Nodaway County Commissioner Chris Burns told people at the regular commission meeting Tuesday that the county was working on a road use agreement as well as a community development agreement with Scale Microgrids. While it would not apply to state-owned roads, it would apply to gravel roads that the county and the township maintain. Commissioner Burns said that the developer had started working on a few of the answers to the questions the commissioners had about the proposed project, but that other answers will not be known until the project is turned over to the end user.
Nina Wiederholt asked about preliminary work and how it would be affected by the county moratorium. Commissioner Burns said that they could grade the land, but that they could not build anything upright or build any utilities. Commissioner Scott Walk added that they could not clean out any vegetation unless they owned the land. Scale Microgrids has taken out an option to buy the land in question south of Maryville, but as of Tuesday morning, they had not exercised their option to do so. They have five years to exercise their option.
Irene Alexander talked about a situation in Cheyenne (WY) that she learned about from a friend. On July 2nd, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reported that the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities had identified Goat Systems LLC, a contractor working on a data center there, as the source of a discharge that introduced Cupriavidus Gilardii, a bacteria that infects people who are sick or who have weakened immune systems. That story was subsequently picked up by the Guardian. It affected the ability of farmers to irrigate their crops and the ability of golf courses to water their grass. The city suspended Cheyenne's water irrigation program temporarily, permanently terminated Meta's discharge privileges, and adopted a new policy prohibiting wastewater discharges from data centers using closed-loop systems. Meta is the end user of the project in question.
Asked about erosion control, Commissioner Walk said the proposed facility would have to have an erosion management plan under DNR rules.
Economic Developer Josh McKim said that he had not heard any more from any other data centers, including the two that had expressed interest in Nodaway County in addition to the proposed facility south of Maryville.
Amy Ziegler of United Electric said that they get reached out to from time to time, but nothing has proceeded beyond that. She said that they did not have the capacity anywhere on their system to support a 600-megawatt gas turbine system like the proposed White Cloud Generating facility that would sell energy to the grid for the purpose of powering a data center. The proposed data center is on the Evergy grid and located right next to the Evergy power station that is being built there. The Evergy station, the proposed White Cloud Generating facility, and the proposed data center are three separate entities.
Commissioner Chris Burns reported that seven people had expressed interest to him in serving on a zoning board for Nodaway County. Others may have reached out to one of the other two commissioners.
Two
participants from the Missouri Journalism Conference, one from Virginia and one
from New York, were present at the meeting. The Conference is marking its 75th
anniversary. Every year, they select a different city in the state to focus on,
and they are focusing on Maryville this year. It started out in 1951 as part of
the University of Missouri, but it has become its own entity and has taken on a
life of its own. Participants each write an original story about Maryville and must
stay within the city limits.
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