public database of facilities that pose risks for toxic releases and require large data centers to source half of their power supply from non-fossil energy sources like renewables — and he voted against Taylor’s data center and wetland bills.
Pearson has not passed any legislation.
If elected to Congress, he said he plans to align his policy goals with his constituents instead of corporations.
“They’re tired of the corruption,” Pearson said.
WPLN’s Marianna Bacallao contributed to this report.
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