City Government - Regular Meeting

with Albany County Board of Commissioners, Tuesday, August 11th, 2026. We will begin this work session with public comment on non-agenda items. Is there any public comment on non-agenda items? Then it appears we're all here for the same thing. So we're going to move right on to our work session tonight and that is on data centers. And I would just like to start this by telling you this is meant as an informational learning and listening session. There are currently no projects before us and there is no vote pending. But we want to learn as much as we can so that we can set the standard for our community before somebody comes in here and it's already being built. So that's why we're here is to learn more about data centers and to talk about the concerns that we have. And if we had anything, what would be the size? What would be the conditional use? Is there moratorium? No moratorium. We just need to be open and and explore that right now. So, without further delay right now. We're going to go on to our presentation tonight, and we have the first one will be presented by Philip Gavituller, and he's our planning manager. And following Philip's presentation, we have Jay Smith, who is our public works director, will be following up to add in the parts about water and stuff like that. Planning Manager Gabetuller.

Yes. Good evening, honorable mayor, members of city council, county commissioners, and the public. I just want to start off by saying that a lot of localities that do currently have data centers and have for a long time probably really wish that they were in this boat that we are in right now. where we don't have a pending project we're in a position where we're trying to figure out what questions to ask what needs to change in our code in order to perhaps accommodate these and at what Expense and and negotiation process that would occur it. So I'd say we're in a very good place. I just wanted to start off with that echo the mayor companies comment that we don't currently have any site plan or any conversations pending with a data center either. So just want to start out with that. But I do want to tonight spend some time giving a fairly high level briefing on data centers. What we know at least because it is such a rapidly changing field. But right across the mountain, we're seeing these data centers popping up at a gigantic scale. So we should be concerned and we should put ourselves into the best position possible negotiate with the data center provider given that opportunity so tonight we'll be looking at the potential economic benefits but also i think more importantly what this means to land water electrical and infrastructure demands associated with these very large projects now um we will walk through a little bit of what's happening in cheyenne and how that's um that's coming about and progressing what our existing city code currently allows as far as data centers go how albany county and the state fit into the regulatory picture and some approaches that some other communities that already have data centers are currently being approached by them are taking and i did want to add that we do have Mr. Gertsch here, the Albany County Planning Director as well. So once we get to the end of the presentation, Mayor, if it's okay, we could turn it over to Dave and then Jay Smith and the folks from Public Works are mainly here for the discussion part and answering questions. So again, the purpose tonight really is not to decide whether data centers are inherently good or bad. And I can't echo this enough. We do not have a hyperscale data center proposal in front of us at the moment. The purpose is to understand what development of the scale actually looks like and whether Laramie has the regulatory tools we would want in place before and if this were to arise. So we'll start off at the top with the definition of a data center, and it's essentially the physical infrastructure behind cloud computing, email banking, streaming, of course, AI, right? And other digital services. so technically we already have seen these data centers in laramie right like this is in this building there is technically a data set a closet houses our server so we really tonight need to focus on what the code currently defines as a data center which is outdated right this definitions for 2013 Did not take this type of scale into account of what we're seeing today as far as data centers go. So, as mentioned, Laramie has data centers defined. It is reasonably detailed. Or it was for its time. But the industry has changed so dramatically since then. I love the definition of the supercomputer it took back in the 80s to house the same amount of memory as we all carry around with us right now. And I think we need to keep that in mind as well as to what it looks like today, but then what it's going to look like 20 years from now. um with the decommissioning of sites um when these become vacant what's the next use going to be all that you know and we we have the power today you know not having one on the menu to be reviewed or anything to address all those things so i think um we'll move on To classifying data centers, right? I mentioned technically, you know, the university here in town has a data center to how, you know, where they have all their central IT servers and stuff like that. We have one here. The city has one. But this slide is intended to show a little bit more about scale and how it's evolved. So. The term data center can describe everything from a small server room to a hyperscale campus that we're seeing over in Cheyenne at this moment. And some of these newer ones proposed are 100 plus acres in size, in campus size. So it's not just a building these days, multiple buildings, a full campus. So I've grouped facilities by electrical demand because power draw is one of the clearest indicators of the overall scale of potential community impact of the facility. So moving up from kind of these micro edge facilities, you move up to small and midsize. Once you get into the 10 megawatt range, you begin getting into what's called a midsize facility. such as the Derecho supercomputer site at the NCAR facility in Cheyenne, which draws about 2.7 megawatts continuously. And I'm going to go back to this a couple of times during the presentation, but when we're talking about energy usage here, that 2.7 megawatts is a continual use, right? And to give you a sense... One megawatt is basically what one megawatt of continuous load is what's needed to fuel about 750 residential homes. so you know 2.7 megawatts is already getting large but as you can see the numbers begin to climb very quickly a large facility could be 10 to 100 megawatts related digital's first phase in cheyenne is about 88 megawatts um and you know that is approaching the Load that the whole city of Laramie uses currently, which is, it's between sixty and ninety, depending, but just to give you a scale, there's what this data center is using the same amount of load that the whole city of Laramie is currently using. And this is important when we're talking about could one move here tomorrow. We'd say a lot would need to happen to the. electrical grid we have in place now and the power supply we have now to even begin thinking about that. And so above 100 megawatts, we begin getting into what most people think of as the hyperscale facility developed by cloud computing and AI companies. And we're getting into the gigawatts here. So the amount of electricity these campuses and these data center campuses are using is huge. So I mentioned the residential comparison already just to give you a sense. Let's talk about water a little bit now. So the water column needs important qualification. there's not an easy way to state, you know, if it's this size data center uses this much water, right? That technology and the systems associated with cooling these data centers are rapidly evolving as well. And a lot of the newer data centers Are using technologies that are using very little water actually on closed loop systems where they're filled one time and then, you know, they need maintenance, but they're not continuously drawing waters like some older data centers are. I do want to mention here that Governor Gordon earlier this year in his brief on data centers called the Data Centers the Wyoming Way provided a framework that specifically spoke to Wyoming and how we with our needs and our water situation and so forth.

Okay.

I was told I need to speak up a little bit more so for the folks online. So I think we need to celebrate so many people being interested in this topic. But anyway, Governor Gordon in his brief data centers, the Wyoming way specifically calls for data center development to protect Wyoming's water. uh resources and encourages technologies and practices that minimize water consumption i think as a city we should really you know when we look at our own policy currently around data centers this use i think that would be very wise to adhere by by that and what that means is regulating the amount of water that can be associated with a use like this um So the policy question is not necessarily in council chambers, it goes up, right? But here we got to have a roll of tape to bring it up a little bit. So the policy question is not necessarily whether data centers should use, it's really about addressing that this is a major concern for this community. And I think that's probably why a lot of folks are here this evening. We want to protect our water. We have such great resources, the Casper aquifer, the Laramie River that really sustain us in a way that we're really lucky as a Western small community to have those. And I think a lot of people, myself included, as a citizen of Laramie, want to be sure that we protect those. You know, I just wanted to include the The golf course today too, as a comparison, we have data centers aren't the only major water users out there. Right? So I would say, and I guess I should caveat this. I only play golf twice a year, whether I need to or not. So, I don't know if I'd play it, put this in there if I was a big golfer, but I would say the golf course here roughly use about 63M gallons of water annually. And to give you a sense. One of these larger hyperscale facilities can be filled up with three million gallons of water if it has a closed loop system and then maintained at that level. And to give you a scale, what's three million gallons of water, right? Well, you can fill an Olympic size swimming pool with about two million gallons. So just to give a sense. Our parks and rec director isn't here, but I don't know how much water it takes to refill our own pool, but I imagine it's probably around a million, the lap pool. Let's talk about land now, since we talked about water and electricity. Do we have the land? I'll just get right to it. Do we currently have land zoned? appropriately in Laramie to house a hyperscale facility. And this is on a later slide, but I think I want to preface this discussion with no, we don't. We have, there's two parcels of land in the city limits. One's owned by Albany County at the fairgrounds. The other one is owned by the UP Railroad. And neither one of those, I mean, each one's around 70 and 90 acres in that scale. And they're zoned industrial. So if, you know, Meta or whoever came tomorrow to the office and was like, where could we site one of these buy-write Tomorrow, I would say there's these 2 places. However, the fairground site, half of it is in conservation easement. The other half is pretty intensively used as we all know by the county and the sheriff's office and all that. And is they, they have uses for their property as well. I'll just leave it at that. So I would say. It would be very difficult, I think, to say that we currently have land zoned and ready to go in the city of Laramie, and that's excluding review of water capacity and electric hookup, which is a completely different story. I hope I painted that picture well as to what it would take to get a hyperscale facility that's using close to ten times what we currently have a load for. here in Laramie today. So I would say shovel ready, we do not have any sites within the city limits that are shovel ready for a data center at this scale. So the main point is that Laramie does not currently have anything approaching the scale of modern hyperscale development that's happening at Cheyenne nor does it really have the land zoned and ready to go for it. So now we'll get into, as we see it, we wanted to provide some high-level benefits and risks to data centers. And, you know, and here I'm just here to, as we were talking about earlier, call balls and strikes. I'm neutral. I'm providing information. So I need to kind of give both sides here, but truly data centers can bring very real economic benefits to cities. But as I mentioned before, I think the story I'm really trying to tell is they can create unusually large infrastructure resource demands as well. And the balance between those two depends on the scale of the facility and most importantly, how we as, you know, Albany County and City of Laramie prepare for it. So the most obvious benefit, of course, is tax revenue. These facilities can represent hundreds or even hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars in capital investment that can translate into a substantial tax base or, you know, or municipality. They generate considerable construction activity that lasts years, which means a significant number of construction jobs and business for contractors, suppliers, hotels, restaurants. The economic impact is substantial when you think about a data center that takes years to construct and finish. Important distinction with jobs is the number of permanent jobs, usually much smaller, of course, than what it takes to build one of these. So it's less about the permanent jobs that it brings in the benefit column and more about the capital investment tax revenue. A lot of these facilities are providing substantial infrastructure investment as well to the communities they land in roads, utility improvements, transmission facilities and other improvements. And if structured appropriately. They can potentially support a lot of development beyond the data center itself. And I think this is where the cooperation between the city and county are so important because the fact that the city doesn't currently have. Land zone within it. That could house 1 of these, I mean, the county is a whole different story, right? That's why we all love Laramie so much, right? You can leave and be in the wide open spaces like that. Right? I love it. But. I think if one located out in the county somewhere, the infrastructure it would take would be connected to the city, which could provide a pathway for developers with, you know, shovel-ready land that's got water, sewer, roads, everything built. So yeah, a major technology investment of this kind could also help diversify the local economy and create connections to other, you know, technology, research, energy, or workforce development opportunities. So then we'll pivot now to the other side of the investment and, you know, the potential risks that come when, you know, data center comes to town, right? First, is the electrical system. Who pays for all these improvements, right? That's where the negotiation process is so important on the front end. And Cheyenne's done a really good job of is these large load tariffs that they've done that hasn't, because think of it as you're expanding the grid by a magnitude of, say, 10. right that's got to be sustained and paid for and a lot of times you know that comes back on the normal the consumers that are already on the grid um so being sure that the the the data center the end user of all this excess power is paying for that is super important um So it gets to the point of who bears the cost of the project and that's what we really want to be sure we address on the front end. Water is a completely other concern. I think I've gone over that fairly thoroughly, but water demand does vary pretty widely depending on the cooling technology used in these facilities. As I mentioned, these closed loop systems that are now pretty much par for the course, especially in Western communities that are not flush with water, like the ones popping up around the DC area, the East Coast, the South. So these closed loop systems are really what we could expect. So I think there are avenues where, you know, water is not a major concern. But we would certainly want that addressed and a lot of communities are doing this by requiring the data centers to disclose how much water they're using. They can't use a certain Oprah certain amount and so forth. So then they need to plan for that. Um. So then comes the other potential impacts, noise, air quality. I mean, the interesting thing about data centers are I've talked about the power supply, but what And a lot of these facilities are generating their own power, but they still want to be hooked up to a public utility for redundancy, right? They, God forbid, chat GPT went down, right? They just can't let that happen. So they have their source of power, and then they have a redundant source. So they're actually doubling the amount of power they actually need. And a lot of that on-site power generation is by generators and stuff, which does generate a lot of noise, a lot of off-gassing, off-site impacts, which municipalities have had to deal with. But again, we have avenues for that. We have a conditional use permit process in town, which directly gets at addressing off-site impacts of certain uses. And I will get to that as far as how our code is currently set up with data centers. But the conditional use process is a really useful process that gives us a higher level of regulation and questioning power for certain uses. And I certainly think that a data center qualifies for that. And I'll just quickly speak about the regulatory question. I started off the presentation with saying we're in a good place. And I want to echo that again, because one of the risks that have come up is not having the appropriate regulatory framework in place. And I would say, I would encourage, you know, the governing bodies to move rather quickly. I know Dave in the county, they're working on a zoning district, especially for data centers. But I think we really do need to consider our regulatory framework and how it is a little bit dated because getting ahead of this and, you know, I don't want to get to the recommendation slide yet, but turning the use of data center into a conditional use permit process in all zoning districts where it's currently allowed would be a great first step just to give us another another level of regulation. We're frozen. There we go. I've gone over this pretty well. I don't know that we need to speak too much more about it. The way that data centers are being cooled and powered is rapidly changing as well and will continue to into the future. But I just have a couple of examples of systems that are used that, you know, don't use that much water right so this technology does exist it could be required by by a municipality if one wanted if a data center wanted to move move here and then yeah i mentioned the power as well and and what they're dealing with in science i'm not going to spend too much time more time on this slide um I will say that Governor Gordon in his... Phillip, I have a question.

Councilor O'Doherty.

Before you move on from that though, air-cooled means more fans and more noise. Closed-loop means more energy. And so I just want to point that out, I think.

Thank you.

Okay. And again, I did want to mention the brief that Governor Gordon did and has these recommendations through his recent data centers, the Wyoming Way Framework, which identifies many of the same considerations we're discussing. Does that tonight, water conservation, protection of existing utility, rate payers, transparency, community impacts, and so forth. So on water, I guess real quick, the governor's approach encourages technologies and practices that minimize consumption, protect Wyoming's water resources. So I think we already have a good policy framework to follow a good foundation when we start looking at our own codes. I think probably many folks are aware, I know, of the scale of data centers that Cheyenne is encountering. But I just want to say the closed captioning is over the lowest example. But Project Jade, which actually is currently paused, would be among one of the largest data centers in the US. Closed loop cooling is planned, but I mean, this is a 600 acre site, 2.7 gigawatts planned. Again, we're running at about 60 to 80 megawatts here. Total usage of the city of Laramie. It's interesting to see this scale and what's already occurring. And I'll just take some time real quick. It's like, why is this occurring over in Cheyenne just 42 miles away, right? compared to Laramie. And I think one of the largest reasons is the public utility serving these Black Hills energy is much more open to expanding its infrastructure and accommodating for data centers than Rocky Mountain Power is here in Laramie. You know, in discussions that we've had, even for just the housing issue of could the current load that is supplied in Laramie even support the amount of housing units, the additional housing units that the City of Laramie would need is in question. And we're talking a completely different scale here. So I think we need to keep that in mind here is how important it is for the public utility to be on board with this and As you can see, they are on board in Cheyenne, expanding the infrastructure. Black Hills is on board. At the moment, Rocky Mountain Power is not, and that's our major provider. So I want to provide some examples there. Okay, thank you. And this is just to bring it home a little bit as to It varies greatly, but so this is giving the scale of what data centers are using now. In the city of Laramie there, it says 108. Again, this is an ongoing load, so it changes. But the CRUSO project, or Project Jade, rather, in Cheyenne is just off the charts as much energy as is required for a facility like that. So I'll jump a little bit into one other layer of review that does apply to projects of this size in Wyoming, and that is the Industrial Siting Act. It's a state process run through DEQ's Department of Environmental Quality's Industrial Siting Division. and the industrial site and council ultimately acts on the permit um so the benchmark for a project like the or for what qualifies to be reviewed under this process is in the threshold of about excuse me 291 million dollars now and any of these hyperscale facilities are easily topping that amount um so the the The purpose of the industrial siting act is to expand on the normal zoning or site plan review process that a locality has in place. I'll let Dave speak a little bit more because this is probably more pertinent to the county than it is in the city. What's reviewed in the industrial siting process is, you know, social, economic, environmental impacts, impact to roads, utilities, emergency services. So it's really like. It's acting as a mediator between the use and the municipality that, you know, they, they may, they may not have code in place. I think that the state legislatures identified this want to help localities out through this process. So, again, yeah, I don't want to speak for Albany County. Um, but he can speak to what the county's review looks like, um, regarding data centers. I know for the city, right? We have the site plan process. In addition to the conditional use process or permit process that became to that and our site plan process looks at all of these things as well. Um. how it impacts roads utilities emergency services all of those things would be addressed through our site plan process and compliance with with that as well and um so so so there's that um just touching briefly on Albany County um I think the zoning well, I'll just let Dave speak to the Albany County piece. I just think it's important for us tonight to to acknowledge that the land is not currently available in the city limits to accommodate any, you know, hyperscale data center. So cooperation with the county would be key. You know, if if that were to occur, I will leave it at that. Is there a question?

Councilor Bowling.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Philip. Um, just for my own clarification, when, you know, we're talking about the, the, the two parcels of land that could possibly, right, um, UP and the, um, and the fairgrounds. Yeah, NS County. But, um, when it comes to the county specifically, are we talking, does that calculus take into consideration private land that could be then sold and then applied to rezone?

Well, not to get through you commissioners and Mayor Comby, I would say to Councilman Bolling's question, The land is certainly, you know, I'll just take where we are now, right? Adjacent to us are sections of undeveloped land owned by a private land owner, right? So if the applicant representing the data center wanted to locate there and wanted to annex into the city, then the annexation report That would have to be generated would also be addressing all these things. I mentioned before impacts on roads, utilities, connection, accessibility, all that stuff. And then, you know, ultimately city council gets to decide, do we want to extend services? Um, city services out and annex this piece of property and it's not just utilities. I mean, other things need to be taken into account too, like the security, expanding police, fire, all that. I mean, needs to be considered, um, So there is a process for, we would go through the annexation process first. But there are instances, right, that, you know, perhaps want to be discussed later where connection to city services wouldn't be needed. And then the county processes are in place. But I'd let Dave speak to what goes into their site plan process and their review.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for the presentation. I have a question. I know in the previous slide it noted the aquifer protection overlay zone. And from my little bit of looking into it, Anything in zone one would not be allowed, but if there were to be something, and maybe this again, because there isn't anything available on the city side. So maybe this is more of a question for the county and I should hold tight. But what would that is there anything in our use document that addresses things in the aquifer protection area in zones two or three? And again, maybe that's for the county and I can hold tight.

Yeah, so. Through you mayor and chair, I would say there are regulations regarding what kind of wells you could you could put in right in the in the casper if it was in the county and not associated with the city process. And those are regulated like high impact and, you know, any type of discharge would be highly regulated as well. And a lot of these closed loop systems are, you know, they're, they're needing to discharge, you know, waters with, you know, that is. I don't want to get too deep into it. Maybe I'll let Jay Smith, our public works director speak to it, but. long story short yes there are provisions in the casper aquifer protection overlay that speak to what types of wells and and the type of well would certainly be needed if they're not going to connect to city um if they're not going to connect to city services and as we all know i mean any well is going to be regulated by the state engineer's office and reviewed through that manner as well okay Okay, so now we're getting into the meat of it a little bit is what does Laramie's code currently look like, you know, for data centers. So there are two zoning districts, our industrial park zoning district as well as the technology and office zoning district where it is permitted by right. That means you do a site plan process where all of these things I mentioned the impacts on roads, how is it going to connect? I just want to emphasize that just because something's permitted by right doesn't mean you just pop in there with the construction crew and start work tomorrow, right? public works is involved fire departments of all police department reviews these plans you know planning reviews them obviously and we're all trying to make sure it fits in to our current infrastructure our you know planned infrastructure improvements in that area so it is a very intensive process that isn't guaranteed either it might it may not work but that's the beauty of the site plan process is It needs to conform to what we have in place and what we can reasonably serve. And then there's two or there's three additional zoning districts, the limited manufacturing and I-1 and I-2 industrial zoning districts where data centers, as they're currently defined, are permitted through conditional use permit. And this is an area I think is a low hanging fruit for consideration of making them all a conditional use permit because the conditional use gives us that extra level of review and assurance that it does fit in that area where it's proposed. I've mentioned this a couple of times. This is just to give you an idea. These, you know, these two parcels of land, uh based on that previous slide are parcels of land that you know it's permitted by right to establish the data center use But it's again, it's even a stretch in my mind. The UP rail yard south of west side essentially is 45 acres and then the fairgrounds is 92 acres. Half of that being a conservation easement. So I just added a couple of examples of what modern day hyperscale data centers are actually in need of. And as you can see, kind of out of the running and short on land within the city that's permitted by right to serve one of these i've mentioned this as well but just to bring it home um even if a data center like we hear about oh why don't a data center just build you know um it's its own power plant its own coal-fired power plant to it they're not the They aren't going that direction. They're still wanting redundant power. And this is what we're hearing from experts in the field that without redundant power, without a power source from a public utility, these uses will not come to town. And as I've said several times, we don't have anywhere near the load required currently to even get close to a hyperscale facility. Can't emphasize that enough, the required upgrades and such that would be required to supply that power that's currently needed for these huge data centers. So we in planning, we always like to live in the solution, right? Like how, what do we do if we're approached by a data center? And I think the negotiation process is key and something that other localities have really done a good job doing. As data centers have gotten larger, communities have started looking beyond just traditional zoning regulations. What we're seeing now is increasingly that development agreements, infrastructure agreements, community benefit agreements, and specialized utility tariffs are coming into play. And these are just a couple of examples. Important caveat is right. We're not like, hey, if you come to town, we'll give you this. It's it's much more structured than that. These aren't just. Payments that a local government can demand exchange for approving a project. Each arrangement, of course, has its own legal basis. Some are negotiated as part of a broader economic development package. Some directly address infrastructure impacts created by the projects. And some, like Cheyenne, they're utility arrangements. And arrangements, these tariffs that are put into place so that the normal rate payer isn't burden with a large increase in their monthly bills. So there are examples out there on how communities have set themselves up and have negotiated appropriately. And I want to say some of these community benefit funds are, you know, they're substantial. I mean, these data centers, a billion dollar data center, even with the tax revenue alone could really you know contribute and does contribute heavily to localities but it's like setting yourself up for what is the money going to be used for what are our priorities um and i would say that comes second to can our current situation handle this as far as utilities water goes So this is the last slide. Luckily right before I turn it over to Dave. But I want to finish with some things that the counselors and commissioners should consider going forward. They're kind of a menu of policy options based on what we've learned from looking at Laramie's existing regulations and what's happened elsewhere in Wyoming, specifically in Cheyenne and other communities and how they're responding to the industry. Um, I think scale based definitions is a good place to start. Right? We have an antiquated definition of a data center. There's 1 data center, which essentially covers a closet of full of servers and a 1000 acre site. Right? So we gotta, we gotta get on top of that. I think, um. you know, require the information necessary to evaluate the project effectively. And that is, yeah, okay, so we're considering your data center, how much water do you need? And how often are you gonna be discharging? What are the offsite impacts? And these are things that we address almost weekly in pre-development or pre-application meetings with applicants, where we try to get a better sense of the project and how the scale and such butts up against what we have in place, what council has established in our unified development code. I think coordination with Albany County, it's a great first step to have this joint work session too. As I mentioned, the very large hyperscale facilities aren't coming to the city, essentially. They're gonna be, they need land, you know, and that's gonna be out the county, outside of the existing city limits. So some type of agreement, you know would essentially help us address that is you know if and and and how that is set up i think could be a point of discussion this eve um water and kool-aid water i think is probably one of the largest um considerations we want to know that's addressed in some of the other recommendations here um And then the lastly, I've mentioned that a couple of times too, but changing the buy right process to more of a to a conditional use process, which gives us a higher level of review. But I will pause here. I'll turn it back over to Mayor or Chair. And.

Councillor Shumway.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Philip, for your presentation. I just wanted to ask if there had been any thought about a possibility of three other properties within the city limits. And obviously, there's more to it than what we've probably even considered. But do we have an understanding with these three properties? First one is BP Amoco. That's a possibility. Another one is the... if a person wanted to come in and make a great offer to Laramie Country Club, they could take over that property. And then the third one would be agricultural land between West Laramie and the airport, which is within the city limits. Can we have an understanding or agreement with them that they have to go through the process with the city and with us before they make any changes agreements with data centers to place their facilities on those properties.

Yes. I can go through, I can go through each property here. I think it is important for the public to know what we're talking about here, but the BP AMCO site, let's make sure I'm getting the right information, Is not appropriate. It's not the sites that I mentioned. Those are. Those are zone industrial where it's permitted by, right? The ones you mentioned all may be big, large enough. But they're not zoned in a sense that they're permitted by right there. They're either not permitted. Like, the BPM Co site is see to the land towards the airport is owned ag. So it's not even permitted there at all. And then the university land.

sorry could you tell me again where which which specific university land you were talking about well the the land i'm familiar with is between the the last housing in the city of west well the city of laramie west laramie extending to the airport i think that's quite a bit of agricultural land and which also you know includes uh the laramie uh country club But, you know, I can see that somebody that really, really wants to get moving on a project can come in and make a trade or a business deal or something before we even know that it's underway. But I wanted to know if we have an understanding that we can be involved in that process before it happens.

To answer Councilor Shumway, yeah, I would say so that property is zoned ag. So it's not permitted. So in order, if someone were wanting to consider that property, then it would have to come to the council for rezoning. And we would say, what's happening? Does this fit in? And I can tell you, it doesn't fit into our current future land use map either. which designates what we want this property what what we want you know property to be developed as 20 years down the road um so i'm glad you brought those up but it is important to know that those aren't those are either you know they they are not you know by right process or it's not permitted at all um and you I just yeah, I can't see a situation where we wouldn't be involved on the onset where we would be essentially an application plopped on our desk for a billion dollar project within the city limits. I just there. There really is no piece of land that, you know, I feel like. That makes sense with today.

Councilor Foley.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Phillip. And at the risk of redundancy, my previous question, which I kind of realized as you were answering. So as I understand it, in a hypothetical scenario, any large-scale project would have to then go through a possible rezoning process. Can you just, especially for the public education, talk to us a little bit about what that process is and what that would look like? I know this is a hypothetical scenario, but given that there's no currently zoned by right land that that could support it, you know, in that. Hypothetical scenario, what that what what that could look like, what that process would look like, how we would be able to engage with it, et cetera.

Yes. And, and give me one second, because we do have such a great definition as to why a rezoning is, you know, what, what we, it has to do with the public good, but I want to pull it up for everybody. So, yeah, I know we just went over this, but, um, so, So the purpose of a rezoning is essentially it's not to relieve particular hardship, not to convert special privileges or rights to any person, but only to make adjustments to the official zoning map that are necessary in light of changed conditions, changes in public policy to conform with the city's comprehensive plan or that are necessary to advance the general welfare of the city. So we would be in a rezoning we would not only be, we would be largely looking at what's the surrounding land use, what's the impact. A lot of the things that are, you know, even considered, you know, I'll go back to this state industrial siting process. I mean, if we're going to rezone a property, we have to make sure it fits in with the surrounding land use, that it can be served to that density of use. And, you know, These zoning districts where it's permitted are some of the highest, most intensive land uses that we have. So we want to make sure that they're served. So, for the, for the public certification, right? I mean, the rezoning goes through planning commission and three readings as city council, all of which have public hearings associated with them. So anything that we miss as staff, any considerations from, you know, the local communities, people that are directly affected that live in the neighborhood or close by that, you know, that that may. you know, have additional information that's brought to light through the public process. So I'd say it's an extremely transparent process and, you know, would be the first step. And then after that, you'd have the conditional use process to go through as well. So there's a lot of I hate to call them hurdles, but as a developer, you got to jump over all of them to get the finish line, get your project done. But in this case, I mean, we're starting from square one and there are so many opportunities for public input for consideration of all kinds through a rezoning and then of course through the site plan process.

Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Philip, do you mind moving forward to the next slide or the last slide that you were on? Sorry. Yep. Oops, that one. So in thinking about considerations, I would love to see added to that the community benefits agreement. I know some of these things could potentially be in a community benefits agreement, but calling that out specifically would be, I think would be behoove us.

Thank you. Thank you very much. David.

Madam chair and commissioners, honorable mayor and council members. I'm Dave Gertsch. I'm the planning director for Albany County. Planning Manager Philip Gavituller invited me to come give a brief kind of background of our regulations and our regulatory framework that we work under. If I knew this was the hottest ticket in town, though, I think I might have declined the invitation. But that's okay. I'm here now. So, um, So, yeah, that's who I am. That's why I'm here. So county governments, you may have heard the term counties are an arm of the state. That term is kind of coined or whatever phrase was coined because the counties can't do anything unless the state says they can do those things. So authority has to be given through Wyoming statutes to the counties to regulate anything. And we do have authority to regulate land use through zoning. That's the method that we can regulate land uses in counties. Industrial Siding Council has authority as well to regulate some projects, industrial projects that are over $290 million as Phillip talked about. So there's also those things in statute where counties can't regulate. So anything over $290 million that will go through the industrial siting permit process review are preempted from county Um, regulation other than maybe zoning, we may be able to require zoning for the project. Now, there's an exemption to that rule or exception. And that comes if if there's actually industrial park designated by the county. So, if the county designates an industrial park, anything within that any of these big projects that are over that 200Million dollar threshold can be regulated by the county. So. So, we have that that opportunity to do that and, of course, statute doesn't define how to designate such a thing. But, but I think that's just up to the counties, how they determine they want to designate. Those projects are designate industrial parks. So, our zoning regulations are. And most zoning regulations are basically are based upon the foundation of the comprehensive plan and Albany county has adopted a comprehensive plan and reviewing that. It says absolutely nothing about data centers, obviously, because this is kind of a new thing, but it does generally support economic development, employment, generating land uses. It does direct development to areas with existing infrastructure and efficient public services. And it also encourages a development to be away from environmentally sensitive areas. So that's all we have for policy direction from our, our comprehensive plan. How many county zoning resolution does address data centers in that? We have a use that's called information technology facilities data centers in our land use table. That that is not defined anywhere. There's no definition of what that means. um and this land use is allowed by right in commercial and industrial zones um so what that means is if if uh somebody came in and wanted to do a data center right now if it's under that 290 million dollars and we can regulate it and we can require permit then they would have to get a zoning certificate. That includes your basic information, applicant, owner, address what is the project going to be, what land uses is going to be, and a simple site plan. Very easy process. It'll be in and out the door in two weeks. So if anything under that threshold came into us and it was in a commercial zone property or industrial property, it would be in and out in two weeks and they'd be good to go. So, obviously, this could be problematic other than most of these hyper scale projects are going to be over that two hundred million dollar threshold. So we're, I guess, protected by the state industrial setting council on their process where they'd have to go through and get permitting through that and potentially the need to get a zoning change. But if it's less than that, and maybe it's not a problem if it's less than that, maybe it's not a big deal, but it's pretty easy process. So that's kind of where we're at today. Right now, the county planning office and the county attorney's office is working on a draft zoning district that would allow for industrial parks to be established. So that would be our process to establish the industrial park. Um, and to, we would also pair that with any of the uses in this part would go through conditional use process and that would be where we could address impacts associated with large industrial process or projects like data centers. Um. One thing I think is important to note about counties and maybe re note is that we can regulate what we're told we can regulate by the state and things that are already regulated by the state. We can't really duplicate. So when we're talking about water and somebody wants to drill a well, they don't go to the county. They have to go to the state engineer's office to get their permit. And so that's where the regulation occurs. Power. um i know if it's a public utility it has to that's regulated by the um the state and i think there's some discussions about where they can do that if somebody puts in a power facility and it's used for private purposes whether public utilities commission will regulate that or not but i mean that's a discussion i think people are having will figure out um and then also like emissions um That's regulated by an air quality permit through the department environmental quality. So. So we can do some regulation and there's things that we, we don't really have. A lot of influence on and water is 1 of them, which is kind of a huge deal when it comes to data centers. But that's all I really had. I'm just kind of filling in on that and happy to answer any questions that that any of you have about our regulations where we're going with them anything like that. So.

Councillor Doherty.

Did you say you don't have industrial parks zoned in Albany County? There are right now there aren't are not any industrial parks correct?

Correct. And we don't have a method to do that at this point, but that's what we're working on through regulation amendments.

And then that regulation would include conditional use that applies the community standard that you're allowed to apply by state statute, that you're not limited.

Yes, so we can, it will be two different applications, a zoning district amendment, so that will establish the zoning that would allow the industrial park And all of the uses within this industrial park will have to then after that's approved or if that's approved, go through the conditional use process to address any impacts that the county is able to to address.

for the vice mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. And I hate to muddy the waters here, but I just want to information that has been shared with some of us that zoning for industrial park can then create a loophole where regulations are more difficult. Is that is that you're I mean, obviously not because you're saying that feels like you would have more Protections creating that industrial park, but I have also heard the opposite that it creates a loophole. And so the conditional use permit may or may not be. Valid, so if you have any insight on that, I'd sure appreciate it.

So, by I'm trying to understand your question, so by creating a zoning district for an industrial park. you're saying that that could potentially create a loophole and they wouldn't have to get a conditional use?

Yes, that is, that is my understanding. And I wish I had my notes from the last meeting, but I forgot them. Erin, do you?

Yeah, what we were saying is that then that's the loophole where they don't have to go through the industrial siting process. So if it's an industrial park, they don't have to go through industrial siting.

So, yes, that is correct. They will not have to get industrial citing permit and the county would then have authority to say, yay or nay on the approval of of a project. Now, that being said, industrial citing from my understanding what I've been. uh told we've had some conversations with industrial society is that they are still involved in the process and they still require some information but the permitting itself would be done by the county thank you for taking that really confusing question and getting us there appreciate it no not a problem thank you david further questions or comments

Yes, Commissioner Gosar.

Thank you, Mayor and Chair. So David, that would just without the Industrial Siding Council, it'll just make the county essentially similar to the city, right? Because if it comes into the city, if it were, the Industrial Siding Council is not going to deal with the data center either. And this would be just essentially the same process only would be a county process if there were an industrial park, and the conditional use was done by the county instead of the Industrial Siding Commission. Is that correct?

yes we would try to i mean in the regulations we're kind of working on we're trying to mimic industrial siding council's requirements the best that we can um so so yeah it would be we would try to do as much as we can as at the county level and be a county process instead of a state process

I just want to add quickly about the industrial siting process, and it is also very transparent in nature, long review periods, even longer than currently what we would even require. And we're getting these mailed to us from Cheyenne currently because what the Industrial Siting Council does is identifies impacted communities surrounding the project. That's not just the locality it's in, but like we're getting ones in Albany County and City of Laramie. what's happening in Cheyenne. So we have the opportunity to comment. So we would certainly be, you know, we would have the opportunity, public input, all of that as part of the industrial siting processes as well. Very much part of it.

Councilor O'Doherty.

So it seems like there would be no advantage for the county to create an industrial park and then you would have to do the regulation that right now would be controlled by the industrial siting process, which they have a lot more resources to do all of the environmental stuff, all of those things. If you made it industrial park, then that would fall on the county.

to to overlook all that stuff so to me it doesn't sound like there'd be any benefit to the county to designate areas as industrial parks i mean i would just say that um there are definitely pros and cons to how it's how we would want to regulate these things um and so yeah um what you say is is true the the state does have a lot more resources um

so yeah there's some pros and cons that we really need to look at if we decided to do that vice mayor sorry one more thing to that point though going the see the conditional use permit route would also potentially provide the county more um input into what they want to see and community residents what they want to see rather than just going by what the industrial setting folks implement, right? So there could be some pluses and minuses on that side.

Yeah, absolutely.

Councilor Shumway.

Thank you, Mayor. I don't know who David or Bill wants to handle this one. Two questions, one about water, one about power. First one about water. Let's say that you have a system that's a closed loop, takes 3 million gallons. i don't know how often but they eventually have to discard discharge the water i don't know where it goes how it's discard how it's treated or whatever and that that's on the water how is it how is discharged water handled then the other one is on power once the data center begins with their power demands their rates will be set by the state as are our rates set by the state What is happening in Cheyenne? Are the rates going up? Are they treating them totally differently? I want to know if the general public is going to be protected by the increased cost of power and electricity for these data centers.

Definitely fill up questions.

I'll do my best. you know to counselor some ways questions i mean the the the water question um i mean what can be discharged you know from any use is you know heavily regulated already right um i would say not to get too far into the weeds but a lot of these closed loop systems um you know the the the chemical agents that they're using in it i mean they're um you know, they're, you know, they're regulated as far as what you're keeping this water in there for, you know, year or so at a time. It's the glycol or whatever they're using in there. I mean, what it is, rest assured, it is, you know, regulated not by our public works department, but by, you know, the the the DEQ process that would need to occur for discharge. Now, whether or not our current public wastewater facility could handle that I mean, you know, 3 million gallons. Yeah, I mean, our pool, our rec center pool is, if you remember last year when they kept finding glass in it, they were draining it a couple of times a season, right? And what generally occurs is like the rec center will call the wastewater treatment plant and say, hey, we need to drain the pool. You're going to get a lot of chlorine and stuff coming down the pike. And because the whole way the water is treated and all the microorganisms needed, they need to make sure balance is in place when this slug of you know chlorinated water is coming through so I assume something similar to that is in place in communities with these with these closed Loop systems um but you know to your to your power question what's going on in Cheyenne no from what we understand I mean the large the large utility tariffs that are in place are protecting the the regular rate payer. So that's how these agreements are in place so that, you know, the end user of all this extra power that's being generated is the one paying for it. That's the way it should be. And that's the way it's set up over there. So that's how we understand what's going on in Cheyenne.

Thank you. Councillor Boling.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you again, Phillip. And you might have just touched on this, but to my understanding that that critical guardrail for consumer protection is the large load tariff. And I'm curious about what that process looks like, if that's something that's adopted at a city council level, if it's a county commission level. And then I I'm curious, actually, and maybe even Todd can speak to this because just in terms of the cost to even consider a second or third transmission line. Right. And I know that we have conceptually thought through what that would look like, even though it's not something that's nearly on Pacific Corps agenda at all. But I think adding one line is like $120 million plus like a 300 megawatt line is like $300 million. And and without you know a multi-state uh taxpayer base to kind of pay for that i don't know how any one single municipality could handle that um unless it's something that you know is coming directly from the you know being supported by the by meta or something like that and todd correct that's information from last year so correct me if i'm wrong on that please

Honorable Mayor, City Council, County Commissioners, you're correct about the lines coming in. The way that that's working in Cheyenne is through a compact power agreement, I think is the term that's called, and any upgrades to the system. are required to be paid for by that user not allowed to be spread on to the rate payers and that's how you protect your rate payers so that let's say that something were to land in albany county and required i don't know 40 million dollars in upgrades to transformers lines towers all that through that agreement it is that that all that expense is handled by the user that's creating that load and i see commissioner jones is shaking her head to that too

And if I could just add, I mean, with any development that comes to town, you know, subdivision, commercial, otherwise, there's something which we require called a franchised utility agreement where, you know, water or any public utility, gas, electricity, that's going to serve this subdivision or use. the developer needs to provide evidence from that utility, a signed letter essentially saying they can serve that. So that would be the process and that's in order for it to get approved. That's in order for it to have a complete application on the front end to even be considered and be reviewed. You have to have all these public utilities behind you saying we can serve you. And in order for a matter to come to town, they would need to do that in order to do that. They would need this agreement in place and so forth.

Oh, yeah. Thank you, Mayor. And just to clarify more for myself than anything else, I understand that any that that that lands on the user, especially the data center. I think my question pertains specifically to the cost that it would take to get pacific cord even to bring a second line from foot creek or uh uh or two more lines you know which would put us at that 300 megawatt but we're talking 300 million dollars in that case does that cost also land on pacific core as that you are they consider the user or how is even something like that um supported because i'd imagine that it would need to come through states that you know are not honored i don't know todd maybe you can answer that yeah uh count uh

I believe that it's that same situation, whatever is driving that power request is going to have to be required to pay for that. That line that comes in the upgrade all upgrades lines, towers, transformers, all those bits are going to have to be put in through that and paid for through the user through that power compact power agreement.

Thank you and so I'm wondering if we're ready. to move on to Director Smith and just a comment to our audience participants. I think what we needed to explore was what do we have in place What are we missing in order to protect ourselves? We're trying to look at the full spectrum of control possibilities, controlling through conditional use, controlling through zoning, controlling in various ways. So I appreciate your patience and letting us kind of go through that and explore what do we have in place and where are we vulnerable. So next, Director Smith is going to focus more on public works and I believe water. So good evening.

Mayor, City Council. County commissioners.

Oh, am I? I always seem to have this issue.

I'm mostly here to answer questions, but there are a couple just pieces of information I want to provide. So, first, it's not only important whether we can produce the water, but whether we can get that water to where it needs to be. So we have transmission issues right in different parts of the city. So being able to get the water that is produced to wherever that data center may end up is important. But also we may be able to provide that water today. We also have to look at if we can provide it every time in the future. So not just today, but 10 years from now, can we provide that? And then I would stand for any questions.

Counselors, questions for Director Smith? Counselor O'Doherty?

When Mr. Gabatuller was talking about all the utilities that have to Of the franchise agreements show that they're ready to hook up is that that's the water to write our utility that utility that the city provides the water you a developer would have to work with the city and find out if the water is available specifically for that development.

Mayor through you absolutely and also we have standards we have requirements so for it's difficult because the answer is really it's very variable it depends on where this data center ends up right so there are standards that go across the city but if it's Mr. Gabatuller mentioned if we annex that's a whole different agreement that's handled through and then we would have the same standards applied there. If it was inside the municipal boundaries, right, we have to look at the current capacity in that area. Can we provide water there? But also, can we provide the sewer services too? And that goes to Councillor Shumway's question, right? Me and these microphones hate each other. I wish I was about like four inches shorter. The, uh, but, uh, counselor some ways question about what happens with the discharge water. That is so variable if it's in the city and it's annexed into the services. We treat that right if it's in the county. they could have lagoons they could have their own treatment system that that's really variable depending on where it ends up and how it ends up council shumway lots of them

my concern is glycol which is you know what's what they put through these systems is toxic waste and if it just goes into a lagoon that's eventually going to find its way down into our aquifer and are other cities prepared to treat the you know the the waste uh the water uh trend that's taken out of the system and replaced with new water and new glycol. I want to make sure that we're not getting into something that we have to increase the capacity of our treatment center or the county is prepared to do something like this with their own treatment plan. And also, are they prepared to do it through the dunes to where we don't endanger our aquifer?

mayor through you i can speak generally about the county i will leave that to mr gersh but generally if you have a lagoon or you have something like that that has to be permitted through deq also but i'll leave that part yeah chair honorable mayor through you guys um

So yeah, we have a delegation agreement with Department of Environmental Quality for our wastewater treatment systems. And they're really just limited to domestic waste of 2000 gallons a day. The size and scope of these facilities would be way beyond what the county could regulate. So it would definitely be going through DEQ and whatever processes they have to take care of that wastewater.

Councilor Bolling.

Just looking, Director Smith, for a point of comparison. Mr. GABA TULER TALKED A LITTLE BIT ABOUT, YOU KNOW, SAY, THE 63 MILLION GALLONS OF THE GOLF COURSE OR THE 200 MILLION GALLONS REQUIRED FOR OLYMPICS-WISE SWIMMING POOL. CAN YOU REMIND ME OUR LARGEST STORAGE TANK, THE ONE THAT NEEDS SOME WORK, WHAT THAT CAPACITY IS?

MAYOR, THROUGH YOU, THAT IS 8 MILLION GALLONS.

Councilor Lockhart.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you, gentlemen, for speaking tonight. And I don't know who wants to answer this. Philip, you brought up some other communities that have had data centers like in Iowa and Cheyenne and whatnot. You know, our community seems, if I look at any of those, to be one of the smallest of all those that you gave an example. So I don't even know if we'd have the resources compared to some of them to be able to do something like this, although they do have to foot the bill for quite a bit. But just having the water and we talked about the electricity. Have you found out any more about the infrastructure that was already in place with these other outside of Cheyenne, like in Iowa and whatnot, before any of these data centers when it were in or was any of that research done? Because I know that's quite a bit of tasks for you guys. Thank you.

mayor through you i i'll pass it off to mr gavituler but i did want to just add one thing there with the amount of resources i just keep in mind for everyone also moving forward any services that are added have an additional cost into the future also for maintenance

Yes, uh, through you mayor, I would say that Cheyenne is probably our best example as far as what we know was there and what has had to be added to their infrastructure. Um, but I think it's just so highly dependent where these are cited on, you know, the availability to get a franchise utility to serve them and so forth. And right now, I mean, um, you know, as I mentioned, I mean, our main, you know, um, Rocky Mountain Power is not in the same boat as Black Hills Energy is as far as serving these. So, in a sense, no, but I think we have a lot of good information from Cheyenne, but I think some of the other examples show You know, what communities can do to, you know, have impact fees associated with these uses that could really affect the municipalities bottom line in a positive way. Right? So, again, I would say China is our best example. I don't have much information on what was in place and the others yet.

Seeing no further questions or comments. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Now, I would like to just go ahead and open it up to public comment is in. We do have some people who've signed up and I'm going to take that first. And I would We may have a number of people want to speak. So the maximum is three minutes and try to keep keep to that. Secondly, if a topic has been addressed, let's try to not address the same thing over and over again, if possible, because I'd like to get the full scope rather than concentrating and repeating. And I could ask how many agree so we can get a sense. So just to do that so that we can try to get enough comments. And I think you all know, no personal attacks, no naming of individuals, um and we'd request that you not curse and things like that but you never have and so i don't anticipate that so i will start with the list people who signed up first of all mr rick martin

Thank you, Madam Speaker, honorable members of the joint session. My name is Rick Martin and I reside in Laramie's 45th precinct on Fetterman Drive. My goal is to start a broader discussion surrounding my opposition to potential future data center development. Artificial intelligence data centers enable surveillance state control. Data centers consume massive resources and threaten food security. AI data centers are linked to globalist agendas and threaten private property rights. I would like to see you all address, if you have time tonight, the tech park north of the town, which on your own website says it was built to house data centers. And I want to ask the county commissioners to consider this. The most important significant cost of the physical footprint comes in lost agricultural land and food production. Once converted to data center use, the land is no longer fit for ranching. The American Farmland Trust has highlighted ongoing losses of U.S. farmland to non agricultural development. Data centers compete directly for large flat parcels ideal for ranching and growing feed for sheep and cattle. In regions such as Virginia and the Midwest, offers reaching millions of dollars per acre have tempted some landowners. But some ranchers rejected these multi-million dollar bids, emphasizing the irreversible impact on food production capacity. And I have a few serious questions for the county commissioners. Please consider what are the water usage commitments and are there drought contingency plans that you would implement? How will increase the electrical demand for our rates and grid reliability right now? We are facing a twenty million dollar statewide increase in power from the public utilities commission. This hasn't been passed yet, but we're facing that. What noise mitigation standards would you require in the county and how will compliance be enforced? What oversight and accountability are built in? What happens if a project is abandoned? We could be in the middle of a bubble for data centers. What would we be left to clean up? But in closing, I ask each and every one of you, which are our representatives, To please consider the human and community costs, displaced families, lost ranch land, altered rural landscapes deserve greater scrutiny before you talk about allowing these mega data centers in the county. I want to thank each of you and everybody here tonight. taking a moment to review my ideas and appreciate other ideas and suggestions as together i'd like to see us work to impose a permanent moratorium on the establishment of data centers in Laramie and Albany county thank you very much okay thank you and um

Next, Michael DeGraff. Good evening, Michael.

Thanks, y'all. It's gonna be a little more informal. Thanks everybody for showing up. It's great to see All right, here we go. A Gallup poll from March twenty twenty six found that seventy one percent of the public somewhat or strongly opposed the construction of a data center in their area compared to the twenty seven percent who somewhat or strongly favor said construction. Other surveys highlight where public sentiment is trending. An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey demonstrates that despite opinions about AI showing no statistically significant change between March and July of this year, those who oppose new data centers in their area, quote, rose from 49 to 61%. I'm not here to convince anyone that we're heading in the wrong direction as a society, although I do believe that. We need to contend with the reality that there's a chance, regardless of how hard we may try, one of these companies will bulldoze their way through any public policy or regulatory framework or politician to get their project off the ground. I'm here to make the case for skepticism. We should not trust any of the information these companies tell us. They're under no obligation to tell the truth except in the court of law. This is not a theoretical understanding of what corporations typically do. We see it time and time again. when there are public record requests for their deals with power companies they come back redacted then they point to studies showing that statewide rates haven't gone up completely ignoring the fact that their rates are far lower than the surrounding rate payers and they rate payers make up the difference when there are public record requests for water deals they come back vague and redacted then they point to their direct on-site use and how low it is completely ignoring the indirect water that's required for the power generation itself Of eight major tech companies, only Meta provided their indirect water use in 2025, which was 24 times higher than their direct water footprint that they consume in the data center themselves. Then when the utility companies, private partners and tech representatives are asked about these deals, they can't tell the truth because they've signed non-disclosure agreements. They hide behind redactions and NDAs and they actively lobby against disclosure and for laws protecting themselves from releasing information. Then, when companies are required, they ignore it. They will promise tax revenue and then negotiate tax breaks, property tax abatements, full sales tax exemptions, and even income tax credits that last for decades. Initial guardrails will be dismantled over time and tariffs will forcibly be phased out and laws will be rewritten. We should not trust these corporations. Only when we have a full picture with independently verified information can we as a community make the right decisions. They don't want to be transparent and that should worry us.

Thank you. Next, I appreciate you all showing your support. but it does extend the time in between people. So anyway, I'm going to move quickly on to Stephen Magnifico.

Thank you, Mayor, Council and Commissioners. One thing I have not heard tonight is how we can protect ourselves from the impact of data centers that are being developed elsewhere in the state and in this country. They are impacting our energy rates. We are seeing a countrywide rise in energy rates, which many people are tying to data centers. Some people are saying that Some people are saying that this is a myth and that these rate increases are not tied to data centers. I don't believe that. I don't believe you guys believe that about several conversations with you guys outside of this room. We don't trust these companies. We don't trust the corporations. So I would like to ask that the. Mayor council and commissioners here look at ways we can advance community owned clean energy in this community. So, working with Rocky Mountain power and carbon power and light to support community solar programs so that any solar farms that are constructed are owned by we, the people rather than billionaires are going to sell the power generated by that to data centers. Community solar programs have brought down rates for people in other communities, notably in Colorado and in some places in Montana. um this has brought down rates for people we can do that here as well so i encourage you guys to work with rocky mountain power and carbon power and light to do that as well as put pressure on rocky mountain power and carbon power and light to support the adoption of plug-in solar systems so that renters also have access to our own solar systems as well so that addresses energy a little bit but next i want to thank you guys for being responsive to the community and hosting this work session tonight I know that you guys don't really like data centers because again, I've had conversations with you guys outside of this room. So I encourage you guys to not just look to Cheyenne for information on what's happening, but also look at them for what not to do. Right now, the city of Cheyenne is trying to overturn a referendum that gathered enough signatures. They gathered something like 3,500 signatures to undo the annexation of land that was meant to service Microsoft data center and their city council right now. the majority of them are looking to undo that referendum and directly oppose the will of the people and prevent that from ever reaching the ballot. So look to them not just for information, but as a great example of what not to do as well. Finally, I'd like to indicate that my comment here tonight was not made on behalf of any organization of that which I work, that which I'm affiliated with, or that which I pay dues to. This is my own personal private comment as a private individual. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephen. Next, Tom Matamor.

Commissioners, thank you for the time. Let me preface my remarks by saying that Nobody with a billion dollars is ever going to build a data center inside the city limits of Laramie because of the Uniform Development Code. Takes too long. It's too restrictive. And Section 1510 would keep anybody, would make Zuckerberg run back to California. All right. So therefore, the heavy lifting burden goes once again to the counties. County is not prepared for that. I have some suggestions for you because the problem with data centers is not the center. It's the data. But they're here, they're real, and someday somebody might come here. County needs a regulatory framework to deal with it, and they don't have one. First one off, closed loop systems. They should only have closed loop systems. Evaporative systems would require cooling towers and waste too much water, waste a lot of water. center any data center must build an in-house on-site treatment center they have to treat their own water before they discharge it they can't discharge glycol into lagoons or into the ground or just let it run up that water needs to be tested i were up to me it would be weekly before they discharge it. And it has to go, I would say, take it to a local lab rather than send it off to a lab of their choice or a lab on their own premises. Next thing is power. Everybody talks about power. If they don't generate their own power, they can't come to Laramie and they can't come to Albany County. We haven't even got three-phase power in half of Laramie. so we couldn't even build a data center we don't have enough electricity to build a data center in Laramie or Albany County they're going to have to build their own power plant we should encourage not only should they build their own power whatever it is solar not a big fan of because it takes up as much farmland as a data center or wind or they could build a a gas generation plant But they also need to encourage third party generation, which, in other words, means Rocky Mountain. Rocky Mountain had better get with the program or they're not going to ever be a data center in this area. And if we do get third generation, they need to provide a third party generator needs to provide to the other municipalities here. I mean, Rock River doesn't have power. Albany doesn't have power. We don't have power. So if you're going to build a data center and get a third party generator, they need to come in with a franchise agreement to deal with the rest of us. Third problem is construction personnel. Building a man camp is... Your time is up. I'm sorry. I sent this to everybody you've got. Thank you.

Next, Jim Rogers. And after Jim Rogers is Martin Buchanan. Good evening, Jim.

Good evening, everyone. Madam Chairman, Mayor. I want to speak in favor of the data centers. Some of the stuff here said denied, I think, is a little bit of a fear tactic. What I understand, and I've worked with some data centers, is most of them are going to do closed loop because it just makes sense for them to do closed loop. And some of those closed loops will use that same tactic. cooling system for up to 12 years and then they'll put it on trucks and take it somewhere and have it cleaned somewhere else. The other thing is Albany County is full of natural gas pipelines and a lot of the data centers are talking are doing their own they're going to do gas generation and many of them may not even get on the grid or if they have extra power they can put it on the grid which benefits you guys uh you're right rocky mountain powers here in laramie but how many county basically is carbon power and light and uh wheatland rea which their their supplier is uh tri-state and they're in favor of looking at these loads because you know it benefits everybody. I think we as people we like our services but now with the legislature changing a lot of the tax bases and stuff we're going to have to look at other ways to generate money to provide the services that our that residents want to have or expect to have. And I think that we need to take, and I'm hoping that the county commissioners, I live in the county, I hope they take a long hard look as if data centers do come in here that they look at them and look at each one individually. And I think there's some ideal spots in Albany County for some data centers. Um, and I think it's up to the landowner himself, the rancher, if he has a piece of property that isn't that productive as far as running a cow, which there's quite a bit of that in certain places in Albany County, uh, it would be a benefit to the county and possibly to him to have that tax. It would be a different tax and it would be a benefit to the whole county and everyone else. And with that, I thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Next, Martin Buchanan. And after Mr. Buchanan is Taylor Haynes. Good evening, Mr. Buchanan. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, Councilors, Commissioners. I live in Laradice. I wanted to stay Laradice. do any of us think that we are unfair mr buchanan oh the microphone thank you do any of us think that we're unfair or biased or prejudiced of course not so we should not be unfair or biased or prejudiced we should be fair even when a project is labeled data center for the whole nine years that i've been here the county and the state and the city have been encouraging and looking for businesses and industries and economic developments. Yet, wind projects have been tied up in court for six, seven, eight years. Other communities in the states have chased away nuclear. The university has been steadily losing enrollment. We don't want the most interesting thing in Laramie to be the obituaries, do we? Now, We are in a vast AI bubble in this country, a $2 trillion bubble, and a lot of these projects are going to blow up. And it is completely reasonable to take a slow, careful approach to it to check all the boxes. If you were to drive north of here to Basler Junction, I don't think you would see much farmland. or ranch land to be displaced. And I will finish by suggesting that we here in Albany County, we could set up our own vision and then invite people into that vision. Once Bill Gates gets his first nuclear reactor working over in Kimmerer, invite him to put one up in Basler and then invite somebody responsible for the data center next to it to use half the power And then we can use the rest of that power to lower our rates. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir.

Taylor Haynes. And after Mr. Haynes is Ron Bryan.

Good evening, Mr. Haynes. Good evening. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Councilors and County Commissions. Thank you. I'm Taylor Haynes, and I live in the county. And just to be quick, I am 100% against data centers. The American data center population is 45%, 46% of the data centers in the world. Why do we need more? It's already been said for surveillance. We don't need them in Albany County, because we're done okay. And the kind of businesses that come in here fit who we are. Data centers aren't that. Just one more point, because I agree with most of what's been said and well-spoken. In the previous life, I was a mechanical engineer, and I dealt with a lot of heat exchangers. I know air heat exchangers are noisier, but we got plenty of air. And since you don't have anywhere to put one in Laramie, if something happened and we're going to get one it needs to be somewhere in the county where the noise wouldn't be an issue and the water have you guys noticed that the Laramie River is almost a creek and it's been going down for the last five years exponentially so we really don't want to talk about anybody using millions of gallons of water and did you hear what happened in Cheyenne when Zuckerberg blamed the contractor and the contractor blamed Zuckerberg, but they dumped a bunch of glycol in the water system over there. So we don't need data centers. We need kinds of businesses that fit who we are in Wyoming. We're natural resource based. We're blessed with natural resources. Let's just stay with that. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Bryan, Mr. Bryan, After Mr. Bryan is Mary Alice Snyder.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilman, Councilwoman. I'm here because I was afraid that this would be a no backyard meeting, right? That you would be concerned about not putting a data center or any type of facility that would hamper the view in this community. And I think that we really should think more about when I was like in first grade and President Kennedy was murdered, we were in a space race. And today we are in an AI race. We're not against the USSR anymore because we managed to dismantle it. Instead, we are in a race against China, who is also a communist country. And if we do not take into consideration, we will be under their thumb, not our own. They will set the parameters for their AI system, and that will be what happens, because that's the future. You want to worry about how things look, how much you're going to pay? Guess what? It's better to pay than it is to serve. And you will have to serve if China becomes the lead. So remember that. In this situation, it is not the appearance. It is how can we fight a war that is hidden from us. There's a book called The Three-Toed Dragon. I suggest everybody read it. You have three toes. The first toe is psychological warfare. Second toe lies in innuendo. Third toe, lawfare. These are the three methods of deceiving people to believe that they don't have to fight. You do. If you choose not to put on your armor, You've already lost the point. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bryan. Mary Alice Snyder. Alex Lang. Good evening, Alex.

Hello.

Hello, honorable mayor, council members and commissioners. My name is Alex Lang and I thank you for being here today and working with the community to be proactive about data centers. I think that's really important and I really appreciate you guys taking the time and the energy to be here and listen to us. I have had the absolute privilege of being born and raised here in wonderful Laramie, Wyoming. And I feel like I'm one of the very few young folks who hasn't fled immediately upon turning 18. And one of the major reasons of that for me is the access to our wild spaces and how pristine and well cared for they are. I think in our community we value very highly our outdoor spaces. I think there's nobody in town who's a hater of Pilot Hill. And I have many fond memories of using our public spaces, especially in the community, as a vessel for building community and also where conservation and recreation can meet peacefully and happily. Me and Father and I had a tradition of going to the Hattie Fishing Derby every year, and almost every year we had a tradition of getting some poor soul stuck out of the mud. And I think that's something that's really important here in Laramie is that we have access to those spaces and that they are safe and they are clean. You know, the fish in our lakes and our rivers are safe to eat. There's no heavy metals. There's no glycols in them that are going to be poisoning us. And then in addition, I... Would the infrasounds that are put off by these AI data centers, which are lower than 20 hertz can affect on human beings, dizziness, confusion, head pain and chest pain. Vertigo, and that's what we know that it does to humans. So consider yes, we don't want this in any residential areas, but we also don't want this in areas where it could be affecting sensitive wildlife populations. And. The water that is removed from these facilities needs to be fully treated, not returns to the offer for where it can be polluting the rest of our water for the rest of time. And I feel that there needs to be at minimum a two year moratorium on any AI data centers being built in Laramie until we have a better understanding or Albany County until we have a better understanding of the consequences of these centers and the impact that they can have on the area. And then in addition, before any can come in, there needs to be comprehensive impact studies and there needs to be ongoing public monitoring of air and noise pollution. And there needs to be public comment in regards to.

Thank you Alex. Amy Benning.

Mayor and Chairman, it's so nice to see you. My name is Amy Binning. I live in the county as well. Many of you may recognize me, I spent a lot of time being the Albany County Emergency Manager. I come tonight to talk a little bit about infrastructure, the prioritization of infrastructure development, and also the support of our community. So there's a lot of history in our county of new developments that have had dissension. If you look back at the railroad, if you look back at the development of the interstate in the 1970s, And if you also look at Pete Lean is one of the newest developments, all of which have supported our community, have been critical infrastructure components that not only service us, but also service our United States citizens. Our tourism that is brought into Albany County is through this critical infrastructure. When we talk about data and we talk about technology, we are talking about critical infrastructure. There is nothing that isn't transported over this infrastructure when you look at data. I currently serve as the 911 coordinator for the Wyoming Department of Transportation. That job has been very interesting because our critical infrastructure in the state is depleting. And when I talk about that, I want you to think about the FCC rules to get rid of copper. 95% of our service is provided over copper lines. When we look at the data, many of us in this room remember that a data center took up a whole city block. You know, there's infrastructure up here at the University of Wyoming, where our data used to be housed for many people in the community. And that wasn't just in Albany County. It wasn't just in Wyoming. We serviced a lot of data through our community. And I think that it's important that we prioritize what is our vision? What is it that we want to protect and build the policies and regulations to support that? We had a young man talk about that there's a limited number of people staying in the state of Wyoming. And that is a true fact. We also have limited housing. Do you know that when I was emergency manager, we were the third largest community in the state, and we had the poorest population. We had people working part time jobs, sometimes two or three to support a community. During COVID, which I was emergency management for, we had heavy support of our community. and food services to students almost 80%. When we think about the priorities of our community, and I'm sorry, Mayor, when we think about, please think about how do we create sustainability. Thank you, Annie.

Thank you very much. After that would be Wade Dennis, Dens. Good evening, Elias.

Good evening to all of you. Quick, I want to say thank you to everybody that's coming up and spoken. Thank you to the presentations that we got. It was very informative. Even the people I personally disagree with, I still love that we have this discourse. I'm not going to burden you guys with a ton more facts because we've all been kind of talked at a lot tonight. But I will just say my overall consensus is that we do not want data centers in Wyoming, in Albany County, and in Laramie. And if we are going to bring data centers, and that feels like a very huge if based on what everybody said here tonight, it needs to be a community collaboration. I don't want data centers to be propped up because of some committee of suits or some board of officials decided that that's what they want to do without talking to us. It should be a vote. It should be something we all decide upon and agree upon. Because these are our lives. I want to raise my children in the state. I'm born and raised. I love Wyoming. I do not want to see it become yet another hotspot for data centers and billionaires to come and stash cash here. That's not what Wyoming's about. That's not what we should stand for. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Green. Wade Dens? Is that correct?

Thank you. Thanks for having me and thanks for having this event. The world an apology for the first 40 minutes of what we went through tonight. Did we see a photo of a data center tonight? Show of hands? No. Did we hear any audio footage of an audio of a data center tonight? No. When asked about Draining water from a closed loop system. I got it's like draining the swimming pool at the rec center when the broken glass was in there. Closed system, closed loop systems, a maximum security prism is a closed loop system. So think about the semantics of what you were shown and not shown tonight. I saw one, there was a lot of white on these slides that we saw and we can handle numbers. A lot of smart people in here. We can handle stats. I needed to see more. I didn't see any photos of a data center. The only risk I saw in my two columns of pros and cons for water was a single bullet. which was spoken over as there are closed loop systems for that. It wasn't even expressed as a risk. When we were talking about legislation in Wyoming as a whole, I heard Governor Gordon has some good recommendations. A recommendation is not legislation. That's not gonna do anything. So I just want you to be mindful of what you're not being told in events as informal and small as this. and what the motives are behind that. I was very disturbed in that 40 minutes. I don't want to see a comparison to a golf course and an Olympic swimming pool. I saw a fallen triplets of an antelope born on the golf course this spring. I didn't see anything like that with any data center. So I just want to give my support for talk like this and hopefully we can reveal what is really at stake here and what the motives are by presentations like that first 40 minutes we went through. It was well done and done with a smile, but I want you to look at what you were not shown and not told in that presentation. So thanks everybody. Thank you.

Next is it Brandon? Good evening, Brandon.

Greetings, City Council. My name is Brandon Schott. I'm a disabled United States Air Force veteran and prior military defensive cybersecurity IT specialist. I've dealt with China in the Pacific Air Force, and I've also served in nuclear deterrence with Global Strike. I'm here to provide statements against future data centers and Laramie in Albany County. Support for overhauling the Unified Development Code and additional actual provisions. The policy actions I will give to you. Immediate moratorium on all data center permits for 12 to 16 months while the UDC is updated. Full disclosure of projected human health factors with any applications. Sound of normal sound, low frequency that penetrates walls, heat, thermal output emissions from carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and PM two point five fine airborne particles in refrigerants for use in power draw. A more memorandum of understanding with Albany County covering the shared standards. Development agreements must require defined human health, decibel, heat, thermal, emissions, water, and power reporting, plus independent geological review. Condition use in all zones. Eliminate permitted by right and require planning commission review. Public notice and ability to restrict. Handicaps. Prohibit medium to hyperscale data centers. No facilities above 10 megawatts. No data centers within 30 feet, or sorry, 300 feet of neighboring property owners and residential zones and human-occupied areas. independent non lobbyist investigation and monitoring established by the city funded by the developer and no industry ties continuous and public transparent air cooled or closed loop cooling required in all data center agreements to protect water resources a large power contract service tariff like cheyenne which puts the burden on the developers and the data centers Mandatory renewable energy commitments, so the developer must procure or generate renewable energy and not consume existing clean grid capacity. cradle to grave decommissioning bond developers post financial bonds and city escrow covering full safe dismantling environmental site restoration at end of life bond adjusts for inflations and forfeited city if the operator abandons the facility and lastly community compensation contributions developers or owners must provide ongoing financial support to local non-profit organizations with all contributions publicly disclosed annually recipients selected by independent community boards And lastly, a question. If the company or project goes bankrupt or pulls out like they have done in Cheyenne with Corissa, with Project Aid, who will pick up the bill for the cost of the grid expansion? What would happen to the closed facility? Thank you.

Thank you, Brandon.

concludes the individuals who had signed up in advance yes sir would you like to come forward yes go ahead if you can say your uh name for the record please

My name is Mark Dotzer, and I'm a real estate economist. I didn't realize that when I got here, but I'm speaking in favor of having an immediate moratorium on data centers. I've heard a lot of good arguments. I'm not going to repeat any of them. I'm just going to add one more that I've spent the last 30 years looking at real estate markets and what makes them good and what makes them bad. Here's a couple of facts. Maybe you have all of these, but Virginia is ground zero for data center mistakes. They have, I just read this recently, they have 570 data centers in the state. Their regulatory agency is called PJM, P-J-M. You never heard of that? I don't feel bad, nobody's heard of it. But PJM regulates electricity for 13 states, including Virginia, PJM, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, but there's 13 states involved. It's America's largest grid operator. It just warned that it has years and not decades to restructure their entire system because they're anticipating energy shortfalls in 2027. Just a month ago, their power auction in May cleared at a record high price. That's what happens when you get too much demand in over a short period of time and you gotta go out and buy it in the short-term market. It can go any direction. What I'm starting to learn is something I think has been really overlooked in data center finance all along here because I'm just seeing these things. For example, back to PGM again, the Department of Energy just recently issued a Section 202C emergency order. I have no idea what that means, but to avoid a blackout during a heat wave. FERC, the Federal Energy, whatever that stands for, I forgot, doesn't matter. I'm 72. I can't remember everything at one time. But FERC has told PGM to develop new rules to protect existing rate payers from price spikes as AI demands increase. That tells me that PGM has been doing this for years and they've been doing it wrong. And now they're getting called out and having to re-figure out how to price this stuff. And I'll close by just saying, well, this... The New York governor, whether you're Republican or Democrat, means nothing to me. I'm not either one of them. But the New York governor signed a moratorium recently, and just Governor Abbott in Texas just signed a moratorium as well. And the last thing is, it's about what happens if one of these companies take bankruptcy. These big companies are multi-trillion dollar enterprises. But the subsidiaries of those are the ones that run a lot of stuff. And those subsidiaries can take bankruptcy in a day. And just the last thing about these data centers, it's just like owning a hotel. It's just instead of having those kind of tenants, you got a data, you got a bunch of computers in there. Well, if there's not enough demand for that, they're going to start closing a bunch of them. Thank you. My two minutes is up. Thanks. Thank you.

council commissioners. My name is Kevin Kelty. I'm retired from the University of Wyoming. And what I have to say has nothing to do with the university. Except I'm going to give you just a couple of concrete examples. First of all, with regard to water, people maybe don't know this, but Dry Fork Station is a 400 megawatt coal-fired power plant in northern Wyoming. They use fin fans to cool. They don't use water and they don't use evaporative cooling to any degree. I think you could solve your water problems right there. The power problems, you're not going to get a big data center here unless they supply their own or you can figure out a way to get Rocky Mountain power to increase the flow in here. Cheyenne, Wyoming, as an example, Cheyenne, Wyoming has got all kinds of advantages that brought them there. They are the internet backbone in two directions. There's a whole bunch of fiber that runs along the Burlington system as well as fiber that runs along the... the union pacific they also fly satellites from dish and they've got satellite uplink facilities they're on the western area power administration lines those could go right into basically right down there on the wyoming colorado border they got advantages all over the place you're not going to see anything like that here you're going to see smaller data centers. Now, one other important example here, you know, we're heading toward falling college enrollment in Wyoming. We're going to drop below 2000 college bound seniors here pretty soon. And we're going to have colleges and everybody fighting over what's there. I went to school in Bozeman, Montana. I graduated in physics in 1975. Bozeman was like Laramie at that time. When you graduated, you left town to go find a job. I was working with a professor in quantum optics and photonics. Bozeman, Montana is now a center for photonics and quantum optics. It's a standard metropolitan area now. It has a booming economy. And I've always wondered, they've got 16,000 students at Montana State. It was like 9,000 when I graduated. Bozeman, Montana has boomed. What is wrong with Laramie? we could stand to be brought into the modern world. And I think these data centers would give us that opportunity one more time. Thank you. Thank you.

And if you can state your name for the record.

Jenny stays. I live in the county. 47 years ago, I left Silicon Valley, left $100,000 a year job with the federal government. Figure out what that's worth today. Because I couldn't stand the quality of life. I had to wear a mask at night. to cut down the light pollution. I had to wear earplugs to cut down the noise pollution. I didn't see blue sky very often. I saw yellow or orange sky because of the auto pollution. There is absolutely nothing that that kind of life can do for me.

Thank you. If you can state your name for the record. Thank you.

My name is Morgan. I don't have too much to say, honestly, but a couple of topics were briefly touched on by the public earlier. Alex mentioned noise pollution, which they mentioned the effects on humans have been studied and they're damaging. But no studies have been done on animals or wildlife and I do think that is a concern to raise, especially if they're going to be out in the county where we have livestock. A big part of Wyoming is ranchers and that I feel should be addressed and is how it affects animals and their well-being as well, as well as light pollution. A big draw of Laramie since I've been a kid is you can go anywhere in this town, doesn't matter where you are at night, you look up, you see a sky full of stars. On clear nights, you can see the Milky Way. I mean, it's gorgeous. People come from all over the state and even surrounding states on clear nights for meteor showers to get in our mountains. And I don't want light pollution to be damaging that. It is a draw, no matter how small. But to me, that's a big part that should also be taken into accountability. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Good evening. If you'll state your name for the record.

Scott's vote. I live in the county and I just thought we should clarify the use of the. And he called this the. This the loop system. Yeah, what's that? The closed loop system. Yeah, the closed loop system. I keep hearing it like it's some kind of silver bullet to save water. Most of these elect electricity producing facilities in the West already use it and so. You're gonna have both cooling water use for a data center and the connected energy production and that. I mean, it's good. It still has evaporation blow down drift. So in a facility, like they're talking about in project Jade, that would equal about the water consumption for the city of Cheyenne per year. So I just wanted to clarify that there's a lot more water use there than what everybody wants to say. Oh, it's a closed loop system. It's gonna hardly use any water, but that's not how things really work out. So thank you. Thank you.

Further public comment.

Thank you. My name is Cam Kuzno, and I'm currently a graduate student at the University of Wyoming's Department of Atmospheric Science. But that's not what I want to discuss today. We have already talked ad nauseum about the economic and environmental concerns that a data center poses. Something that I strongly want to warn everybody about is that this technology is ontologically evil. And we have already seen AI, despite its many good and positive uses, be used for lots of negative things like misinformation and plagiarism and generation of illegal content. And I think that we have already had incidents in the past where AI companies have lost control of their systems, such as an incident last year where Grok was spouting Nazi and white supremacist talking points. This is not something that I want to be complicit in. And this is something that a lot of other people in my age group are not comfortable with furthering this technology. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, Council, people and commissioners. My name is Sadie Clarendon. There are a few things that I wanted to bring up. First, I support a moratorium for 12 to 24 months on any new data center development. And that is also so that we can figure out how this is affecting our water agreements with the city of Cheyenne. 75% of Cheyenne's water comes from Rob Roy Reservoir through Crow Creek. And I'd like to understand how That's affecting water usage here in Albany County. Secondly, can we require centers to disclose the chemicals and materials they're using in closed loop systems? And then thirdly, I think we need to define what types of data centers are already allowed in Albany County. And if that's like critical data infrastructure centers or these mega hyper data centers. Thank you. Thank you.

Evening, Eric, if you can state your name for the record.

My name is Eric boss, thank you all for being here this evening mayor council and commission. So, I just want to express the complexity of this issue. I am not a supporter of data centers coming to Wyoming at this time. And that's in part. because of conversations with a John Iams who has testified to Congress and talked to me about water usage. But that was before the big discussions about these closed loop systems, which I still have concerns of. I also share concerns about wartime issues, frankly. In the press release that the governor made when he made his movement, which honestly I think is a good framework to be able to start with, he mentioned that this was in part endorsed and encouraged because of AI and because of different reasons for national security. My question would be, again, another complexity. Is this going to be supporting the most unpopular war in our nation's history, more unpopular than Vietnam, where Iran has already targeted certain areas of our country, 12 different states, and has targeted water systems? Does this make us a target? These are just complexities that I would ponder about. I don't think that it would make us a target. I don't think it's a super massive data center that would justify targeting us unless it was both Cheyenne and Laramie. But these are just theoreticals. What I would push forward, though, is if this is a structure that we're going to look at, look at the governor's scaffolding. Look at the Wisconsin Coalition's five-page document that I've mentioned in other forums before. excellent scaffolding to protect our communities to protect our resources and all these other things and also I've heard so much from my community as I've been speaking with them over months look at public transportation could these groups support something like that which would also connect our communities and support our different economies so thank you thank you very much

Hello, everybody. Thank you so much. My name is Dawson Cooley. And I just have three things. So one for a closer look at those closed water loop systems. I would recommend everyone to look at the article from oil city news on the atheist hyperscale center. um there's a patent within that and if you link to the patent um some of the terminology in that is kind of concerning um they mentioned that it can be a closed or open loop system but they also mentioned um injecting the water back directly into the aquifers with glycol based coolants um second i would just like to mention um on may 7th there was a water select committee meeting where a government liaison official from microsoft mentioned that they were committing to using nondisclosure agreements. I know for a fact that this is not true. The Laramie County Planning and Development Office, they actually have nondisclosure agreements with Microsoft. And lastly, I just want to emphasize that we need to put more focus on methodology, especially with water usage in general statistics. I think the last, um nationwide kind of study of that was done was done back in 2010 and even then um they mentioned within it that the terminology is not universal and um there's a lot of room for error and miscalculation within that so that's pretty much it thank you thank you sir

Good evening, councillors and commissioners. My name is Dylan Chatterley. I'm a student here in Laramie, Wyoming, and I also live here. And today I wanted to take a broader approach to the water issue that we have continued to bring up tonight. The UN released a report a few months ago about how we have entered an era of global water bankruptcy. This is already catastrophic in other areas of the world. And I ask that when this crisis reaches us in ways that it hasn't already, how can a data center help? Furthermore, think of the temperature issues that this data center may bring, especially already in a dry and small tight-knit community. For example, Kevin O'Leary's proposed and now canceled project was projected to warm the surrounding air by 2 to 5 degrees during the day and 8 to 12 degrees at night. Consider the current climate catastrophe and how hot and dry the summer has already been. Can we afford much more of that? And lastly, I just want to bring to attention that when we are talking about data centers and especially hyperscale data centers, that when people like to say that we are always using them with phones and laptops, that is actually not the majority of what data centers are being used for. It is a quick Google search to find that data centers are being used more in the private sector and for corporations' own interests than ours. So do we want to sell out our community to another corporation? Thank you.

Good evening, Peggy.

Hello. Thank you all for being here. These are really important and I think everybody appreciates this chance to hear what staff has to say and council questions and county commissioner questions. My name is Peggy McCracken. I live here in town. And this has been really enlightening for me. I've learned a lot tonight. And I feel a sense of relief that this city is not vulnerable to data centers from what we've learned tonight. But I feel just the opposite about the county. I am super worried now about the county because it feels like the county is ill prepared to deal with the data center issue. And I also feel pretty concerned about the county embarking on industrial parks, because I think that is in direct opposition to the safety that the industrial siting can provide for us. So that's a major concern for me now and I also want to make sure that any industrial park conversations are open to the public because I knew nothing about this. So this needs to be open to the public and we people need a chance to weigh in on whether we want industrial parks or not. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. It's a pleasure to see you all again. This again, Peggy McCracken mentioned, is very insightful. My name is Mirav Ben-David, and I'm the Vice Chair of the Albany County Planning and Zoning Commission. And it is our job to start the discussion of industrial park, water security and other issues related to data center in Albany County. And I am hearing all the concerns of everybody is very, very important. I would like to invite every person in the room to our meetings, the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. We meet every second Wednesday of the month, which means tomorrow. and then again in September 14th to discuss these issues. In fact, David Gertsch is working on a draft for us to look at. We meet at the county commissioner's room in a courthouse at 5 p.m. And so this is an invitation to the community to start participating in what we do in planning and zoning by coming to our meetings. We do, like every other entity, we have open public hearings and we allow non-agenda items. And anyone who wants to come and inform us and educate us is really welcome. I encourage everybody to come, especially to the September 14th meeting at 5 p.m. Thank you.

Further public comment? All right. I want to thank you all very much.

um council are there any final comments that and commissioners counselor bowling thank you mayor um first i just wanna uh commend every single person that showed up this evening and spoke or listened learned Was present, this is the most people I've ever seen turn out to a council work session or joint session. Um, and that is encouraging the level of civic participation that we're seeing not only over this issue, but like recently across, you know, uh, issues concerning our city as a whole. Um. I think this is the only way that these issues are solved or met appropriately is with this kind of civic participation. Secondly, I just want to extend my support for the considerations laid out by our city staff, especially beginning with the update to the UDC based on scale. and conditional use versus right of use. And I would encourage you guys to get on that ASAP for us so we can have that in place as well as the rest of the considerations that are here. And I just look forward to the next opportunity we are able to have this discussion in collaboration with our county counterparts. thank you guys for being part of this with us today thank you thank you commissioner jones

Councilman Bowling, I thank you very much for your comments here and I don't have anything to add to those. I think that you covered everything very well and thank you for everyone that made the energy and the effort to get here and allowed us to listen to what you have to say. So thank you very much and I certainly encourage you to come to meetings in the future.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mary. Just to add on, extend my gratitude as well. I know there was talk about moratorium at the city level, knowing that there is such a small likelihood of anything moving forward. I feel comfortable not implementing a moratorium at this point and just working on these these pieces that many of you addressed. Again, just because we're seeing what the realities seemed to be for the city which looked quite a bit different from the county. And so at that point, it doesn't feel like a necessity at this point. It was something I was thinking about previously in terms of just to give us the time to really think through everything. But knowing more about what the landscape of what Laramie could look like, I feel less of a sense of need for that.

I kind of feel the same. However, I think we heard about it so much that I would support one for a short amount of time. So we could work on. working on the the building codes or the UDC and everything else so I sent an email already to Bob to see if maybe we can do one for the six maybe six months and I think that would give the public kind of an understanding that we heard and we're listening and so that's kind of that would be my thought process is to go ahead and get one even though I think you're right I think I don't think we're in huge danger in the city but I think it would give the public a piece of Thank you.

Council free.

Thank you mayor and thank county commissioners for being here and members of the public and city and county staff for presenting. Sorry it was a few minutes late tonight. I just want to say to the public thanks for coming and continuing to stay involved in this topic. I think there's a lot of really good workable items that have come from this and from other conversations we've had with different staff from the county and the city and you all. And so I think this is a continued conversation that needs to be brought up a lot until we figure out you know how we want to proceed and what data centers if they if they were to come here what it would look like and we have a lot of work to do um i feel i feel pretty safe uh in in the city and even that the county i think can um come up with some standards that we'd want to see for data centers based on a lot of the feedback we've heard tonight but stay involved uh continue to keep coming to these meetings because uh the conversations just started so thanks

Mayor's comments usually go last. So I have to wait. I just want to say, first of all, I would like an estimate from the planning department. And we only have Council, we only have control over a city moratorium of how long the process of putting together conditional usage and identifying the code and everything that's involved in that. And though I do feel that a certain sense of safety in that we're not a very attractive target, I still kind of worry about the corporate culture. And so I'd like to get a sense of how long this might take for you to comfortably do this, not have to rush through it, put other things aside, and then consider a moratorium, a pause, which Governor Abbott just did two days ago, where we pumped forward. And we're clear that we want to pause any consideration until we get our standards the way that we want them. And so that's, I'd like to move in that direction to have a sense of what the timeframe and to me, a thoughtful timeframe probably would not be six months considering the workload that we have, it would probably be closer to a year. At which time we could reconsider where we are, but that's. Yeah, I'd like to have that conversation. I think this has been really important tonight. I think that we've identified some things in our code that we need to enhance and strengthen. And I would like safe time to be able to do that within the city, even though, and then I'd like to really be clear what we're talking about. We keep saying data centers, but we do already have data centers all over the place. And most of them are less than 100 square feet. They support departments in the university. They support the city. They support out here. So these are small groups of computers. But I think what we're talking about are large hyperscale and what I'm calling now gargantuan, which are starting to come out. I mean, they're dwarfing hyperscale. So that would kind of be the direction i'd like to go i'd like some direction from planning how long is it how long would it comfortably take and then for council to consider a moratorium to allow thoughtful intentional time uh to bring that forward with further meetings this was very important it was very useful it was very helpful and i thank you all i think your opinions they aren't always positive, but we need that. We cannot make decisions in a vacuum. And so I thank you all, and I thank you for your courage, and I thank you for speaking up. Do what? Oh, so we're gonna, I'm ready to leave, but we have some council business that we need to take care of. You are welcome to stay and see it. We're going to talk about our updates and our agenda review, but you're welcome to take off and have a good evening. Thank you all. Safe journey home.

We have, but we only have 20 minutes.

Call to order. Thank you. Call to order. Thank you. All right, council. Shall we start with updates? Councillor Lockhart?

I attended with several of you this Farmer's Market this last Friday. Thanks to Will for helping set up. And then Councillor Freed came by, participated. Councillor Dougherty did. I did it mainly the full time with Councillor Richardson. It was a great time. I really enjoyed it. So thank you. We did not have a Planning Commission meeting this week, nor did we have a, haven't had our Albany County Tourism Board meeting. I did drop the ball on the URA interview. because i've been sick and then kind of forgot and so then i was reminded but uh by uh um assistant city clerk that i should get that done but then we found out there might be another candidate so if you'd be reached out so we may have to do that next week but thank you i appreciate that thank you sir counselor shimway there you go no updates

Thank you. Councilor Boling.

Thank you, Mayor. Sorry, I was talking to our survey planner. Just a few updates. I also dropped the ball and missed the emergency management meeting, but I spoke to Kate um and it was a very quick one i have the minutes there's not much to report there um i did attend a training with the police advisory board last week um and i just wanted to state again for the record just in case so it's on public record because some ai picked up um part of that training exercise over you know what the police were trying to use as a private channel and then posted immediately that there was a live shooter. There was an active shooter. It was on Laramie rants and raves that that was immediately dispelled and posted again and corrected by the L. P. D. But just, um, as stating that as a matter of fact, so, um, that's it.

Thank you. Councilor Councilor video.

Thank you, Mayor. Not a lot on my end. I also dropped the ball. I was out of town on Friday and missed our LCCC Advisory Council meeting. But I am told that LCCC will be launching a new name. And it's very under wraps. Very exciting. And it's, yeah, we'll see. I think they launched that middle of this month, later this month. And so that's exciting. Also, just want to give a shout out to the city, especially Nancy for organizing all of us for farmers market dates. I think the city presence at the farmers market is really important. So just want to give a shout out to our staff and also council members who have been able to attend those. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor O'Doherty.

On Thursday, the Laramie Main Street and Audubon Society had an event downtown about about pollinators and then the showing the demonstration pollinator garden and I encourage people to go. Pay attention to that and maybe we want to hear from Audubon sometime because here is this like right in the center of town. We have this wonderful demonstration garden and then the environmental advisory committee met and we heard from Larry bike net. and there's some members here that just like all the amazing things that they do for our community and how it helps us with our other goals of reducing carbon emissions and also just trying to keep our kids safe. They gave away helmets at the farmer's market and they do that regularly. And then the EAC is also looking at the Forge Laramie. They didn't have any additional comments at the meeting. And then they were glad that we sent that letter to Rocky Mountain Power about the IRP. That's it for me.

Thank you. Vice Mayor.

Thank you. I also attended the Audubon event, which was great. And farmers market, as Matt mentioned, also attended with some other folks, the Wyoming Outdoor Council and Sierra Club's review of the data centers. It was really informative. It was great to hear feedback from community members as to kind of the parameters that they'd like to see in place as well. Pilot Hill was canceled this month, their meeting was, and then the DDA met today. We had a special meeting to go over the downtown plan and walk through a long Excel sheet of feedback from community members and seeing where we could combine ideas and shorten that a little bit. We did not get through all of it, so we have homework to do to submit to Derek by Friday, and I think that's it.

Thank you. Let's see. I also there was a lot of ball dropping. I think we've been busy. I dropped the ball after a month of trying to plan town and gown. I was sitting in my backyard watching birds. and completely forgot the meeting so i dropped the ball on that one were you there counselor no uh mayor no i was not yes that's two balls thank you so we're gonna set a certain date and not try to change it all the time um i also was going to join them at the farmers market and we have such a wonderful council that two were scheduled two more showed up And the vice mayor called and said, we don't need you. And so I was able to take a Friday off and it was really fun. So thank you. I did attend the Laramie Chamber Business Alliance gave a report on the west side thought that they should be aware of that. Just kind of just reported on the things that we're doing. Secondly, I met, oh, the vice mayor and I met and also city manager with the fire department, B-Shift, and they are planning for our experiential session with the fire department that will occur October 28th. And they are so excited. They are like little kids. So we can't let them down. We looked at the menu of things that we could do. And the vice mayor and I have chosen live podcasts. It can be either observation or participation. If you're going to participate, then you'll need full gear and your face mask and respirator and you would be inside the burning building. Otherwise, you can be an observer. In order to be a participant, you have to be, you cannot have a beard because the respirator would not fit and make a seal. So either if you really want to be inside a burning building, you would have to shave. The second one we chose was the you're going to love this one counselor bowling the rope rescue repelling So it's going from the building and rappelling down or being rescued from the top of a building.

Mayor, we better make sure AI and Facebook doesn't get a hold of that and start saying that.

The third one is vehicle extraction. And one of us could have the opportunity to volunteer to be the one extracted. We could draw straws. Yes. And then the last opportunity you would have would be to go up in the basket of the 90-foot ladder truck if you chose to do that. But you can be an observer. And they are most excited to show us and for us to experience. And they said even if we were just observing the live burn, that you get a sense of what's going on.

Vice Mayor, one additional piece, thanks Mayor, is if you are interested in being in the live burn, you need to let Nancy know because you have to be fitted for everything and fit tested.

October 27th. October 28th. And we would do our same council time for work session from 6 p.m. till about 8, 830, something like that. so then i continue to the vice mayor and i uh meet on a regular basis uh just to make sure we're both on the same page but we tend to kind of divide the labor to trade make sure everything gets done um todd and i continue with weekly monday meetings and that's really helpful in coordinating council and activities with what's going on with the city um Ward one counselors met with the planning department to look at the West side overlay what's involved with that counselor bowling. Thank you very much for taking the lead on that. He's done the leadership, the gathering, the making of the appointments and we'll be meeting Thursday. Councilor Newman has asked to attend. And so Vice Mayor, I know you're gonna be in Cheyenne. So Councilor Newman, and then he's kind of on the west side, but north. So I think that'll be good. And then the Albany County Housing and Land Trust also met on Friday. And the good news there is the Wyoming Community Foundation has given the Housing and Land Trust $10,000. And that is going to pay for several board members and staff to attend conferences where people are working nationwide in housing and some of the land trust type of stuff. And then also, this is very exciting, Eshapir has asked us to submit a grant. They're willing to do another $150,000 based on the success that has already been achieved. So we'll be submitting that and hope for the best. Yes, sir? I mean, Elbogen. Yes, I'm sorry. It's Elbogen, not Eshapir. And that's it for me. Councilor Newman.

27th, sorry. Thank you for correcting that I can always depend on you. Councilor Newman.

I don't know what's cooler than touch a truck than touch a fire.

I'm in, like count me in. I don't have any council updates, but I do have an update. I did some nonprofit fundraising and there's some staff in the room. There's some council members in the room that donated to that. And I actually got to go to the hospital and touch the piece of equipment, the piece of gaming equipment that these kiddos get to play with. And so that was like, really touching that I could do that. And then the hospital in Kansas actually called and asked me to come visit them too. So I'm going to make a trip back to Kansas. So thank you staff. Thank you counselors who donated to that nonprofit because. That was really rewarding for me to see kids who probably aren't going to make it out of the hospital or just got bad news that maybe their wife isn't going to go on much longer using the exact thing that I raised money for. So I appreciate you guys.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Are you sure you don't have any more updates for us? Real quick, shout out to our city manager and assistant city manager for their matching rocking shirts. They look pretty awesome. I know. Our assistant city managers and our city manager. We noticed. It looks great. Professional. Last Tuesday or Wednesday the 5th, the... Oh, man. Sierra Club and... Outdoor Council hosted a data center event in West Laramie where Councilor Doherty, Vice Mayor, and myself attended. Similar topics to today, talking about strategies and solutions if data centers are going to come to your community, what you can do to mobilize. So very timely. That was last week. Then on Friday, I was at the Farmer's Market with Councilor Lockhart, Vice Mayor. I saw Councilor Doherty there, and I'm glad I didn't see you there, Mayor, and you got a Friday off. And this week, coming up tomorrow, the Park, Streets and Rec Board will meet if we have a quorum at 630. We'll look at the new bike park. Councilor Bolling is going to fill in for me if there is a quorum, as I'll be in the field. And then Thursday, 1 p.m., the Ranch Advisory Commission will meet in this room. We have some good updates. Traffic Safety Commission is canceled for Thursday, but there is a presentation at 5 p.m. about the Snowy Range Road. So if you're interested in that, the city's done a whole bunch of posts about that. So go visit there. Then the Railroad Depot Board is meeting at 5.30 on Thursday to go about regular business. So I have those coming up. And that's it.

Thank you very much. And before we go to agenda, I just want to thank you all again This second year, it's like everybody has just gone into high gear and there's so much initiative and follow through and enthusiasm and just all of us working together. We've had some difficult situations and you've all handled it with grace. And I just really thank you and I appreciate all of you very much. So this is a rather simple agenda. A lot of liquor stuff and is there are there any concerns about the consent agenda or anything that anybody would like moved from there and placed on the regular agenda? No. Okay. Is there any concerns about the regular agenda? Alrighty. Well, then that ends our meeting. Thank you very much. We are adjourned.