Data center development agreement with county attorney
GEOFFREY WOEHLK/THE FORUM
Nodaway County Administration Center building
MARYVILLE, Mo. — A draft development agreement proposal for the White Cloud Acres data center project is being reviewed by the county’s attorney, the county commissioners said Tuesday, and they hope to know more about moratorium language after meeting with their attorney on Thursday.
During the commission’s regular meeting on Tuesday morning, the two commissioners present said that a development agreement was sent by Scale Microgrids, the data center developer, to the county’s attorney. The commissioners have not seen the agreement yet, they said.
A development agreement would likely include the framework of what tax abatements or other incentives the data center developer is seeking from the county, along with performance benchmarks and guardrails the company is willing to offer in exchange. That could include a minimum number of jobs created and precise numbers about emissions and water usage, for example.
“In general, that is the entire project design, everything,” said North District Commissioner Chris Burns. “Basically anything we would ask in a moratorium will be in the development agreement, from capping water use, electric use, size, noise buffers — everything.”
Burns said he was not sure if the development agreement would name the end user of the hyperscale AI data center.
The commissioners stressed that the draft agreement sent to the county attorney is not a finished product, whatever it may say. It’s the first step in a negotiation, Burns said.
“They don’t just give us an agreement and we sign it,” Burns said. “That’s the only tool we have in negotiating.”
Burns also said that if the commission opts to pursue a moratorium on projects like the data center, the moratorium would need to be approved before the development agreement.
The county’s attorney has been working on options for moratorium language for weeks. Burns said it is a more complicated process because of the active data center project.
“We’re just trying to keep the county from being tied up in litigation,” Burns said. “… Instead of just saying ‘We’re doing a moratorium’ and getting sued, we wanna do it the right way and get the right answers.”
Presiding Commissioner Bill Walker said the commission will meet with its attorney in closed session on Thursday afternoon to discuss the moratorium, and that he hopes they will have more clarity on the possible measure then.
Town hall
Walker said the commission is open to a joint town hall among multiple government entities to talk about the data center with constituents. Maryville Mayor John McBride told The Forum on Monday that he is also supportive of the idea.
However, Walker said that right now, the commission doesn’t have all the answers they know people want. They had hoped that a water resource feasibility study commissioned by Nodaway County Public Water Supply District No. 1 would provide more concrete information on how much water the data center would require and where it would come from. But Walker, like Maryville City Council member Erin Allen on Monday, questioned the study’s veracity.
Walker said many of the study’s estimates came from incomplete and unreliable information, making it “as far as I’m concerned, worthless.” For example, the study noted that it did not have any information on the quality or makeup of wastewater that would leave the data center site or on what would be needed to treat the wastewater that may be used to cool the data center.
“Now maybe after Thursday, when we meet with our attorney again, (I) pray to God that there’s something that we can get rolling on a little bit, one way or the other,” Walker said.
