Kansas Commerce official briefs Dickinson County on data centers' power, water and review rules

Paul Hughes, deputy secretary at the Kansas Department of Commerce, briefed Dickinson County commissioners on the technical and policy considerations of data center development, saying the most important early question is scale — and that determines power, water and community impacts.

Hughes told the commission that data centers are commonly described by power load, not square footage: “the first question is, what size data center are we talking about? A 5 megawatt data center could easily fit within a standard shipping container,” he said, contrasting that with campus projects that can be hundreds of megawatts. He described cooling technologies and the tradeoffs they pose for local utilities: older evaporative systems can use very large volumes of water, while modern air‑cooled systems “are about the equivalent of a 100‑room hotel” (roughly 12,000 gallons per day by his example) and closed‑loop systems average “about 3 to 4,000 gallons a day,” but tend to use more electricity.

Hughes outlined state policy that communities should expect to see. He summarized SB98 as creating a threshold (projects with roughly $250 million in investment) that may make a project eligible for sales‑tax exemptions on equipment for 20 years, and said Kansas uniquely requires a security and ownership review through an intelligence fusion center before incentives are discussed. He urged local officials to make incentives and infrastructure commitments contingent on completion of that review so speculative developers cannot hold water or power commitments in limbo.

Commissioners asked about local impacts and community benefits. Hughes recommended that counties prepare a short list of community needs — such as child care, workforce training partnerships or infrastructure — so they can negotiate benefits if a project becomes real. He also said Commerce offers free cost‑benefit analyses to communities and cautioned that many speculative site assemblies create an inflated perception of demand.

Public commenters during the meeting urged caution. A resident asked the board to avoid tax abatements and to require independent impact studies of grid, water and tax effects before any incentives are offered. Hughes and county staff responded that energy providers and state agencies will be the most reliable sources on grid capacity, and that the fusion‑center review and required water‑conservation plans are intended to limit speculative commitments.

The commission took no formal action to approve incentives or to change zoning during this informational session. Commissioners said any future decisions would be made in public meetings after staff and utilities provide more detailed analyses and any applicant completes state review steps.