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Students and residents urge county action on data centers, wildfire planning and open‑space funding
Summary
Several students and residents used the public‑comment period to urge Gallatin County to strengthen wildfire planning using GIS, oppose large data centers over water and energy concerns, and increase the open‑lands levy to preserve agricultural and wildlife areas.
Several members of the public urged Gallatin County commissioners on April 14 to take policy steps on three related threats: rising wildfire risk, large data centers’ demands on water and energy, and the need to boost funding for open‑land conservation.
“My name is Abigail Riddell, and I’m a student at Montana State University,” Riddell said, urging county officials to use geographic information system (GIS) tools that integrate climate projections with population and infrastructure data to better model future wildfire scenarios and guide long‑term resource allocation. “Using GIS, agencies can adapt their efforts as conditions change,” she said.
Two other student speakers focused on data centers. Zach Henry, an MSU environmental‑science senior, warned that “a single data center can use up to 5,000,000 gallons of water every day” and described a growing number of large proposals in Montana that, he said, risk straining local water and energy systems. An earlier commenter argued the county should join environmental coalitions and consider a moratorium on large data‑center construction to protect local water supplies and community resources.
Kyle Hayes, a Gallatin County resident and outdoor enthusiast, urged commissioners to continue and expand county investment in open‑lands conservation, noting local land trusts and the county program have conserved tens of thousands of acres and that local funding is often needed to unlock state and federal matching dollars. “This county’s role in this is essential as these private land trusts need the local funding to match to unlock these state and federal dollars,” Hayes said.
Why it matters: speakers tied three issues together — climate‑driven wildfire risk, infrastructure proposals that can increase local resource demand, and the role of local funding programs that buy conservation outcomes. Commissioners did not take formal action during public comment but heard repeated requests to consider regulatory and fiscal responses, including asking the state to revisit property‑tax classifications for data centers and exploring levy options for open‑lands funding.
What’s next: public comment items were recorded in the meeting record; commissioners did not announce immediate policy changes at the meeting but flagged legislative and county‑level options for follow up.
