A Big Discovery at Sharkey Hot Springs? And Who Is Behind Lemhi County’s Geothermal Leases?
Over the past several weeks, Lemhi County Informed has been digging through decades of government records to better understand the three Lemhi County parcels scheduled for the November 17 geothermal lease sale.
At the same time, many residents have been asking another question: Could this geothermal development have any connection to a future AI or other large data center in Lemhi County?
This article provides an update on both issues.
First: the three geothermal lease parcels
What started as a fairly simple question — What protections already exist on this land? — led to something much more significant.
Buried in the old Lemhi County planning record was a very specific decision involving approximately 800 acres at Sharkey Hot Springs.
And it raised a serious question about land that is currently being offered for geothermal leasing.
What was found at Sharkey Hot Springs
Historic BLM planning records specifically state that an additional 800 acres at Sharkey Hot Springs would be CLOSED to geothermal leasing, subject to valid existing rights.
That word — CLOSED — matters.
Land that is CLOSED to geothermal leasing is unavailable for geothermal leasing.
Land that is OPEN is available for geothermal leasing
And land OPEN but with restrictions (for example a No Surface Occupancy restriction–NSO), can still be leased, but surface development is prohibited or heavily restricted on the protected acreage.
Those are very different land-use decisions.
The 1987 Lemhi RMP specifically provided that approximately 800 acres at Sharkey Hot Springs would be closed to geothermal leasing.
Yet the current 2026 geothermal lease-sale documents lists Sharkey-area lands as OPEN for geothermal leasing, with NSO and other restrictions.
That raised several obvious questions:
What happened to the historic Sharkey closure?
Was the land formally reopened through a later planning decision?
Was the historic 800-acre boundary different from today’s protected area?
Or was the original CLOSED designation somehow not properly carried forward into the current lease documents?
If a later land-use-plan decision legitimately changed that acreage from CLOSED to OPEN, there should be a paper trail showing how and when that happened (i.e. environmental assessment and an amendment).
After reviewing hundreds of pages of planning records and other government documents, Lemhi County Informed could not locate that decision.
Why this is a serious issue
This is not simply a disagreement over terminology.
If the land was closed but is being treated as open to geothermal leasing…then we have a problem. It basically affects whether geothermal lease rights can be offered on those 800 Sharkey acres in the first place.
The historic Sharkey documents therefore could not simply be brushed aside as old paperwork. They raised a real land-use-plan discrepancy.
Below is a segment of one of several documents found during the investigation.
April 1987 Record of Decision and Approved Lemhi Resource Management Plan
A note about “valid existing rights”: This simply means that if someone already had a legal right to use the land before it was closed, that existing right could continue. It does not mean new geothermal leases could be issued on the closed land.
What happened next
Once the historic documents were located, the evidence was organized and taken directly to the BLM Salmon Field Office.
The response from the local Salmon office has been encouraging and cooperative.
The material presented included the historic planning documents, the approved Lemhi Resource Management Plan, the current lease-sale materials, and one very specific question:
Where exactly (on a map) are the historic 800 CLOSED acres, and what planning decision — if any — changed them from CLOSED to being OPEN and leasable?
The Salmon BLM office has been reviewing the issue and engaging directly with the questions Lemhi County Informed brought forward.
Lemhi County Informed is now anxiously awaiting a final BLM agency decision to be made and offered to the public.
There is good reason to believe the Sharkey concern is being taken seriously, and there is growing optimism that this research may result in an important correction.
Until something is formally announced, however, nothing should be treated as final.
The larger question involving all three parcels
Even if the 800 Sharkey acres are removed from the sale, the three Lemhi County lease parcels themselves are still scheduled for November 17. The parcels would simply contain less acreage:Parcel 0049
Parcel 0054 — includes part of the 800 Sharkey-area acreage
Parcel 0056 — includes part of the 800 Sharkey-area acreage
One possible outcome is that the 800 Sharkey acres recently identified as CLOSED will be removed from the upcoming sale, while the rest of Parcels 0054 and 0056 — along with Parcel 0049 — remain scheduled for sale.
That is why the Sharkey issue matters beyond those 800 acres: it raises a larger question about:
- how all three parcels were reviewed before they were offered for leasing.
- The Salmon/Lemhi planning area currently has 60,464 acres that are CLOSED to geothermal leasing (Sharkey is just 800 of those acres).
- are there other mistakes where closed land is being treated as open (like the discrepancy with Sharkey)?
The public still does not have the parcel-specific record showing exactly how the above three current Lemhi County parcels were checked against the CLOSED allocation to ensure no additional closed areas are included in the 3 parcels for sale.
The Sharkey discovery gives the County a concrete reason to ask BLM to verify and document that review before federal lease rights are sold.
That is why, at the Monday, September 28 Lemhi County Commissioners meeting, Lemhi County Informed will encourage the Commissioners to consider asking BLM to defer all three Lemhi County parcels from the November 17 sale while the parcel-specific land-use-plan and geothermal-availability review is completed, documented and shared with the community.
This does not mean Lemhi County Informed is claiming that another Sharkey-type discrepancy exists elsewhere in the three parcels.
The request is much simpler:
Resolve the planning record first.
Verify that the remaining lands are properly OPEN and available for leasing.
Then proceed with listing the parcels for sale.
We are still waiting on an important public-records request
There is another important part of this investigation that the community should understand.
Back in May, Lemhi County Informed submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, often called a “FOIA request”.
FOIA is a federal law that allows members of the public to request records from federal agencies in order to better understand how government decisions are being made.
In this case, the request was designed to answer some very basic questions about the proposed geothermal leasing in Lemhi County:
Who nominated these parcels for geothermal leasing? (The lease announcement said it was ‘members of the geothermal industry’...but who precisely?)
Why were these particular lands selected?
What communications took place between BLM and geothermal developers, utilities, consultants or other outside entities?
What studies, maps, resource evaluations or environmental analyses were used?
Were there discussions about how the geothermal power might ultimately be used — including anticipated future electricity demand, transmission needs, major new energy users, or infrastructure expansion (such as a possible future data center)?
Were there discussions about large industrial energy users, increased electrical capacity or other major development that could be connected to these leases?
In other words, the FOIA request is meant to help answer a larger question:
What is the long-term vision behind these geothermal parcels, and who is involved?
That matters because BLM’s public project page says the parcels were nominated by “members of the geothermal industry,” but the public still does not know who those companies are.
It also matters because residents have questions about whether this geothermal development could eventually support a large future energy user, including an AI or other data center.
The FOIA request was submitted on May 18, 2026 and through today’s date has not yet been fulfilled.
The submission was made through the Department of the Interior’s (DOI's) FOIA system and was then assigned to the BLM Idaho State Office for processing.
In other words, the formal FOIA request is not processed or completed by the local Salmon BLM office. The Salmon office may provide responsive records, but the Idaho State Office/DOI FOIA process is responsible for completing the request.
During discussions with Salmon BLM personnel, Lemhi County Informed was told that the local office had gathered responsive records and forwarded them for FOIA processing back in late May!
If that recollection is accurate, the Salmon Field Office provided its responsive materials months ago, and the current delay is occurring later in the formal BLM/Department of the Interior FOIA process, not at the Salmon BLM level.
And frankly, we find that odd, very odd.
BLM’s acknowledgment letter states that its regulations generally provide 20 workdays to determine whether to comply with a FOIA request, although unusual circumstances may allow additional time.
The Department of the Interior’s FOIA portal later assigned the request an estimated delivery date of August 17.
That date passed.
Follow-up requests were made.
A formal appeal and escalation were filed.
As of September 24, DOI’s own portal still listed the request simply as:
“Assigned for Processing.”
- No responsive records had been produced
- No substantive determination had been received.
This delay seems unusual, especially because members of Lemhi County Informed have prior experience submitting FOIA requests.
Does that prove the government is deliberately withholding something?
No, not yet.
There is no evidence to make that claim.
But after more than four months — and with the November 17 geothermal lease sale approaching — the continued lack of records understandably raises concern.
A formal escalation has now asked BLM and DOI to explain the delay, provide a firm production date, and begin releasing any records that have already completed review rather than waiting indefinitely for the entire request.
The timeline is straightforward:
- May 18 — FOIA request submitted
- August 17 — estimated delivery date
- September 24 — still “Assigned for Processing”
And the unanswered question remains:
Who nominated these parcels, and what do the government’s own records show about the larger development plans behind them?
What about an AI data center?
Many people in Lemhi County continue to ask whether this geothermal leasing could eventually be connected to an AI or other large data center.
At this point, there is no evidence establishing that an AI data center is planned for Lemhi County or that these three geothermal parcels are connected to one.
That needs to be stated clearly.
But the concern itself is not unreasonable.
In fact, the federal government is openly discussing geothermal energy and data centers together.
The U.S. Department of Energy now has an entire resource titled “Geothermal and Data Centers.” DOE explains that AI is rapidly increasing data-center electricity demand and that geothermal’s ability to provide steady, around-the-clock power makes it attractive for those loads.
Major technology companies are already using this model:
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has partnered with Sage Geosystems on a project intended to provide up to 150 MW of geothermal power to support Meta’s data-center growth.
Google has an approved Nevada arrangement involving 115 MW of enhanced geothermal power developed by Fervo Energy and delivered through NV Energy to support Google’s Nevada data centers and cloud region.
DOE reports that data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and could consume approximately 6.7% to 12% by 2028.
Federal policy has also moved aggressively in this direction.
In July 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14318, “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure.” The order specifically calls for faster federal permitting of AI data centers and the infrastructure that powers them. It expressly lists high-voltage transmission lines, substations and geothermal power equipment among the infrastructure associated with large data-center projects, and directs the federal government to facilitate the buildout of that infrastructure.
About nine months after this Executive Order, BLM proposed the November 2026 Idaho geothermal lease sale—36 parcels totaling approximately 114,000 acres across the state, including the three parcels in Lemhi County. This is far larger than Idaho’s September 2025 geothermal sale, which involved nine parcels totaling about 24,355 acres.
That timing does not prove these leases are connected to data-center development, but given the federal push for AI infrastructure and geothermal power, it is reasonable for communities to ask what larger development plans, if any, are behind these geothermal nominations.
So the question is not:
“Is there proof that an AI data center is coming to Lemhi County?”
There is not.
The more reasonable question is:
“In the current rush to build AI infrastructure, could geothermal development, expanded electrical infrastructure and a future large industrial energy user be connected — and do the public records tell us whether anyone is considering that here?”
That is one reason the unanswered FOIA request matters.
Sometimes the power comes first
One thing residents should understand is that a large energy user does not necessarily appear first. The power infrastructure can be developed before the ultimate customer is obvious to the public.
That may mean new generation, substations, transmission capacity or other projects described as grid improvements or increased electrical capacity. None of those things alone proves a data center is coming.
And the companies involved may be different at each stage. In Google’s Nevada example, Fervo Energy develops the geothermal power, NV Energy delivers it, and Google uses the electricity for its data centers.
That is why knowing who nominated the Lemhi parcels and what larger development, if any, is being contemplated matters.
Lemhi County should not assume a hidden data-center project exists. But the community should not have to guess, either.
Why the Sharkey discovery matters beyond Sharkey
The Sharkey issue shows why digging into old government records matters.
The current lease documents did not make the historic closure obvious.
Residents had to go back through decades of planning material to find it.
Once it was found, the evidence was organized, documented and placed directly in front of BLM.
That should be encouraging to people who sometimes wonder whether ordinary residents can make a difference.
Careful research matters.
Documentation matters.
Asking precise questions matters.
A government process is not necessarily beyond review simply because it is already underway.
What happens next
The next important step is the Lemhi County Commissioners meeting this Monday, September 28.
The regular meeting begins at 8:30 a.m., a Lemhi County Informed representative is scheduled for approximately 10:05 a.m. with ten minutes on the agenda.
The group will ask the Commissioners to consider formally requesting that Parcels 0049, 0054 and 0056 be deferred from the November 17 sale while BLM completes and documents its review.
Meanwhile, Lemhi County Informed will continue pursuing the outstanding FOIA request and watching for new BLM documents, parcel amendments and decisions.
There is still a great deal that remains unknown.
But there is also a good reason to be encouraged.
The community found a serious discrepancy in the historic Sharkey planning record.
The evidence was documented.
It was brought directly to BLM.
To the Salmon BLM office’s credit, local personnel have been responsive and cooperative in reviewing the issue and the records brought to their attention. Credit should be given where it is due.
And the investigation is continuing.
The approach remains simple:
Find the records.
Separate facts from rumors.
Ask hard questions.
Keep the community informed.
Make sure important questions are answered before these federal rights are leased.
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