Residents urge moratorium on proposed Osawatomie data-center pre-development agreement, citing water, power and health risks

Dozens of residents told the Osawatomie City Council on May 28 that a proposed pre-development agreement for a large data center could overwhelm local water and power systems and harm nearby residents and institutions.

At public comment, Troy Harp, who gave the council his address, said he reviewed a December 2025 pre-development agreement and warned the project “asks for at least a million gallons of water a day,” and contended the developer anticipates scaling electric demand well beyond initial estimates. “This is going to be a massive industrial scale power plant and data center,” Harp said.

Why it matters: The draft terms residents cited would assign the project rights over 116 acres and allow large utility demands that speakers said could exceed the city’s current capacity. Thomas Harp, who identified himself as a long-time Miami County resident and incoming medical student, said the city’s reported average daily water consumption is about 750,000 gallons and that the proposal’s water request “is 250,000 more than the entire city’s usage,” and he demanded a moratorium modeled on Miami County Resolution R263012.

Residents gave multiple reasons for opposing or questioning the deal. Ian Day said the planned site would be “just a few hundred yards” from the Sunflower Recovery Center and worried continuous mechanical noise could hinder patient recovery; a speaker who said they previously worked at the state hospital disputed that patients could hear mechanical rooms throughout the facility. Aaron Pachek told the council pre-development agreements with middlemen and nondisclosure agreements could conceal the end user and “gag our local officials,” preventing independent environmental review.

Speakers also cited state-level incentives and prior bills in the Kansas Legislature. Frank Henderson pointed to Senate Bill 98, which provides sales-tax and equipment exemptions for qualifying data centers and other incentives; Courtney Crawford said a city official had lobbied in Topeka for a land-conveyance bill (Senate Bill 146) and asked why the public had not been notified.

An engineer who spoke, Daniel Abe, offered calculations about thermal output, saying even a 50-megawatt installation produces substantial waste heat and cited studies showing localized temperature increases around large facilities.

Council response and next steps: Council staff repeatedly told attendees that a town-hall question-and-answer session with the developer and city officials would be scheduled soon; staff said a press release was expected within a day and a town hall within a month. The council did not take a formal vote on the data-center proposal at the meeting.

What speakers asked for: Residents urged the council to publish the community-benefits analysis and all material terms of the pre-development agreement, require concrete limits on water and power use with penalties for exceedance, insist on local protections for utilities and emergency response, and consider a temporary moratorium while the county-level resolution was cited as precedent.

The meeting moved on after public comment; the council approved its consent agenda earlier in the session and later adjourned. The city’s next publicly announced step is the promised town-hall meeting with the developer and city staff.