St Marys Town hall recap
This article was originally published by the Manhattan Uranus on June 6.
An estimated 250 Flint Hills residents attended a Data Center informational meeting in St. Mary’s on June 3.
At the heart of this turnout is Beltline Energy and 481 acres of land adjacent to Jeffery Energy Center. Beltline is a solar farm and data center developer who has placed an option-to-buy offer on the land. They hope to build a hyper data center.
The event was hosted by the Kaw Valley Chamber of Commerce (Kaw Valley COC) and Pottawatomie County Economic Development Corporation (Pott Co EDC). Moderator and Kaw Valley COC Executive Director, Nate Greico set the tone with his opening statement.
“Our goal tonight is simple,” Greico said. “To move beyond speculation, provide a forum where community members can hear directly from the individuals and organizations involved. We want facts, data, and information— not narratives. We want residents to have the opportunity to understand what is being proposed, what is known, what is still being evaluated, and how this project could potentially affect our community.”
Executive Director of the Pott Co EDC, Shanna Goodman, provided background on her organization’s establishment of an informal Data Center Exploratory Committee. Members of the committee included economic development, construction, and utility representatives.
The committee decided last year not to recruit a data center using tax incentives or other measures. Their conclusion? “If it’s the right project, on the right site, with the appropriate regulations, plus massive tangible community benefits, it could be a good opportunity,” Goodman said. “There are things like environmental impact, water and energy usage, energy costs, noise, all sorts of things that are legitimate and we need credible answers.”
The jointly-hosted event was broken into sections based on the community’s concerns.
Bradley Petras is the Director of Data Center Services with Clean Harbors, a Louisiana-based firm that specializes in industrial wastewater treatment. As an expert, Petras led the presentation on water. “I’m here to enable you guys with the resources to ask the right questions when it comes to water.”
Petras demonstrated that an evaporative cooling system uses 75 million gallons of water per year per 100 megawatts of processing power. Beltline’s proposed hyperscale facility weighs in at 1,200 megawatts, requiring 900 million gallons of water per year under an evaporative cooling scenario.
According to Petras, a closed loop system is not truly closed loop: he explained that chips are submerged in water in large pools, that those pools lose water through evaporation and through a regular flushing of contaminated water, called blowdown. Blowdown is a process that occurs between once per month and once per quarter, wherein 20% of the water is bled out of the system as industrial waste. More efficient but still highly consumptive, closed loop cooling systems require 45 million gallons of water per year per 100 MW of processing power, bringing the proposed hyperscale facility to an annual consumption of 540 million gallons per year. *
At the Pottawatomie County Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, Uranus staff learned that the adjacent Jeffery Energy Center consumes 4.5 billion gallons of water annually, which is pumps directly from the Kansas River. As with other sub-bituminous coal plants, Jeffery Energy Center’s reservoirs act as a holding area for the facility’s own circulatory cooling system. It is still unclear how much— if any— of the coal plant’s reservoirs are a surplus that may be available to the proposed data center.
At Beltline’s presentation on May 6 at Ironclad Coworking, Co-Founder of Beltline Energy, Ryan Sanders insisted that the community’s concerns about water consumption were unfounded, promising that the company would use only a closed-loop cooling system. But in a Q&A document provided to and published by Pott Co EDC, Beltline stated, “The facility is designed to use either a recirculating evaporative cooling system or a closed-loop cooling system — the standard approaches for modern hyperscale data centers.”
Petras repeated the advice to demand regulations that require a data center to use on site water recycling during both the construction phase and steady-state operations.
Petras indicated that onsite water treatment would be necessary, as most municipalities and rural water departments do not have the ability to filter out contaminants added to the wastewater to prevent corrosion, bacterial growth, and hard water buildup. These chemicals include highly concentrated citric acid and phosphorus.
President of the Kaw Valley COC and committee member of the Data Center Exploratory Committee, Chris Johnson took a hardline approach to the project throughout the meeting, starting with his stance on water treatment regulations. He stated, “The county needs to take an active role in this and not just expect the state to take care of contamination issues. Somebody made the comment to me, ‘oh, if this is done, if this is built, they’ll have to comply to EPA and KDHE— Kansas Department of Health and Environment— standards.’ That’s not good enough. That just ensures that you’re not a criminal. That’s a low bar. The water needs to be clean.”
Johnson advocated for well-considered, researched, and expert-driven establishment of regulations before any project moves forward. “It doesn’t matter what the economic benefit is to the community. If there’s any risk to our water, it’s not worth it.”
The next section focused on utility rates and power consumption. Unfortunately, organizers could not secure a representative of Evergy to lead this section of discussion. Johnson reported general information, including that hyperscale data centers are required by the State of Kansas to pay a 20% tariff on energy prices, and that Evergy has a specific program for large load users that allows only a limited number of large load users to be accepted per year.
He also addressed the section focused on roads. “63 and 24 are already congested and trying to back out of the angled parking on main street?” He scoffed. “This has to be contemplated if there’s any type of construction project of this size.”
Johnson reported that the City of St Marys does not have the budget for increased wear and tear on roads related to construction and insisted that any proposed data center should expect to compensate the City for these additional expenses. Goodman echoed Johnson’s sentiments, saying, “I think that any type of billionaire company needs to plan on paying their own way as far as infrastructure, energy costs, et cetera.”
Johnson expressed concerns in the workforce and housing section, as well. “We’re at full employment right now. I think there’s more of a problem with employers trying to find good employees than people saying, ‘I can’t find a job.’” As for transplanting new permanent workers? “There’s no houses if they relocate,” he said.
Johnson— and later Goodman— said that they were not personally concerned about noise pollution. Johnson cited the noise and light levels that already exist at Jeffery Energy Center, saying that the existing pollution would drown out that of the proposed project. Goodman cited her experience visiting a smaller facility that Beltline is in the process of building in Atlanta. She relayed during that visit that a landscaper’s leaf blower seemed louder to her than the facility.
The next section addressed Senate Bill 98 and was presented by District 61 State Representative Francis Awerkamp. This bill created a 100% sales tax exemption for materials and supplies data centers purchase for a period of 20 years, requiring a minimum $250 million investment, use of one or more water conservation strategies, compliance audits, and prohibition from receiving discounts on utilities.
In the economic impact section, Johnson— an entrepreneur who has employed over 1,000 Flint Hills residents over his career— hammered down on return on investment. He explained that only a small portion of the value of the data center would be taxable as property tax: most of the value of the facility is in the equipment. Johnson said that if the project moved forward, he would demand a tax arrangement that captured the value of this private property.
Johnson also challenged Beltline’s employment claims with data he and Goodman collected from the Kansas Department of Commerce, bringing the average wage from Beltline’s promise of $128,000 annual salary to $86,000 annually.
And when it came to the $15 to $30 million Beltline promised in annual revenue to the region? “I think the Commissioners should hold out— if they are going to do this— for a lot more.” The slideshow showed the promised amount crossed out and replaced, as Johnson said, “$50 million.”
“That is based on several proxies and comps [comparables] for projects around the country,” he added. “If the value for this wasn’t absolutely staggering, we shouldn’t even consider this.”
Beltline representatives were allowed to present at this meeting, but audience members and hosts found their transparency to be lacking. Sanders indicated that Beltline is part of a conglomerate of skilled and experienced co-developers he referred to as an “ecosystem,” saying, “we have a large team behind us.” He would not disclose the name of any of those companies. He claimed that Beltline has “seven projects actively being built,” but would not disclose the locations of any but the facility he brings government officials to tour in Atlanta.
Sanders did not agree with the nature of the data center for which he repeatedly visits Pottawatomie County and presented about that evening. “It was mentioned today that we have a proposed project,” Sanders said, “and I’m here to tell you that we do not have a proposed project because the planning and zoning committee is still working through the regulations in Pott county.” In the Q&A document provided to and published by Pott Co EDC, Beltline stated, “Beltline Energy is proposing a 1.2-gigawatt (GW) data center campus adjacent to the Jeffrey Energy Center (JEC) in Emmett Township.”
Sanders would not disclose their guaranteed end user, and said that they would announce their identity until after regulations were in place and architectural and engineering designs were approved, just before pulling permits. Johnson intervened. “I want the county commissioners to know who the end user will be before—”
Before Johnson could finish, the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.
During the Q&A session, attendees submitted over 200 questions up to the very end. The organizers and presenters extended the Q&A session by an hour to accommodate this demand.
Nonetheless, many attendees left feeling dissatisfied. Wamego resident, Bethany Page, attended the earlier Wamego town hall and this one. She was disturbed by the inconsistencies in the developer’s statements, but her question about trust was not posed. “Beltline has a proven history of lying to the citizens of Pott County,” Page said. “Why would we choose to trust them with something that matters so much when they have shown they don't have integrity?”
John Watt grew up in Wamego and still calls it home, with strong ties to the community. He is the founder of Pott County Data Watch, a watchdog organization reporting on these developments and rallying support for a three-year moratorium. "There are multiple reasons we need a three-year moratorium on data centers in Pott county, but the strongest reason is the secrecy with which this one is being proposed. There are endless examples of people who have been negatively affected by data centers nationwide, and the fact that all the specifics on how this data center would be built are locked behind non-disclosure agreements doesn't sit right with me.”
Watt’s support is growing. At the meeting, he circulated an informal petition for the moratorium until he ran out of copies. Another online petition has gathered 1,660 signatures. Watt is especially suspicious of Sanders’ claims of stewardship and partnership, given the structure of their ecosystem. “Beltline has roughly a dozen employees, which tells me they are simply a broker.” Watt said, “They are a shell company for a shadow billionaire seeking a commission check. They have no skin in the game for what actually happens to the people in this county. I believe they will tell us everything we want to hear in order to get their commission check and skip town once they have closed the deal.”
Richard Carlson, an Emmett resident whose family property is adjacent to the proposed data center said, “my family’s lived out here for multiple generations, going back to the 1800s. It’s just always been a rural community with ranchers and farmers in this area. It’s just another big project that they stick over here in this end of the county where there’s a low population. And they just say, ‘well, there’s only a handful of people over there that have to deal with it. We’ll get all the money and spend it over here on the west side of the county.’ That doesn’t sit well with us.”
Carlson’s family is no stranger to big projects. The Carlsons were the original owners of the land that Jeffery Energy Center sits on now. They were pioneer settlers, and their hands held the first plow that ever touched that ground. When the power plant was introduced to the community the Carlsons refused to sell. Kansas Power and Light obtained it through eminent domain. The Carlsons sued, but did not win back their land—only a slightly higher price.
His mother’s house is, again, under threat—adjacent to the proposed data center. The Carlsons have received many offers from solar companies looking to build solar farms to service the proposed facility. As in the 1970s, the Carlsons refuse to sell, saying that the legacy is worth more than the land’s appraised value.
The next development in this story will come at the Pottawatomie County Planning and Zoning Board meeting. Committee members will continue their draft of the data center overlay, a special zoning type that will govern this project. The meeting is on June 18 at 7pm in the Sunflower Room located at 612 E Campbell Street in Westmoreland.
