What They Are, Why They Matter, and What Missouri Communities Need to Know

From WIPN in Warren County to the Heart of America Mega-Site in Montgomery County, data centers are no longer abstract internet infrastructure. They are land-use, water, power, tax, and governance decisions happening locally.

On This Page

• What Is a Data Center?
• Not All Data Centers Are the Same
• Types of Data Centers
• AI and Hyperscale Facilities
• What Communities Should Ask
• WIPN in Warren County
• Heart of America Mega-Site
• Power, Water, Land, and Public Finance
• What Responsible Development Would Require

Not All Data Centers Are the Same

When public officials, developers, consultants, or economic-development agencies say a project is “a data center,” residents should pause and ask for specifics. The phrase data center can describe anything from a relatively small facility serving one company’s internal computer systems to a massive hyperscale or AI campus requiring hundreds of megawatts of electricity, large cooling systems, backup generators, substations, transmission upgrades, water or wastewater planning, security infrastructure, road improvements, and long-term utility commitments.

In other words, “data center” is not enough information.

A small enterprise server room, a regional colocation facility, a cloud-computing campus, a cryptocurrency mining operation, and a hyperscale AI facility may all fall under the same general label. But they do not carry the same land footprint, energy demand, cooling needs, noise profile, generator use, water impact, emergency-planning burden, tax-incentive structure, or public-infrastructure cost.

That distinction matters because communities are often asked to evaluate these projects through ordinary land-use categories such as “industrial,” “warehouse,” “technology,” or “commercial development.” But a modern large-load data center is not just a building. It can function as an infrastructure system tied to the electric grid, water supply, sewer capacity, fiber network, transportation access, emergency-response planning, and public finance.

The U.S. Department of Energy reported in late 2024 that data-center load growth had tripled over the prior decade and was projected to double or triple by 2028, which means local projects should be evaluated in the context of much larger electric-system demand, not just as isolated site plans. The International Energy Agency similarly describes data centers and data-transmission networks as an increasingly important source of energy demand as digital systems expand.

So the first responsible question is not simply:

“Is this a data center?”

The better questions are:

What kind of data center is it?
How large is it?
How much electricity will it require?
How much water will it use, and when?
Who is the end user?
What infrastructure must be built around it?
Who pays for that infrastructure?

Types of Data Centers

Type	Plain-English Description	Community Questions
Enterprise data center	Built for one company or institution’s internal needs.	Is it serving a local employer or a remote corporate platform?
Colocation data center	A facility where multiple companies rent server space.	Who are the tenants, and how much power is reserved?
Cloud data center	Supports cloud services like storage, computing, apps, and platforms.	Is the end user disclosed? Are public incentives tied to job claims or infrastructure?
Hyperscale data center	Very large facility designed for massive computing capacity.	What is the megawatt demand? What utility upgrades are required?
AI data center	High-density computing facility supporting artificial intelligence workloads.	How much additional power and cooling capacity is needed?
Edge data center	Smaller facility placed closer to users for faster processing.	Does it create meaningful local impact, or is it relatively low-impact?
Crypto/mining facility	Uses computing power to validate cryptocurrency transactions.	What is the energy use, noise profile, and local benefit?

Why AI and Hyperscale Facilities Are Different

The current wave of data-center development is not just about storing photos, hosting websites, or keeping ordinary business records online. It is increasingly being driven by cloud computing and artificial intelligence — and that changes the scale of what communities are being asked to absorb.

An older or smaller data center might be reviewed as a building. A modern hyperscale or AI campus should be reviewed as an industrial infrastructure system.

These facilities can require enormous blocks of electricity, specialized cooling, high-capacity substations, backup generators, batteries, fiber connections, stormwater systems, access roads, security infrastructure, utility easements, and long-term service agreements. The building is only the visible part. The real project is the network of infrastructure needed to keep that building online every second of every day.

The U.S. Department of Energy reported that data-center electricity load growth has tripled over the past decade and could double or triple again by 2028. DOE also estimated that U.S. data centers used about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and could rise to roughly 6.7% to 12% by 2028, depending on growth and efficiency assumptions.

That is why the word “data center” is no longer enough.

A hyperscale AI facility is not simply a warehouse with servers inside. It is closer to a factory for computation: a place where electricity, land, cooling systems, fiber networks, and industrial-scale equipment are converted into digital processing power.

The football-field problem

One of the easiest ways to understand the scale is to compare the buildings to football fields.

A full American football field, including both end zones, is about 57,600 square feet. So when a proposed data-center building is hundreds of thousands of square feet, we are no longer talking about something residents can picture from the phrase “industrial building.”

For example, public reporting on the Warrenton project described a plan for two 805,000-square-foot data center buildings, plus a 40,000-square-foot administrative building, stormwater detention basins, an electrical substation, and 12 emergency backup generators.

That means one 805,000-square-foot building is roughly the size of 14 football fields under one roof.

Two such buildings together would be roughly 28 football fields of data-center building space, before counting the administrative building, substation, detention basins, access roads, security areas, generator yards, battery areas, parking, grading, or transmission-related infrastructure.

That is the part that is often missing from public discussion.

Residents are not being asked to review “a computer building.” They are being asked to review a campus whose buildings alone may cover an area larger than many people’s entire neighborhood landmarks.

Hyperscale means campus, not building

A hyperscale data center is usually not one isolated structure. It is often a campus model: large buildings, phased expansion areas, power infrastructure, cooling equipment, backup power, stormwater systems, fenced security areas, and room for future growth.

That is why acreage matters.

An 800,000-square-foot building does not sit gently on the land. It requires grading, drainage, foundations, service roads, electrical yards, loading areas, setbacks, fencing, lighting, and utility connections. If the project is phased, the first building may only be the beginning.

In other states and markets, hyperscale campuses have reached hundreds or even thousands of acres. A recent industry discussion of hyperscale land development cited examples such as Meta reserving 800 acres for an Indiana campus and Microsoft expanding onto a second 500-plus-acre San Antonio campus. A recent report on Meta’s AI-focused Alberta data center described a project occupying 1,750 acres, spanning 2.9 million square feet, and designed around 1 gigawatt of data-center capacity.

Those examples do not mean every local project is the same. But they show why residents should ask whether a proposal is a single building, a phased campus, or part of a larger regional infrastructure strategy.

AI changes the density problem

AI workloads are different because they can require extremely dense computing clusters. The more powerful the computing equipment, the more electricity and cooling are needed in a concentrated space.

That is why AI data centers are often discussed not just in square feet, but in megawatts.

For a normal warehouse, residents might ask: How many trucks? How many jobs? How much traffic?

For an AI data center, residents also have to ask:

• How many megawatts are being reserved?
• Is the facility designed for ordinary cloud use, AI training, AI inference, or some combination?
• Will the load grow in phases?
• What substation or transmission upgrades are needed?
• Are backup generators diesel, gas, or another technology?
• How many generators are planned?
• Are battery energy storage systems included?
• What happens during a grid emergency?
• Who pays for the infrastructure required to serve the load?

The question is not only whether the building fits the zoning map. The question is whether the surrounding community, utility system, water system, road system, and public-finance structure are being quietly reorganized around the load.

The building is not the whole footprint

A data-center site plan can understate the real community footprint if residents only look at the main building outline.

The full footprint may include:

• the data-center buildings;
• administrative/security buildings;
• substations;
• switching stations;
• transmission or distribution lines;
• underground duct banks;
• backup generator yards;
• fuel storage or fuel-delivery planning;
• battery energy storage yards;
• cooling equipment;
• stormwater detention basins;
• access roads and service roads;
• fencing and lighting;
• construction laydown areas;
• water and sewer upgrades;
• fiber routes;
• easements across private land;
• utility agreements and rate structures.

That is why a community may feel blindsided even when officials say the project went through the normal site-plan process. The formal approval may focus on the parcel, while the practical effects spread through power planning, water planning, road planning, land transfers, easements, and public finance.

Why communities should not accept vague labels

When officials say, “It is just a data center,” residents should ask:

Is it enterprise, colocation, cloud, hyperscale, AI, crypto, or mixed-use computing?

When officials say, “It is industrial,” residents should ask:

What is the megawatt demand?

When officials say, “It will bring investment,” residents should ask:

What public infrastructure, public financing, tax treatment, water capacity, and utility planning are being used to make that investment possible?

When officials say, “The site plan meets code,” residents should ask:

Was the code written for this scale of load, noise, generator use, water demand, and electrical infrastructure?

That is the core issue. Communities are often being asked to evaluate twenty-first-century AI infrastructure through twentieth-century land-use categories.

Why WIPN and the Heart of America Mega-Site need deeper review

For WIPN, the scale already reported publicly — two 805,000-square-foot buildings, a 40,000-square-foot administrative building, stormwater basins, substation infrastructure, and 12 backup generators — shows why this cannot be reduced to “a building.” It is a major industrial power user with a physical footprint, a utility footprint, and a governance footprint.

For the Heart of America Mega-Site, the question is even broader because a mega-site is marketed as an infrastructure-ready platform. It is not just one parcel waiting for one user. It is a recruitment and infrastructure package involving land, transportation, water, wastewater, power, public authorities, financing tools, and industrial positioning.

In both cases, the public deserves more than labels.

Residents deserve to know:

• how many acres are involved;
• how many buildings are planned;
• how many football fields of building space are being proposed;
• how many megawatts are being reserved;
• what power lines, substations, and utility agreements are connected;
• what water and wastewater assumptions are being made;
• what generators, batteries, and cooling systems are planned;
• what public funds, bonds, abatements, districts, grants, or ratepayer mechanisms are involved;
• whether the project is a single phase or part of a larger buildout.

A fair review begins by saying the quiet part plainly:

An AI hyperscale campus is not just a data center. It is a power plant’s worth of demand, a factory’s worth of infrastructure, and in some cases a city-scale footprint — packaged as a building permit.

That is why residents need plain-language scale comparisons, not just engineering drawings. When one building can hold fourteen football fields, the public should not be asked to understand the project from a single phrase on an agenda.

What Communities Should Ask

Basic project questions

• Who owns the land?
• Who is the developer?
• Who is the end user?
• What is the total acreage?
• How many buildings are planned?
• What is the expected megawatt load?
• Will the facility use diesel or gas backup generators?
• Will battery storage be used?
• Will new substations or transmission lines be required?
• Who pays for those improvements?
• Are tax abatements, subsidies, grants, TIF/TIME districts, Chapter 100 bonds, or other incentives involved?
• What water source will be used?
• What sewer capacity is required?
• What happens during drought, grid emergency, or peak demand?
• What local jobs are permanent versus temporary construction jobs?
• What public records exist, and what has been withheld?

Power, Water, Land, and Public Finance

Power

Data centers are not only local land-use decisions; they are electric-system decisions. A project’s megawatt demand can affect transmission planning, generation planning, utility tariffs, ratepayer risk, and who pays for upgrades.

Water

Some data centers use water for cooling, while others use different cooling designs that may reduce direct water use but increase electricity demand. Communities need peak water-demand information, not just annual estimates, because local water systems must be able to meet demand on hot days and during drought or emergency conditions.

Recent research has emphasized that direct data-center water demand can create peak-capacity problems for public water systems, especially during hot periods when cooling demand rises.

Land

Large data centers require large sites, grading, stormwater infrastructure, buffers, access roads, security, utility corridors, and sometimes related solar, substation, or transmission projects. The land impact may extend far beyond the main building parcel.

Public finance

Residents should ask whether public money, tax abatements, public bonds, grants, special districts, redirected taxes, port authority tools, or utility cost recovery mechanisms are involved. “No public funds” should be tested against the full stack of public infrastructure and financing mechanisms.

What Responsible Development Would Require

Responsible development should not begin with secrecy, vague project names, or decisions made before residents understand the full footprint. At minimum, any proposed data center, AI campus, or hyperscale development should be reviewed through a public-interest standard that protects residents, ratepayers, land, water, workers, and local democracy.

A responsible process should require:

1. Full transparency before approval

Residents deserve the full truth about what is being proposed before zoning, utility, infrastructure, financing, or land-use decisions are locked in.

That means public disclosure of:

• the developer;
• the landowner;
• the end user, when legally available;
• the total acreage involved;
• the number and size of buildings;
• the expected megawatt demand;
• the water source and wastewater plan;
• the generator, battery, cooling, and emissions profile;
• any public incentives, grants, bonds, abatements, districts, or redirected tax structures;
• and all related infrastructure commitments.

If officials cannot yet disclose the end user, they should still disclose the project’s infrastructure assumptions. A community cannot meaningfully evaluate a data-center proposal without knowing the scale of power, water, land, and public obligations attached to it.

2. Protection of water, land, air, and public health

Data centers should not be reviewed only as buildings. They should be reviewed as infrastructure systems with potential impacts on water supply, wastewater capacity, stormwater, air permitting, emergency backup generation, noise, fuel storage, and long-term land use.

Missouri DNR notes that depending on a data center’s configuration and operational needs, a facility may need water, air, or waste permits before operating. DNR also states that it does not generally regulate the amount of water used, beyond out-of-state export and annual reporting for major water users — which is exactly why local review matters.

A responsible review should require:

• water-source and wastewater-capacity analysis;
• peak-demand information, not just annual averages;
• stormwater and grading plans;
• backup-generator emissions information;
• fuel-storage and emergency-response plans;
• noise modeling;
• battery safety planning;
• and cumulative-impact review when multiple projects or utility corridors are connected.

3. Protection for ratepayers and existing residents

No data-center project should shift hidden costs onto ordinary residents, small businesses, farmers, or existing ratepayers.

Before approval, the public should know:

• who pays for substations, transmission lines, water extensions, road work, sewer upgrades, and emergency-service demands;
• whether utility costs can be recovered through rates;
• whether the project receives special tariffs, discounts, exemptions, or public financing;
• whether existing residents face higher utility bills or reduced capacity;
• and whether the development creates long-term public obligations after private profit is secured.

The basic principle should be simple:

The public should not be left paying for private infrastructure disguised as economic development.

4. No blank checks, secret subsidies, or public giveaways

If public money, public credit, tax abatements, port authorities, Chapter 100 bonds, TIF/TIME districts, grants, cost-share funds, utility-rate mechanisms, or other public tools are involved, they should be disclosed in plain language.

A responsible review should require a public accounting of:

• the public tool being used;
• the dollar amount or estimated value;
• the beneficiary;
• the legal mechanism;
• the approval body;
• the repayment or cost-shift structure;
• the duration;
• and the public benefit claimed in exchange.

“No public funds” should not be accepted as a slogan. It should be tested against the full stack of financing, infrastructure, tax treatment, utility planning, and public risk.

5. Community consent, local control, and enforceable protections

A data center should not be treated as inevitable before residents have a meaningful chance to understand and respond.

Responsible development should require:

• public review before major zoning or infrastructure commitments;
• accessible public meetings;
• plain-language summaries of technical filings;
• enough time for residents to review documents;
• meaningful local authority over land-use decisions;
• public access to site plans, studies, agreements, and permits;
• enforceable conditions, not voluntary promises;
• and ongoing reporting after approval.

Community benefits should not be vague press-release language. They should be specific, written, enforceable, and tied to measurable obligations.

What They Are, Why They Matter, and What Missouri Communities Need to Know

From WIPN in Warren County to the Heart of America Mega-Site in Montgomery County, data centers are no longer abstract internet infrastructure. They are land-use, water, power, tax, and governance decisions happening locally.

On This Page

• What Is a Data Center?
• Not All Data Centers Are the Same
• Types of Data Centers
• AI and Hyperscale Facilities
• What Communities Should Ask
• WIPN in Warren County
• Heart of America Mega-Site
• Power, Water, Land, and Public Finance
• What Responsible Development Would Require

Not All Data Centers Are the Same

When public officials, developers, consultants, or economic-development agencies say a project is “a data center,” residents should pause and ask for specifics. The phrase data center can describe anything from a relatively small facility serving one company’s internal computer systems to a massive hyperscale or AI campus requiring hundreds of megawatts of electricity, large cooling systems, backup generators, substations, transmission upgrades, water or wastewater planning, security infrastructure, road improvements, and long-term utility commitments.

In other words, “data center” is not enough information.

A small enterprise server room, a regional colocation facility, a cloud-computing campus, a cryptocurrency mining operation, and a hyperscale AI facility may all fall under the same general label. But they do not carry the same land footprint, energy demand, cooling needs, noise profile, generator use, water impact, emergency-planning burden, tax-incentive structure, or public-infrastructure cost.

That distinction matters because communities are often asked to evaluate these projects through ordinary land-use categories such as “industrial,” “warehouse,” “technology,” or “commercial development.” But a modern large-load data center is not just a building. It can function as an infrastructure system tied to the electric grid, water supply, sewer capacity, fiber network, transportation access, emergency-response planning, and public finance.

The U.S. Department of Energy reported in late 2024 that data-center load growth had tripled over the prior decade and was projected to double or triple by 2028, which means local projects should be evaluated in the context of much larger electric-system demand, not just as isolated site plans. The International Energy Agency similarly describes data centers and data-transmission networks as an increasingly important source of energy demand as digital systems expand.

So the first responsible question is not simply:

“Is this a data center?”

The better questions are:

What kind of data center is it?
How large is it?
How much electricity will it require?
How much water will it use, and when?
Who is the end user?
What infrastructure must be built around it?
Who pays for that infrastructure?

Types of Data Centers

Type	Plain-English Description	Community Questions
Enterprise data center	Built for one company or institution’s internal needs.	Is it serving a local employer or a remote corporate platform?
Colocation data center	A facility where multiple companies rent server space.	Who are the tenants, and how much power is reserved?
Cloud data center	Supports cloud services like storage, computing, apps, and platforms.	Is the end user disclosed? Are public incentives tied to job claims or infrastructure?
Hyperscale data center	Very large facility designed for massive computing capacity.	What is the megawatt demand? What utility upgrades are required?
AI data center	High-density computing facility supporting artificial intelligence workloads.	How much additional power and cooling capacity is needed?
Edge data center	Smaller facility placed closer to users for faster processing.	Does it create meaningful local impact, or is it relatively low-impact?
Crypto/mining facility	Uses computing power to validate cryptocurrency transactions.	What is the energy use, noise profile, and local benefit?

Why AI and Hyperscale Facilities Are Different

The current wave of data-center development is not just about storing photos, hosting websites, or keeping ordinary business records online. It is increasingly being driven by cloud computing and artificial intelligence — and that changes the scale of what communities are being asked to absorb.

An older or smaller data center might be reviewed as a building. A modern hyperscale or AI campus should be reviewed as an industrial infrastructure system.

These facilities can require enormous blocks of electricity, specialized cooling, high-capacity substations, backup generators, batteries, fiber connections, stormwater systems, access roads, security infrastructure, utility easements, and long-term service agreements. The building is only the visible part. The real project is the network of infrastructure needed to keep that building online every second of every day.

The U.S. Department of Energy reported that data-center electricity load growth has tripled over the past decade and could double or triple again by 2028. DOE also estimated that U.S. data centers used about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and could rise to roughly 6.7% to 12% by 2028, depending on growth and efficiency assumptions.

That is why the word “data center” is no longer enough.

A hyperscale AI facility is not simply a warehouse with servers inside. It is closer to a factory for computation: a place where electricity, land, cooling systems, fiber networks, and industrial-scale equipment are converted into digital processing power.

The football-field problem

One of the easiest ways to understand the scale is to compare the buildings to football fields.

A full American football field, including both end zones, is about 57,600 square feet. So when a proposed data-center building is hundreds of thousands of square feet, we are no longer talking about something residents can picture from the phrase “industrial building.”

For example, public reporting on the Warrenton project described a plan for two 805,000-square-foot data center buildings, plus a 40,000-square-foot administrative building, stormwater detention basins, an electrical substation, and 12 emergency backup generators.

That means one 805,000-square-foot building is roughly the size of 14 football fields under one roof.

Two such buildings together would be roughly 28 football fields of data-center building space, before counting the administrative building, substation, detention basins, access roads, security areas, generator yards, battery areas, parking, grading, or transmission-related infrastructure.

That is the part that is often missing from public discussion.

Residents are not being asked to review “a computer building.” They are being asked to review a campus whose buildings alone may cover an area larger than many people’s entire neighborhood landmarks.

Hyperscale means campus, not building

A hyperscale data center is usually not one isolated structure. It is often a campus model: large buildings, phased expansion areas, power infrastructure, cooling equipment, backup power, stormwater systems, fenced security areas, and room for future growth.

That is why acreage matters.

An 800,000-square-foot building does not sit gently on the land. It requires grading, drainage, foundations, service roads, electrical yards, loading areas, setbacks, fencing, lighting, and utility connections. If the project is phased, the first building may only be the beginning.

In other states and markets, hyperscale campuses have reached hundreds or even thousands of acres. A recent industry discussion of hyperscale land development cited examples such as Meta reserving 800 acres for an Indiana campus and Microsoft expanding onto a second 500-plus-acre San Antonio campus. A recent report on Meta’s AI-focused Alberta data center described a project occupying 1,750 acres, spanning 2.9 million square feet, and designed around 1 gigawatt of data-center capacity.

Those examples do not mean every local project is the same. But they show why residents should ask whether a proposal is a single building, a phased campus, or part of a larger regional infrastructure strategy.

AI changes the density problem

AI workloads are different because they can require extremely dense computing clusters. The more powerful the computing equipment, the more electricity and cooling are needed in a concentrated space.

That is why AI data centers are often discussed not just in square feet, but in megawatts.

For a normal warehouse, residents might ask: How many trucks? How many jobs? How much traffic?

For an AI data center, residents also have to ask:

• How many megawatts are being reserved?
• Is the facility designed for ordinary cloud use, AI training, AI inference, or some combination?
• Will the load grow in phases?
• What substation or transmission upgrades are needed?
• Are backup generators diesel, gas, or another technology?
• How many generators are planned?
• Are battery energy storage systems included?
• What happens during a grid emergency?
• Who pays for the infrastructure required to serve the load?

The question is not only whether the building fits the zoning map. The question is whether the surrounding community, utility system, water system, road system, and public-finance structure are being quietly reorganized around the load.

The building is not the whole footprint

A data-center site plan can understate the real community footprint if residents only look at the main building outline.

The full footprint may include:

• the data-center buildings;
• administrative/security buildings;
• substations;
• switching stations;
• transmission or distribution lines;
• underground duct banks;
• backup generator yards;
• fuel storage or fuel-delivery planning;
• battery energy storage yards;
• cooling equipment;
• stormwater detention basins;
• access roads and service roads;
• fencing and lighting;
• construction laydown areas;
• water and sewer upgrades;
• fiber routes;
• easements across private land;
• utility agreements and rate structures.

That is why a community may feel blindsided even when officials say the project went through the normal site-plan process. The formal approval may focus on the parcel, while the practical effects spread through power planning, water planning, road planning, land transfers, easements, and public finance.

Why communities should not accept vague labels

When officials say, “It is just a data center,” residents should ask:

Is it enterprise, colocation, cloud, hyperscale, AI, crypto, or mixed-use computing?

When officials say, “It is industrial,” residents should ask:

What is the megawatt demand?

When officials say, “It will bring investment,” residents should ask:

What public infrastructure, public financing, tax treatment, water capacity, and utility planning are being used to make that investment possible?

When officials say, “The site plan meets code,” residents should ask:

Was the code written for this scale of load, noise, generator use, water demand, and electrical infrastructure?

That is the core issue. Communities are often being asked to evaluate twenty-first-century AI infrastructure through twentieth-century land-use categories.

Why WIPN and the Heart of America Mega-Site need deeper review

For WIPN, the scale already reported publicly — two 805,000-square-foot buildings, a 40,000-square-foot administrative building, stormwater basins, substation infrastructure, and 12 backup generators — shows why this cannot be reduced to “a building.” It is a major industrial power user with a physical footprint, a utility footprint, and a governance footprint.

For the Heart of America Mega-Site, the question is even broader because a mega-site is marketed as an infrastructure-ready platform. It is not just one parcel waiting for one user. It is a recruitment and infrastructure package involving land, transportation, water, wastewater, power, public authorities, financing tools, and industrial positioning.

In both cases, the public deserves more than labels.

Residents deserve to know:

• how many acres are involved;
• how many buildings are planned;
• how many football fields of building space are being proposed;
• how many megawatts are being reserved;
• what power lines, substations, and utility agreements are connected;
• what water and wastewater assumptions are being made;
• what generators, batteries, and cooling systems are planned;
• what public funds, bonds, abatements, districts, grants, or ratepayer mechanisms are involved;
• whether the project is a single phase or part of a larger buildout.

A fair review begins by saying the quiet part plainly:

An AI hyperscale campus is not just a data center. It is a power plant’s worth of demand, a factory’s worth of infrastructure, and in some cases a city-scale footprint — packaged as a building permit.

That is why residents need plain-language scale comparisons, not just engineering drawings. When one building can hold fourteen football fields, the public should not be asked to understand the project from a single phrase on an agenda.

What Communities Should Ask

Basic project questions

• Who owns the land?
• Who is the developer?
• Who is the end user?
• What is the total acreage?
• How many buildings are planned?
• What is the expected megawatt load?
• Will the facility use diesel or gas backup generators?
• Will battery storage be used?
• Will new substations or transmission lines be required?
• Who pays for those improvements?
• Are tax abatements, subsidies, grants, TIF/TIME districts, Chapter 100 bonds, or other incentives involved?
• What water source will be used?
• What sewer capacity is required?
• What happens during drought, grid emergency, or peak demand?
• What local jobs are permanent versus temporary construction jobs?
• What public records exist, and what has been withheld?

Power, Water, Land, and Public Finance

Power

Data centers are not only local land-use decisions; they are electric-system decisions. A project’s megawatt demand can affect transmission planning, generation planning, utility tariffs, ratepayer risk, and who pays for upgrades.

Water

Some data centers use water for cooling, while others use different cooling designs that may reduce direct water use but increase electricity demand. Communities need peak water-demand information, not just annual estimates, because local water systems must be able to meet demand on hot days and during drought or emergency conditions.

Recent research has emphasized that direct data-center water demand can create peak-capacity problems for public water systems, especially during hot periods when cooling demand rises.

Land

Large data centers require large sites, grading, stormwater infrastructure, buffers, access roads, security, utility corridors, and sometimes related solar, substation, or transmission projects. The land impact may extend far beyond the main building parcel.

Public finance

Residents should ask whether public money, tax abatements, public bonds, grants, special districts, redirected taxes, port authority tools, or utility cost recovery mechanisms are involved. “No public funds” should be tested against the full stack of public infrastructure and financing mechanisms.

What Responsible Development Would Require

Responsible development should not begin with secrecy, vague project names, or decisions made before residents understand the full footprint. At minimum, any proposed data center, AI campus, or hyperscale development should be reviewed through a public-interest standard that protects residents, ratepayers, land, water, workers, and local democracy.

A responsible process should require:

1. Full transparency before approval

Residents deserve the full truth about what is being proposed before zoning, utility, infrastructure, financing, or land-use decisions are locked in.

That means public disclosure of:

• the developer;
• the landowner;
• the end user, when legally available;
• the total acreage involved;
• the number and size of buildings;
• the expected megawatt demand;
• the water source and wastewater plan;
• the generator, battery, cooling, and emissions profile;
• any public incentives, grants, bonds, abatements, districts, or redirected tax structures;
• and all related infrastructure commitments.

If officials cannot yet disclose the end user, they should still disclose the project’s infrastructure assumptions. A community cannot meaningfully evaluate a data-center proposal without knowing the scale of power, water, land, and public obligations attached to it.

2. Protection of water, land, air, and public health

Data centers should not be reviewed only as buildings. They should be reviewed as infrastructure systems with potential impacts on water supply, wastewater capacity, stormwater, air permitting, emergency backup generation, noise, fuel storage, and long-term land use.

Missouri DNR notes that depending on a data center’s configuration and operational needs, a facility may need water, air, or waste permits before operating. DNR also states that it does not generally regulate the amount of water used, beyond out-of-state export and annual reporting for major water users — which is exactly why local review matters.

A responsible review should require:

• water-source and wastewater-capacity analysis;
• peak-demand information, not just annual averages;
• stormwater and grading plans;
• backup-generator emissions information;
• fuel-storage and emergency-response plans;
• noise modeling;
• battery safety planning;
• and cumulative-impact review when multiple projects or utility corridors are connected.

3. Protection for ratepayers and existing residents

No data-center project should shift hidden costs onto ordinary residents, small businesses, farmers, or existing ratepayers.

Before approval, the public should know:

• who pays for substations, transmission lines, water extensions, road work, sewer upgrades, and emergency-service demands;
• whether utility costs can be recovered through rates;
• whether the project receives special tariffs, discounts, exemptions, or public financing;
• whether existing residents face higher utility bills or reduced capacity;
• and whether the development creates long-term public obligations after private profit is secured.

The basic principle should be simple:

The public should not be left paying for private infrastructure disguised as economic development.

4. No blank checks, secret subsidies, or public giveaways

If public money, public credit, tax abatements, port authorities, Chapter 100 bonds, TIF/TIME districts, grants, cost-share funds, utility-rate mechanisms, or other public tools are involved, they should be disclosed in plain language.

A responsible review should require a public accounting of:

• the public tool being used;
• the dollar amount or estimated value;
• the beneficiary;
• the legal mechanism;
• the approval body;
• the repayment or cost-shift structure;
• the duration;
• and the public benefit claimed in exchange.

“No public funds” should not be accepted as a slogan. It should be tested against the full stack of financing, infrastructure, tax treatment, utility planning, and public risk.

5. Community consent, local control, and enforceable protections

A data center should not be treated as inevitable before residents have a meaningful chance to understand and respond.

Responsible development should require:

• public review before major zoning or infrastructure commitments;
• accessible public meetings;
• plain-language summaries of technical filings;
• enough time for residents to review documents;
• meaningful local authority over land-use decisions;
• public access to site plans, studies, agreements, and permits;
• enforceable conditions, not voluntary promises;
• and ongoing reporting after approval.

Community benefits should not be vague press-release language. They should be specific, written, enforceable, and tied to measurable obligations.