Tool Kit

The Battle for Tonganoxie: Toolkit

This page goes with the novel The Battle for Tonganoxie by L J Steele. The book ends with short “How To” guides. This page is the longer version, with templates you can copy and links to the real laws and sources.

Please read first. This page is a starting point. It is not legal, financial or medical advice. Laws change, so check with your county clerk, the Kansas Secretary of State or a lawyer before you file anything. Anything marked REAL LAB ONLY means exactly that.

Get the book: mybook.to/BattleTongi

On this page

Start Here: Know the Facts (what a data center is, and facts for your 3-minute speech)

  1. How to Start Your Own Ghost Lab
  2. How to Start an Energy Co-op
  3. How to Start a Guild
  4. How to Start a Confluence Center
  5. How to Fight a Data Center in Your County
  6. How to File an Open Records Request
  7. How to Correct the Minutes
  8. How to Organize Your Neighbors
  9. How to Check Your Retirement Account
  10. Letter to the Editor Template
  11. How to Write The Ask: Your Insurance Policy
  12. Download the Templates

Start Here: Know the Facts

Download the fact sheet:  Word — edit it  ·  PDF — print it

You don’t have to be an expert to speak at a meeting. Pick one or two facts below that matter to your family, say where they come from, and make one clear request. Each fact has its source, so you can print it and bring it with you.

What is a data center?

A data center is a building, or a group of buildings, full of computers called servers. They store and run everything online: email, videos, shopping, and now artificial intelligence (AI). A “hyperscale” data center is a giant one, often several big buildings on hundreds of acres. The computers run day and night, all year. They use a huge amount of electricity, and almost all of that electricity turns into heat. Getting rid of that heat takes big fans, cooling towers, and often a lot of water.

It is not a warehouse. It brings very few long-term jobs, because computers don’t need many people to run them.

Electricity

  • Data centers used about 4.4% of all U.S. electricity in 2023. The U.S. Department of Energy expects that to reach about 6.7% to 12% by 2028.
  • When a data center needs more power than the grid can give, the company may want its own power plant, often a gas plant.
  • New power plants and power lines are usually paid for through everyone’s electric rates. Ask who pays.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy, 2024

Water

  • A large data center can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day. That’s as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
  • About 80% of that water evaporates. It doesn’t go back into the ground or the river.
  • Ask: Where will the water come from? How much, every day? Will they report it to the public? What happens to our wells?

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

Heat, corn and warm nights

  • Corn needs cool nights. Hot nights in the 70s and 80s make the plant burn up the sugar it made during the day, so less goes into the kernels.
  • Corn grown with nights in the mid-60s out-yielded corn grown with nights in the mid-80s.
  • A data center gives off heat all day and all night. Ask: Has anyone studied what it does to night temperatures on the farms around it?

Source: Ohio State University Extension, “Warm Nights May Impact Corn Yield”

Cattle and bulls

  • A bull has to keep his testicles 4 to 6 degrees Celsius (about 7 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than his body to make healthy sperm.
  • When a bull stays hot for 8 hours or more, his sperm don’t swim as well. Heat can also damage the sperm, so fewer cows get pregnant and stay pregnant.
  • The damage shows up late. A bull keeps making new sperm all the time, so it takes 2 to 4 weeks before a heat spell shows up in his fertility, and 6 to 12 weeks of cooler weather before he’s back to normal.
  • Cool nights are when a bull recovers. If the nights near a data center never cool off, he never gets that chance.
  • Ask for a livestock baseline study before anything is built, and yearly checks after.

Source: University of Wisconsin Extension, Bull Reproductive Health Fact Sheet

Noise and vibration

  • Thousands of cooling fans and big transformers make a low, steady hum, day and night. Low sounds travel farther and pass through walls more easily than high sounds.
  • People who live near data centers often say they feel it more than hear it. One man said it’s like the thumping shake in a car when the back windows are partway down.
  • Ask for noise limits that include low-frequency hum (not just regular decibels), vibration limits, and monitoring the public can see.

Source: Report on data center noise in Loudoun County, Virginia (Prince William County, Va.)

EMF: electric and magnetic fields

  • Every wire carrying power makes a magnetic field. A data center the size of a small city, with its own substation and high-voltage lines, makes a lot of it, day and night.
  • Magnetic fields are measured in milligauss (mG). Most homes average under 1 mG. Fields drop off fast with distance.
  • Two large pooled studies found about twice the childhood leukemia risk in children whose homes averaged 4 mG or more, and about 1.7 times the risk above 3 mG.
  • Because of those studies, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency (IARC) rates power-line magnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B, 2002).
  • A review of 20 studies found a 41 percent higher rate of ALS among people who work in electrical jobs.
  • Be honest: these studies show a link, not proof of cause. That is exactly why we ask for strict limits. Babies, children and pregnant women are the ones to protect first.
  • A copper or aluminum Faraday cage blocks radio waves, but it does little against the 60-hertz magnetic field from power equipment. That takes mu-metal or silicon steel, which carries the field around a room like a gutter carries rain.
  • Ask: no more than 1.0 mG added at any property line, home or school above a baseline measured before construction. See section 11 for how to test it.

Sources: Ahlbom et al., British Journal of Cancer, 2000 · Greenland et al., Epidemiology, 2000 · IARC Monograph 80 (2002) · Huss et al., Bioelectromagnetics, 2018 (ALS)

A gas power plant and the air

  • Gas power plants give off nitrogen oxides (NOx). These irritate the lungs and make asthma worse. Children and older people are at greater risk.
  • NOx also helps form smog (ozone) and fine soot in the air.
  • Ask: How far is the plant from the nearest school? Will the air be monitored, and will the public see the numbers?

Source: U.S. EPA, Basic Information about NO2

Taxes and jobs

  • Kansas Senate Bill 98 (2025) gives qualifying data centers a sales tax exemption for 20 years. To qualify, a company must invest $250 million and create at least 20 new jobs.
  • Twenty jobs. Ask how many will go to people who live in your county.
  • Land and buildings owned by the federal government don’t pay local property tax. If the data center is being built for the government, ask in writing who will own it and whether the county’s tax numbers still hold up.
  • Ask who the end user is. Developers often keep it secret.

Source: Kansas Legislature, summary of SB 98

What happens if it closes?

  • A data center building is hard to reuse. It’s built for computer racks and a city’s worth of power, not for trucks or people.
  • Ask for a decommissioning bond, money set aside up front, so the county isn’t stuck paying to clean it up.

1. How to Start Your Own Ghost Lab

A Ghost Lab is a lab that doesn’t belong to a university, a company or the government. It’s regular people doing careful science and sharing everything they find.

What is safe at home or in a shop

  • A wind box (a simple wind tunnel) with a box fan or blower
  • A multimeter, a simple oscilloscope and a laptop to log numbers
  • Temperature, sound and air sensors
  • Test stands outside for small wind rotors and panels

REAL LAB ONLY: growing nanotubes. That means furnaces over 1,000 degrees, explosive gases, and dust that harms lungs the way asbestos does. Partner with a college lab or buy ready-made samples. Never in a garage.

Who you need

Three to five people who know different things, like a scientist, an electrician or engineer, a builder, a record keeper and a writer.

Where

A barn, garage or shop with good power, fresh air, a fire extinguisher and a first-aid kit.

Money (rough)

A starter test bench can cost a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars. A full nanotube lab like the one in the book costs about $94,000. That’s why the Ghost Lab in the story buys ready-made sheets first.

The rules

  • Write down every number, even the bad ones.
  • Test before you claim anything.
  • Share it all openly.
  • Safety first, always.

Share your designs the open way

The designs in the book are shared under the CERN Open Hardware Licence, Strongly Reciprocal (CERN-OHL-S v2). Anyone may build and improve them, as long as they share their improvements the same way. Publishing a design openly also makes it public “prior art,” which makes it much harder for anyone to patent it later.

Source: CERN-OHL-S v2 full text

2. How to Start an Energy Co-op

A co-op is a business owned by its members. One member, one vote, no matter how much money anyone puts in.

Steps

  1. Gather your members. Under the Kansas Cooperative Societies Act, a co-op needs at least 20 incorporators, all Kansas residents.
  2. Write your purpose and bylaws. Put in one member, one vote. Add an “asset lock,” so the co-op’s property stays in the community if it ever closes.
  3. File your articles of incorporation with the Kansas Secretary of State.
  4. Open a bank account. Choose a board and a treasurer. Keep clean books, and let members see them.
  5. Raise money with member shares or community bonds, like the $500 bonds in the book.

Legal and money note. Selling electricity to your neighbors is regulated in Kansas by the Kansas Corporation Commission, and electric utilities have certified service territories. Start with power members use on their own land. Selling bonds or shares to the public can fall under securities law. Talk to a lawyer before you sell power or bonds to anyone.

Sources

3. How to Start a Guild

Why a second group? If you start building and selling parts for other people, keep that business separate from your power co-op. Then a lawsuit over a bad batch can never reach the co-op that keeps the lights on.

  • Set it up the same way: one member, one vote, an asset lock.
  • Publish every design under an open license, so nothing gets locked behind a patent.
  • Teach the next town how to do it instead of keeping secrets.
  • Pay people fairly for their work, and share any profit with the members.

Building your own industries is how a town gets its freedom. Every job you create at home keeps money at home and makes you less dependent on the companies that used to own your power.

4. How to Start a Confluence Center

A Confluence Center is a research center, trade school and university in one, with no walls between them. A twelve-year-old and a seventy-year-old work on the same real problem.

  • Start small: one room, one real project, a few mentors young and old.
  • Make real things: every class makes something that works. No grades.
  • Teach what a community needs: science, trades, ranch and farm management, co-op money, writing and video.
  • Open-source everything: every technical advance is shared, always. No exceptions.
  • Join the network: share what you learn with other centers, so a breakthrough in one town shows up in the next town the same week.

A Confluence Center doesn’t replace the smaller projects around it. Barns, shops, sheds and pastures can all be part of it.

5. How to Fight a Data Center in Your County

Step 1: Learn what’s proposed

Find out how many acres, how many megawatts of power, how much water, whether there’s a power plant, and who the end user is. If the end user is the federal government or a federal contractor, the property may not pay the local property tax everyone is promised.

Step 2: Show up and pack the room

Bring folding chairs. Bring hand fans with your message on them. Don’t leave early. Commissioners notice who stays.

Step 3: Give a 3-minute speech

Use this shape:

  1. Who you are and where you live.
  2. One fact.
  3. What it means for your family, farm or business.
  4. One clear request.

Before you count on speaking — read this

Your state’s open meetings law almost certainly gives you the right to ATTEND. It does not give you the right to SPEAK.

This is the single most common misunderstanding in a land-use fight, and it is an expensive one. Public comment is something the board chooses to allow. It can be limited, and it can be closed — sometimes on the same night as the hearing, before the document you are objecting to has reached its final form. In Kansas the law is the Open Meetings Act, K.S.A. 75-4317 and following; yours will have a different name and the same limit.

So before the meeting, ask the clerk or planning staff three things:

  • Will there be public comment on this item? Not every agenda item gets it.
  • Do I have to sign up, and by when? Many boards require a card filled in before the meeting is called to order. Arrive early.
  • How long do I get? Three minutes is common. Time it at home. Being cut off mid-sentence costs you your closing line, which is usually the ask.

Say it out loud AND put it in writing

Do both, every time. They do different jobs.

  • Speaking moves the room. It is seen, it is on the recording, and the people in the chairs hear it.
  • Writing survives. Minutes often record a speaker as a single line — “spoke in opposition” — no matter how detailed the testimony was. A written submission enters the case file as a document and stays there. See section 7 if the minutes have already flattened what you said.
  • Don’t read your letter aloud. Submit the letter before the packet deadline, then use your three minutes for the one point you most want remembered. Finish by saying you have submitted written comment and asking that it be entered into the record. That sentence is on the recording, and it is hard to lose.

If public comment gets closed

Once comment on a hearing is closed it may not reopen — even if the proposal is later rewritten by someone you never got to question. If that happens, written comment into the case file is your remaining route, and it still counts.

Two questions worth asking in writing, the moment it happens:

  • Was the hearing closed, or only the public comment portion of it? These are not the same thing, and staff do not always know which was done.
  • If the text changes substantially after comment closed, does the law require the hearing to be re-noticed? You are not asserting that it does. You are asking whether anyone has determined that it does not — and putting that question on the record early is worth far more than asking it after a vote.

Step 4: Ask in writing

Find your packet deadline first — it is earlier than you think.

Written comment reaches the commissioners through the agenda packet, and the packet is assembled and sent out before the meeting. In one Kansas county the packet goes out the Friday before a Wednesday meeting — five days ahead. Your county or city will be different. Every jurisdiction sets its own.

A letter that arrives after the packet has gone may still be handed round to members as a courtesy. It may also sit in a folder until the next meeting. Do not rely on the courtesy.

So before you write anything, call or email the planning department and ask, in these words:

“When does the agenda packet go out for the [date] meeting, and what is your deadline for written comment to be included in it?”

Write the answer down and treat it as the real deadline. The meeting date is not the deadline. Ask the same question again for each meeting — a special or rescheduled hearing can move it.

Send a letter to Planning and Zoning. Every letter goes into the public record, and the record matters if this ends up in court. Ask for:

  • Noise limits, including low-frequency tonal hum, with monitoring
  • Vibration limits
  • Water-use limits and public reporting
  • Where cooling chemicals go
  • EMF measurement and shielding
  • Air monitoring if there’s a gas plant
  • A livestock baseline study
  • A road-repair agreement for truck traffic
  • A fire-safety plan with your local fire department
  • A decommissioning bond, so the county isn’t stuck with an empty building
  • Disclosure of the end user and its tax status

Planning and Zoning letter template

To the [County] Planning and Zoning Commission:

My name is [name]. I live at [road or area], about [distance] from the proposed data center site. I am writing about [project name or case number].

Before any approval, I ask that the county require: [pick from the list above].

I also ask the county to put a moratorium in place until these rules are written and adopted.

Please include this letter in the public record. Thank you.

[Name, address, phone, date]

Step 5: Ask for a moratorium

Ask the county to pause new data center applications until real rules are written.

Step 6: Watch for the 1,050-foot trick

In Kansas, neighbors within the notice area of a rezoning can sign a protest petition. Enough signatures can mean the county needs more votes to approve it. A developer can pull its rezoning line back past the notice ring, so no neighbor is close enough to sign. Ask your county to measure notice from the outside edge of the whole property, or to notify everyone within a mile.

Step 7: Write letters to the editor

See the template at the bottom of this page.

Sources

6. How to File an Open Records Request

The Kansas Open Records Act (KORA) lets anyone ask a public agency for its records. You don’t have to say why you want them.

  • Write to the agency’s records custodian. Many agencies post a KORA request form on their website.
  • Ask for specific records: contracts, invoices, timesheets, or emails between certain dates.
  • The agency has to act within three business days. It can give you the records, a cost estimate, or an explanation of a delay.
  • They may charge copy fees. Keep copies of everything you send and get back.

Legal note. Some records can be withheld by law. If you are refused, ask which part of the law they are using, in writing.

Open records request template

Download this template:  Word — edit it  ·  PDF — print it

To: Records Custodian, [Agency name]

Under the Kansas Open Records Act, K.S.A. 45-215 and following, I request copies of the following records: [describe them, with dates. For example: “all contracts and invoices between the county and [company] from January 1, 2026 to today.”]

Electronic copies by email are fine. If there are fees, please tell me the amount before you fill the request. If any part is withheld, please tell me which part of the law allows it.

[Name, address, email, phone, date]

Sources

7. How to Correct the Minutes

Official minutes are the only lasting record of a public hearing. If yours summarises five minutes of detailed testimony as three words — “spoke in opposition” — then as far as the record is concerned, you never made your argument.

This matters later. When a county says public comment shaped its decision, the minutes are the evidence of what that comment was. A technical submission reduced to a one-word category cannot be traced to anything.

Download this template:  Word — edit it  ·  PDF — print it

Before you write

  • Find your remarks in the meeting recording and note the start and end times. Most counties post the video.
  • Write down what you actually asked for, as a numbered list. Not how you felt — what you requested.
  • Check how other speakers were recorded. If some got a summary of their subject and you did not, say so. You are asking for the same treatment, not special treatment.
  • Ask promptly. Minutes get harder to amend once they are approved and the meeting recedes.

Ask for two things, not one

Ask for the correction — and then ask, in the alternative, that if the approved minutes cannot be amended, your letter and any written submission be entered into the file for the case, with the entry noted in the minutes of the next regular meeting.

That second request is the one that usually succeeds, and it is the one that actually protects the record. Approved minutes are often treated as settled. A case file is not.

Keep it courteous and factual. The person who maintains the minutes is rarely the person you disagree with, and they are the one who can help you.

8. How to Organize Your Neighbors

  • Start a phone tree and a Facebook group.
  • Pass a sign-up sheet at every meeting.
  • Make the cause visible: hand fans, buttons, yard signs, t-shirts.
  • Plan rallies and convoys safely, with permits.
  • Keep a press list, and pick one person who talks to reporters.
  • Be kind to everyone, even the people on the other side of the room. Many of them will change their minds.

You have a right to speak up

Kansas has a law called the Public Speech Protection Act. It helps people who get sued for speaking out on public issues ask a judge to throw the lawsuit out early.

Sources

9. How to Check Your Retirement Account

  • Look at your statement’s list of holdings, not just the balance.
  • Index funds often hold data center companies set up as real estate investment trusts (REITs), like Digital Realty and Equinix.
  • Ask your plan (KPERS, a 401(k), an IRA) what you own and what your choices are.

Money note. This is not financial advice. Talk to someone you trust before you change anything.

Sources

10. Letter to the Editor Template

Keep it short (about 250 words), use your own words, and sign your real name and town. Most papers won’t print anonymous letters.

To the Editor:

My name is [name], and I live in [town]. A company wants to build a data center [and power plant] at [place]. I am writing because [one reason that matters to you: water, heat, noise, your farm, your kids, taxes].

Here is one fact every neighbor should know: [one fact, with where you found it].

I am asking [the county commission / our legislators] to [one clear request: a moratorium, real rules, a public vote].

The next meeting is [date, time, place]. Please come.

[Name], [Town]

From the novel The Battle for Tonganoxie by L J Steele. mybook.to/BattleTongi

11. How to Write The Ask: Your Insurance Policy

Asking for conditions is not saying yes. It’s insurance. You don’t buy fire insurance because you want your house to burn down. You buy it so that if it does, you don’t lose everything. If your county votes yes over your objections, these conditions decide how bad it gets.

Put this at the top of your letter: WE STILL SAY NO. IF YOU VOTE YES ANYWAY, THIS IS OUR INSURANCE POLICY. Send it before the Planning Commission votes, and ask that every item be written into the approval as a binding condition. You get zero of what you don’t ask for.

Be honest about the heat. None of these conditions makes a data center and gas plant safe for the farms around it. Reusing heat helps most in winter. But July and August are when corn needs cool nights most, while it fills its kernels, and those same hot weeks are hardest on bulls. That is when there is the least use for extra heat. The best summer protections: distance and windbreaks, heat sent up high through tall stacks so it doesn’t pool over fields on still nights, and dry cooling (a giant radiator instead of a water-spraying tower) so nights don’t turn muggy for cattle. These conditions make the best of a terrible situation. That is why the answer stays no.

EMF, noise and air

  • EMF: Faraday shielding on power rooms (like the metal mesh in a microwave door) PLUS mu-metal or silicon steel for the 60-hertz magnetic field, gas-insulated substations, active cancellation loops, and high-voltage lines buried in a tight triangle (trefoil) inside steel conduit.
  • The EMF limit, and how to test it: no more than 1.0 mG added above a baseline. Someone will say “you can’t test 1.0 mG, the background is already that high.” The answer: (1) before construction, a county-chosen tester records fields for seven days at every property line, home and school (IEEE Std 644 methods), so the background is already counted; (2) at startup, with the equipment off, a test coil inside each shielded room makes a known field, and the shield must cut it by at least 90 percent just outside the wall (shields work both ways, so this proves fields stay in and stay out); (3) at full power, and every year, record again at the same spots. The increase must stay at or under 1.0 mG.
  • Vibration and hum: vibration-absorbing layers under server racks, generators, transformers and cooling towers, like rubber feet on a washing machine. A fence-line noise limit that includes low, tonal hum. County-owned meters.
  • Air: catalytic controls and soot filters on every gas turbine, heat recovery on the exhaust, stack readings posted online, air monitors at schools.
  • Lights: shielded and pointed down, to protect the night sky.
  • A county team that checks: unannounced testing, every reading on a public website, fines that grow with each violation.
  • Answer us in writing first: if your county has a cost funding agreement (developer money for the county’s lawyers and engineers), ask that those experts answer every condition and every point of public testimony in writing, posted before the vote, with an accounting of what the money paid for.

Use the waste heat, all year

  • Greenhouses on the roofs, heated by waste heat, growing food for the community, schools and food pantry. No new ground used.
  • Waste heat piped to schools, the hospital, homes, a public pool, grain dryers and stock tanks.
  • Carbon dioxide from the gas plant fed to algae for fuel.
  • Summer: absorption chillers (like a propane refrigerator) to cool schools and the hospital, grain and hay drying, heat stored underground for winter, and dry coolers that don’t evaporate local water.
  • Better coolant (for example, carbon nanotubes in closed-loop cooling water).
  • Turbines on cooling-tower exhaust. Honest note: this makes only a little power, but it’s free wind.
  • DC power inside the buildings, to cut conversion losses.
  • Solar on every roof that isn’t a greenhouse, and over every parking lot.

Water

  • All closed-loop water (first fill, every flush, every refill) trucked in. Used, chemically treated water trucked out to licensed disposal. Haul records public.
  • Local water for restrooms and drinking only, in writing. If the developer says it will use “about as much as it takes to flush the toilets,” ask them to sign it.
  • A hard annual cap, a public online meter, no pumping in a declared drought.
  • Test wells on neighbors’ land, and a fund to deepen any well that drops.

The construction years (“man camps”)

  • Workforce RV housing on the developer’s own site, with its own power and sewer and water hauled in.
  • A fee to the county for every RV site, every night, for roads, deputies, EMS, fire and schools.
  • When construction ends, the hookups go to the county (for example, a fairgrounds campground).
  • Food truck loans for local residents, and county-owned food trucks local groups can rent to feed the crews.
  • Hire local first, shift-change shuttles, an on-site clinic, truck routes away from schools, a road-repair bond.

Farms, neighbors, money and safety

  • Baseline and yearly checks of night temperatures, cattle conception and crop yields, with payment if they drop.
  • A property value guarantee, native prairie and trees on unbuilt ground, berms and setbacks, fast internet along the developer’s fiber route.
  • The developer pays for all new power lines and substations, not ratepayers. Backup power for the school and hospital.
  • Fire trucks, equipment and training paid for before any batteries arrive.
  • A teardown (decommissioning) bond up front. Tax payments guaranteed in writing, even with a federal lease. An escrow for independent engineers chosen by the county. Clawbacks if promises are broken.
  • Local training, apprenticeships, and funding for a public research lab.
  • The name of the end user, in writing, before any vote.

The Ask letter template

Download this template:  Word — edit it  ·  PDF — print it

To the [County] Planning Commission and Board of County Commissioners:

Re: [project name or case number]

My answer is still no. But asking is not agreeing. If the county votes yes anyway, I ask that each item below be written into the approval as a binding condition, with dates, dollar amounts, penalties and public reporting: [pick from the lists above].

I ask the county counselor to say in writing which of these can be made binding conditions. Please include this letter in the public record. Thank you.

[Name, address, phone, date]

A real example: L J Steele’s letter on Project Bluestem

Here is the letter Linda Jo Steele wrote to Leavenworth County about Project Bluestem (Western Meadowlark Projectco LLC / Cloverleaf Infrastructure) near Tonganoxie: about 1,100 acres, up to 1.2 gigawatts, with a gas power plant on site. Copy it, change the names and numbers, and make it yours.

To: Leavenworth County Planning Commission and Leavenworth County Board of County Commissioners
Re: Project Bluestem (Western Meadowlark Projectco LLC / Cloverleaf Infrastructure), proposed 1,100-acre data center and on-site gas power plant near Tonganoxie

I still say no. My answer, and my neighbors’ answer, is still no. A 1.2-gigawatt data center and a gas power plant do not belong on Kansas farm ground near Tonganoxie.

But asking is not agreeing. This letter is an insurance policy. You don’t buy fire insurance because you want your house to burn down. You buy it so that if it does, you don’t lose everything. We get zero of what we don’t ask for.

If this county votes yes anyway, I ask that every item below be written into the approval as a binding condition, through the Planned Unit Development (PUD) conditions, a development agreement, or both, before any vote, with dates, dollar amounts, penalties and public reporting.

Please be clear about one thing: none of these conditions makes this project safe for the farms around it. Reusing heat helps most in winter. But July and August are when corn needs cool nights most, while it fills its kernels, and those same hot weeks are hardest on bulls. That is exactly when there is the least use for extra heat. These conditions make the best of a terrible situation. They do not make it a good one. That is why my answer is still no.

1. EMF, noise and air

  1. Contain the EMF. Faraday shielding plus mu-metal or silicon steel around transformers, switchgear, generators and power rooms; gas-insulated substations; active magnetic cancellation loops. The facility may add no more than 1.0 mG at any property line, home or school above a pre-construction baseline. Tested three ways: a seven-day baseline before construction; a test-coil check of every shielded room at startup (at least a 90 percent cut); and seven-day full-power tests every year. Why 1.0 mG: pooled studies found about twice the childhood leukemia risk at 4 mG and above; the WHO’s cancer agency rates these fields “possibly carcinogenic”; electrical workers show higher ALS rates.
  2. Bury and balance the high-voltage lines. No more than 1.0 mG added at 50 meters from the center line and at the substation fence. Lines buried in a tight triangle (trefoil) inside steel conduit; phase rotation so fields cancel; substation and switchrooms at the dead center of the parcel.
  3. Clean power, no stray radio. Fiber instead of wireless links; harmonic distortion under 5 percent (IEEE 519); shielded generator yards behind earth berms; setbacks and a health impact study for any wireless equipment.
  4. Eliminate tonal hum and vibration. A “zero-detectable-tonality” design: heavy equipment on concrete inertia blocks, spring isolators and gel plates; flexible connectors on every pipe and conduit; a fence-line limit that includes low, tonal hum.
  5. Clean up the smokestack. Catalytic controls, fine-particle filters and heat recovery on every gas turbine; continuous stack readings online; air monitors at every school within ten miles.
  6. Protect the night sky. All outdoor lights shielded and pointed down.
  7. A county team that checks. Unannounced noise and EMF testing, every reading on a public county website, fines that grow with each violation.

2. Use the waste heat, all year

  1. Greenhouses on the roofs, heated by waste heat, growing food for the community, schools and food pantry. No new ground used.
  2. Algae for fuel, fed by the gas plant’s carbon dioxide.
  3. Heat our schools and homes, the hospital and a public pool. A data center in Oslo, Norway heats up to 5,000 homes; one in Odense, Denmark heats about 9,000.
  4. Use the summer heat: absorption chillers to cool schools and the hospital, grain and hay drying, underground heat storage for winter, and dry coolers for the rest.
  5. Better coolant: carbon nanotubes in the closed-loop coolant, made here in Kansas.
  6. Catch the hot wind: turbines in cooling-tower exhaust.
  7. Run on DC inside to cut conversion losses.
  8. Solar on everything else: every other roof and every parking lot.

3. Hands off our water

  1. Truck it in, truck it out: all closed-loop water (first fill, flushes, refills) hauled in; used, chemically treated water hauled out to licensed disposal; records public.
  2. Restrooms only: local water limited, in writing, to restrooms, sinks and drinking water.
  3. A hard cap and a public meter, and no pumping during a declared drought.
  4. Protect our wells: test wells on neighboring land and a fund to deepen any well that drops.

4. The construction years

  1. House your own workers on the developer’s site, not in county parks or church lots.
  2. A nightly fee to the county for every occupied RV site, for roads, sheriff, EMS, fire and schools.
  3. Keep the hookups: turned over to the county when construction ends.
  4. Feed them local: food truck loans and county-owned food trucks local groups can rent.
  5. Safe roads and a clinic: local hiring first, shift-change shuttles, truck routes away from schools, an on-site clinic, a road-repair bond.

5. Farms, neighbors, money and safety

  1. Watch the farms: baseline and yearly checks of night temperatures, cattle conception and crop yields, with payment if they drop.
  2. Protect the neighbors: a property value guarantee, native prairie and trees, berms and setbacks, fast internet along the fiber route.
  3. Pay for your own wires, plus backup power for the school and hospital.
  4. Fire safety first: trucks, equipment and training paid for before batteries arrive.
  5. Money up front: a teardown bond, guaranteed tax payments even with a federal lease, an escrow for county-chosen engineers, and clawbacks.
  6. Jobs for our kids: local training, apprenticeships and a public research lab.
  7. Tell us who it’s for: the end user’s name, in writing, before any vote.

I ask the county counselor to say, in writing, which of these can be made binding conditions, and to ask for all of them anyway.

Respectfully,
Linda Jo Steele, Tonganoxie, Kansas

Legal note: some of these may go beyond what a county can require on its own. Ask your county counselor which ones can be written as conditions of a Planned Unit Development (PUD) or a development agreement, and ask for all of them anyway.

Sources

12. Download the Templates

Everything above, as files you can open and change. The Word versions are meant to be edited — anything in [square brackets] is for you to replace, and you should delete whatever doesn’t apply to your situation. A shorter letter that means every word beats a long one that doesn’t.

Check your own state’s law. These were written in Kansas. Where a statute is cited, your state will have its own version with a different number and a different deadline — and that deadline is usually your best lever.

  • The Ask — your insurance policy — Thirty-one conditions to ask be written into any approval as binding, grouped so you can cut what doesn’t apply. Send it before the vote.
    Word (edit it)  ·  PDF (print it)
  • Open records request — Plus the three rules that decide whether you get anything: ask for records not answers, say where you heard the record named, and put a cost ceiling in.
    Word (edit it)  ·  PDF (print it)
  • Request to correct the minutes — For when five minutes of testimony is recorded as three words. The alternative request near the end matters more than the correction itself.
    Word (edit it)  ·  PDF (print it)
  • Data centers — the facts — Three pages to print and take to a meeting. Electricity, water, heat and corn, cattle, noise, EMF, air, taxes and jobs. Every fact has its source.
    Word (edit it)  ·  PDF (print it)

One word of advice on the Ask. Consider leaving your street address and phone number off any letter that may be published. Your name, your town and an email address are enough to make it a real public comment.