Zack Pistora, Sierra Club Kansas Chapter Director
I wonder how Dr. Brewster Higley might revise his famous poem about Kansas if alive today?
Home, home on the range… where hyperscaler data centers seek to stay…
The State lured them with cash, and developers arrived in a flash
And the skies are not cloudy… those are just diesel fumes.
Ok, clearly I’m not a songwriter. But like many Kansans, I don’t want the Sunflower State to be the next home for mega data centers, the “hyperscalers.” While Kansas already hosts several small data centers, we are welcoming Big Tech giants who develop data centers that consume as much power as all of your community’s homes and businesses combined. We have concerns about the availability of water yet data centers often use millions of gallons of water every day for evaporative cooling or new closed-loop water systems dependent on greater amounts of toxic chemicals and/or energy use. And don’t get me started on the problems of land disturbance / habitat loss, the air and noise pollution from backup diesel generators or gas turbines, parking lots of A/C units, and more.
From Gardner to Garden City, at least a dozen data center proposals have been sprung upon our Kansas communities this year, and with likely more to come, unannounced, but already discussed in back rooms of your county economic development office or local utility. In almost every stand off with hyperscale proposals to date, local citizens (regardless of political affiliation) have banded together to push back and demand answers and assurances from the data center developers. Community members want to know about taxes, impacts to their water and air, effects upon electric bills and the grid, noise and light impacts. But those questions get answered far too late or not at all during the permitting process.
The people of Kansas didn’t ask to be in the bullseye for Big Tech’s data center mad dash buildout. It was the industry itself, backed by Governor Kelly’s Department of Commerce, the Kansas Chamber, our largest monopoly electric utility (Evergy), and other monied interests, who put forward the scheme to offer tax subsidies of $250 Million a pop for some of our richest companies in America to establish these mega data centers.
When Kansas Senate Bill 51’s data center tax giveaway proposal came to the House for a committee hearing, Sierra Club was the only group to oppose the bill. But we weren’t alone. Nearly 4000 phone calls from Kansans rang the lines of Legislative leaders and the Governor, overwhelmingly opposing data centers and the tax giveaway bill. Yet corporations and their powerful lobbyists prevailed over the (extra)ordinary efforts by citizens to oppose the legislation. SB 98 (originally a license plate bill) passed after several final-hour amendments, in the last hours of the last day of the 2025 session. The final passage was 85-37 in the House and 26-8 in the Senate.
Sierra Club is not “anti-data center.” We understand that massive changes in how computers can be used system of computing may have benefits for society, and might even help to solve our environmental challenges, But whether that happens depends on the type of data centers built and how artificial intelligence is applied. Right now we’re seeing “dirty”data centers; hyperscale data centers that consume fossil fuels, drain our water supplies, use diesel generators that pollute our air, and which do not receive community support. Although potential mitigation of harmful environmental impact is possible, for now we’re looking at serious negative impacts from data centers..
Sierra Club stands ready to support local communities as they face the prospect of data centers. We will continue to advocate for protections at the state level, including the repeal of the tax giveaway legislation that started all of this. In the meantime, let us all remind ourselves what’s really important in life. What we see looking across the land, into the skies, or into our loved ones’ eyes is much more beautiful than what’s on a phone or computer screen. We’ll be back with useful facts and figures to help with the persuasion, but for now, please accept my plea for common sense, intuition, and integrity.
P.S. This editorial was fully composed without use of artificial intelligence.
