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Public commenter warns council about data-center development and regional grid impacts
Summary
A visitor from another county warned Lincoln officials about social, land-use and grid impacts associated with large data-center projects and related power infrastructure, urging vigilance and local ordinance review.
Tim Leperge, a resident of Flemore County representing Digi North Dakota, addressed the council during public comment on May 22 to raise concerns about data-center and crypto-mining development in rural areas and broader grid and land-use impacts.
Leperge described large campus-style facilities that host crypto mining, artificial-intelligence processing and data storage. “They are building a multiple facility. They do crypto mining, and they are also gonna do artificial intelligence…they do a lot of storage of data,” he told the council.
He described community effects he has observed elsewhere: large offers to landowners, annexation requests, pipeline and generation projects tied to data-center power needs, and local disagreement about public benefits. He said some projects in his region began in 2022 and described one main campus as a 350,000-square-foot building with plans for two additional large buildings. He warned about onsite battery energy storage and firefighting limitations, saying lithium battery fires would exceed local fire department capacity.
Leperge also discussed wider grid work and transmission projects, identifying the Mid-Continent Independent System Operator and named utilities such as Otter Tail Power. He said developers sought exemptions from traditional regulation and that state legislation had affected township authority in at least one case. Leperge urged councils to ask detailed questions, read permitting records (he suggested the state public service commission filings), and consider local zoning and comprehensive-plan updates before any data-center proposals arrive.
The council did not take formal action on the topic at the meeting; members said they would look into whether Lincoln’s ordinances address data-center uses and noted neighboring jurisdictions have been discussing the issue.
Key details cited by the speaker: project starts around 2022; one existing building ~350,000 square feet; battery storage beneath buildings; claims that transmission projects can raise electric bills (the speaker said “your power bills are gonna go up, 10 to $15 a kilowatt hour”); and references to developers named in public filings as Applied Digital and Fly Digital. The speaker recommended careful local ordinance and zoning review before entertaining major data-center projects.
