A draft agreement between Nodaway County and the data center developer is at Attorney Travis Elliott’s, commissioners said at the regular meeting Thursday. The county’s lawyer does not take a position on the agreement, but advises the county on potential ramifications and consequences. The attorney will go through the agreement and then present it to the county. The county plans to talk again to the attorney this week.
The development agreement is negotiable, and the county would sign off on it. Commissioner Scott Walk said a design agreement would be part of a development agreement.
The county is also working on a road use agreement for the power station that is being built next to the proposed data center.
Visitors to the meeting Thursday had a lot of new questions regarding the data center given that one of the options for drawing water, drawing from the 102 River, runs right across land owned by Susie Strauch, who has been one of the biggest opponents of the project. “I was told by the company that they would not touch the 102,” said Commissioner Bill Walker. Donna Tomkins said she had tried to call Brock Pfost of White Cloud Engineering, overseeing the feasibility study, but he was out of the state.
While a private entity like Scale Microgrids, which is developing the proposed data center, can’t use eminent domain in Missouri, a public utility like Evergy, which is building a power station next to the proposed center, can.
While drawing water from underground did not seem like a viable option according to the draft feasibility study, there were still worries in the room that the data center might try it. Commissioner Bill Walker said that the company rep told him they had ruled it out. “But that rep could be gone tomorrow,” he said.
Commissioner Scott Walk said that the projects would be subject to DNR and EPA regulations, which left many people in the room unswayed. “The DNR acts after the fact,” said Ms. Strauch. “I guess after we die.”
Assessor Rex Wallace said that the tax and school revenue numbers provided by the March study showing a purported millions of dollars in tax revenues for the county and South Nodaway were “not even close.” And even if they resulted in a windfall for the county and South Nodaway, he said the money was not guaranteed. Mr. Wallace said there was no way of knowing how much revenues the proposed data center would generate without knowing the specifics of the project.
Some people at the meeting expressed surprise at the company getting an agreement to the county early. Tim Schafer said that he thought it would be before October before a solid plan was put together. “Nobody was prepared for this,” said Commissioner Walk. “So we’re getting help the best way we know how.”
Commissioner Walk said that he was told that “in a perfect world,” Scale would exercise their options to buy the land needed for the data center and start construction in the first quarter of 2027. That was enough to cause Ms. Strauch to worry about the effects. “They’ll affect the bees, which pollinate the soybeans. It will affect the farmers. The noise goes out farther than expected. It will affect Maryville,” she said.
Asked about making Scale pay for bringing water to their facility, Mr. Walk noted that Evergy is paying most of the cost for bringing the water from Savannah to their nearby power plant. He noted that Northwest paid to put in a turnoff at its new ag facility east of Maryville. He said it was typical for a new user to pay to bring water to their place.
One of the options discussed in the feasibility study was to get the water from Barnard. For that, Barnard would need a whole new plant; they have been dealing with wastewater issues, including two buildings that draw rainwater into the city sewer that create a lot more sewage than expected.
Scott Wilson said that there was a lot of uncertainty about how much water would be used for the data center, given that figures from 70,000 to 1.8 million gallons of water per day were tossed around. Jeff From said that typical operations use anywhere from 1.5 million to 5 million gallons of water per day.
Susie Strauch said that after leaving one data center meeting, her husband got an offer for cash for land. Commissioner Walk said he believed it was a scam text.
Commissioner Walk pledged to continue answering questions about the project. “We’re not afraid of answering questions,” he said. “We’re looking for an economic development person with knowledge of data centers. We’re looking for a tech advisor as well. You may not like our answers, but we will get them.”
Scott Wilson said that from what he had seen, Scale’s bread and butter was power projects, and wanted to see what they had done on other projects. Currently, they are working with an end user that is not known at this time. The proposed St. Joseph project that was recently abandoned had the developer as the end user. The data center projects in Montgomery County that were recently announced by the Governor are being operated by Amazon and Google.
“All this is done to keep us in the dark,” said Jeff From. Susie Strauch said that she recently encountered a strange car with Ohio plates near her place. She said they advised her they were waiting for their crew and that they were taking core samples.
Kim Swyers talked about the effects she feared data centers would have on young people. She characterized Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s motto as, “Move fast, create havoc, break things, go away.” A 2022 Snopes post said that one of Mr. Zuckerberg’s mottos was, “Move fast and break things.”
Ms. Swyers talked about a situation where an AI chatbot talked a young girl into committing suicide. When they found her journal and her chat logs, they added up. “These things are talking children into hurting themselves,” she said. She noted there was one recent protest at Capitol Hill where people held up pictures of children who were talked into killing themselves by chatbots. “This is evil. This is what’s going to come here. We may as well have demons,” Ms. Swyers said.
Ms. Swyers noted that Meta was hit with a $375 million verdict in New Mexico after a jury concluded that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp harmed childrens’ mental health, made minors vulnerable to sexual exploitation, violated New Mexico’s consumer protection laws, and concealed internal knowledge about risks to children. Meta denied wrongdoing and is appealing. ABC News reported on the verdict on March 25th. While the $375 million verdict seems like a lot, ABC notes that Meta’s market cap sat at $1.5 trillion as of March 2026.
The New Mexico Attorney General, as quoted by ABC, said they would seek additional financial penalties and court-mandated changes that they say would offer stronger protections to children.
“They prey on us because they think we’re naïve and stupid,” Regina Brisbane, a new visitor, said. “They say they want to help,” said Commissioner Walk.
“They’re offering 100-150 permanent jobs. At what cost? Is there a cost? Yes. We have a governor who is pushing them.” Recently, Governor Mike Kehoe rebuffed calls for a special session to deal with issues involving data centers. “We’re getting conflicting advice. We have to listen and do the best we can,” Mr. Walk said.
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