Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Commission requests that you act respectively to everyone in attendance and follow the public hearing procedures. The chairperson will call the public hearing item. The Land Use and Development Department will present the staff recommendation. Commissioners may ask questions of staff, presentation by applicant and or representatives. Commissioners may ask questions of the applicant. The chairperson will open the public hearing. The chairperson will call for public comments from persons in support of items followed by persons in opposition of the item. The applicant will have the chance to rebuttal comments. The chairperson will close the public hearing. Commissioners may ask questions and discussion and take action. Speakers must speak from the podium and state their name and address for the record. The chairperson reserves the right to establish a time limit for all speakers to ensure that everyone can speak. That time limit will be set at four minutes per speaker. The designation of a spokesperson for groups sharing a common point of view is encouraged. All comments and questions will be directed to the chair from the podium and not to the applicant, staff, or audience. When the hearing is closed, additional public comments are not permitted. Roll call.

DAN BRADLEY.

Here.

Rosa Cavazos. Present. Mark Galbraith.

Here.

Chad Gearhart. Here. Terry Robinson. Here. Jeanette Johnson. Present. With seven members present, there is a quorum.

Any communications from public to staff?

We have received emails regarding the first case, and we went ahead and printed those, and they're part of your packet.

Thank you. That's a point of order. She skipped me in the roll call.

Sorry. Myron? He's here. Here.

I stand corrected. Now we have seven members.

Ex parte communications by members of the commission.

I have had a short conversation with Dave Mahon in regards to the second application.

Okay. Declaration of conflict of interest by members of the commission.

Can we go back to the first one? Sorry, I have had emails and conversation in regards to item number one.

Okay. Any declaration of conflict of interest by members of the commission?

zoning and subdivision items item number one item number one it's cu 2602 so this morning we received a call from the applicant and they're requesting to defer the item to it's going to be either depending on when they submit their revisions It's gonna be either for the Planning Commission meeting on October 12th or November 9th. And they're requesting a deferral because they're wanting to address items that were brought up in the staff report.

Okay. Do we need a action?

So in essence, yes, we do want you to take action on the deferral. In essence, at this point, if they make amendments to their plan in order to address concerns or issues within the staff report, they would need to get that submitted to us by the next filing deadline, which is August 28, and that would get it scheduled for an October Planning Commission meeting. If they're not able to get it to us by then, then they would have to submit by the end of the September date, which would then put it into November. Once again, we'll have to send out notice to all of the people within the thousand feet and publish notice in the paper and do all of the legal requirements to make sure that there's proper notification of a new public hearing.

Okay. Sir, I see your hand up. We're not in a public comment portion of the meeting.

I know that there is no feed out in here.

Oh, okay. Thank you for that. IT's on the way. Yeah, appreciate it. No, no, you're fine. We'll take that one.

Yeah, if there's questions by the commission or any specific action to be taken.

I would entertain a motion from the commission if there's no discussion or questions.

OK. I will move to defer this until they get their application resubmitted.

I feel very sorry for those who have come to speak today. Let me tell you, we will be reading all the emails. And I have the first batch from the first time. But I will second the motion.

We have a motion and a second to defer item number one to a further date based on application.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

With seven votes in favor, the item will be deferred until further notice.

Item number two.

Item number two is SP87E, a request for a major amendment to an existing conditional use permit to remove condition number two from resolution number 80-123 at 4144 Southeast 45th Street in Tecumseh Township. The size of the parcel is 5.18 acres with 4.13 acres covered by the CUP. Here is the general location of the site as shown by the blue star. The Planning Commission first reviewed this item on July 13th, 2026. Staff presented the report and the recommendation. After the meeting, an error was found in the legal description, so we had to go ahead and update the maps and we sent out new notification letters per our requirements. As you heard before, the proposed use of the property will remain unchanged. The request is just to remove condition number two from the resolution, which restricts the SUP to the original ownership and requires board approval for any transfers of ownership of the SUP. Here is the site plan. The yellow portion is the area that is covered under the CUP. Here's the vicinity map. We sent out 11 letters to property owners located within 1,000 feet of the site. No responses were received. Staff recommends approval subject to the following motion. The Shawnee County Planning Commission finds that the request satisfies the golden factors and recommends approval of the CUP as submitted by the applicant. And that concludes the site.

Questions for staff?

Yeah, so basically everything stays unchanged. It was just a technical error in the language.

Yes, it was a legal description that was provided. It was actually for the bottom portion, which was basically the area where the house is. The portion that was covered under the SUP was the larger portion of the parcel.

Any further questions for staff? Do we have anyone with the applicant? With that, we'll open the public hearing on item number two. Anyone to speak in support of the item number two? Are you speaking on are you speaking on item number two?

Can you go to the step to the podium? Yeah.

Good.

Good. I just recently moved here, so it's been interesting. So for this is an interesting five point something acres. Would it be close to anything that would be an issue to water? And the reason I say that is we seem to have an interest to talk great links of this. but we did not give the public any time to talk about the other.

This is paw prints?

It's great. I have my time. I have four minutes. Ma'am, I'm asking you, are you talking about paw prints? I am talking about whatever this is. And then I'm also talking about why the public did not get four minutes of their time to talk about the other either. And I just am really appalled by that. ma'am we didn't open a public hearing on the other one that is appalling and that is appalling because that had a lot to do with their drinking water that we all needed to talk about ma'am we the case is being deferred to another date so that will come back up for public hearing and it really needed to come open to some public opinion

You can have a public comment on that one. If you're talking about paw prints, go ahead, and if not, please step down.

I will step away, but you really missed some opportunities tonight to at least listen to some genuine topics tonight that a lot of us took time out of our time over the weekends to prepare some good literature, some good talking points for you all. And you didn't even give us four minutes to do that. Were your evenings too busy for this? That is just a shame.

Again, we are on item number two. If there is anyone that would like to speak in support of item number two, please come forward.

I'm here to speak in favor of that one.

Name and address, please.

Dave Mahon, 7838 Southwest 12th Street, Topeka.

Please start with something.

Um, this is a popper. It's ones we just amended and, uh, we had this approved last time, but there was some confusion on that. It is simply, we're looking to make it a simple process for us to, to find our buyer, put the house on the market, find the buyer, let them transfer the special use for the animal hospital to that person and, uh, and let it operate the way it is.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anyone else to speak in favor? Anyone to speak in opposition of item number two? With that, we will close the public hearing. Commissioners, any questions or discussion? Seeing none, I'd entertain a motion.

I'll move approval. I'll second.

Terry Robinson?

Yes.

Myron Leinwetter?

Yes.

Mark Galbraith?

Yes.

Rosa Cabasa? Yes. Chad Gerhardt?

Yes.

Jeanette Johnson? Yes. Dan Bryant?

Yes.

With seven in approval, the item on Thursday, September 10th.

We would now entertain public comment on non-agenda planning and zoning items. Again, we have a sign-up sheet over there for anyone wishing to speak and come to the podium and state your name and address. We would take comment on any item that you wanted to come to the podium and speak on. Again, if it's a shared point of view, please try to keep those compiled. And each of you would have four minutes to speak.

My name is Chris Huntsman. I've already signed the sheet. I live at 4645 Northwest 50th Court zip code 66618. That's up north by the Petro Deli. So I. Think we wouldn't be here tonight, I'm gonna talk about the data center, okay? I don't think we would be here tonight, except for the legislature made it really tempting to draw data centers to Kansas. And there is a video out, 45 minutes, the reroute of Senate Bill 98. And I've researched on kslegislature.org or .gov, whatever it is, this bill. And it started out in the House. It did not pass the House Committee. It went the Senate in the meantime had Senate Bill 98 which was license plates for Route 66. And that passed went through the normal channels then all of a sudden at the. zero hour almost they're closing down legislature they vote they have a conference committee but they've changed out people and I didn't understand that till I watched this video but the legislature did a gut and go if you haven't heard of that it's where they take the content of the license plates and insert in committee a 20 year sales tax waiver for the data center on building the center all no sales tax on materials and on parts and all that inside the data center over 20 years and that went to the floor and immediately passed. So that's called a gut and go. It's kind of in the dark. It's kind of they've operated that way on several other items. So that really got me riled up to address you to really maybe do some research. And I'd be glad to airdrop the link to this video if you'd like it. I had an idea that I wrote to my two representatives. I'm in District 1 on your committee here. And one of my ideas was let's put that, since Evergy was kind of in on this from the beginning, why don't we put that up at Jeffries Energy Center? There is lots of land. It's close to the interstate Jeffries pumps water from the river for their cooling tower so that's already in the works so that could pass it on to Pottawatomie County I believe for them to consider it. I would stand for any questions.

I think if you wanted to share that link, you could email that to planning so it would be available.

I shall do that. And I'm the one that wrote to you and asked how are the planning commission members picked and all that kind of stuff just so you have a name with a face. Thank you very much for your prompt reply. Thank you. Thank you.

Michael Bradley has already signed up on the list. 6707 Southwest Windsong, 66619. The proposed data center on Southwest 77th Street is incompatible with the local area schools and residential community of Montero and South Central Shawnee County. First, this area is currently zoned for light industrial and the current conditional use permit states the proposal is for a light industrial facility and was designed to fit within the parameters of a light industry. I believe that this proposed facility is being inappropriately zoned as it should be a heavy industrial district, not a light industrial district. This facility is a hyperscale facility designed to be one of the larger generation of data centers using a tremendous 400 megawatts of electricity, which is over four times the usage of the largest Evergy customer at the beginning of 2026, with 117 high-powered cooling fans to cool the facility and numerous backup generators. The size and energy consumption of the proposed facility, let alone the air pollution, long range noise pollution, and infrastructure upgrade requirements substantially demonstrate this is no low impact industrial facility, but is a model of what a modern heavy industrial facility looks like today. A heavy industrial facility is not compatible with the nearby schools and residential community already established and the surrounding agricultural uses. And this area is not currently zoned for heavy industry and was not intended for heavy industrial usage. With limited time, let me say the high frequency sounds may travel as far as two miles, and the low frequency sounds may travel significantly farther and covers the schools and Montero residents. Although the CUP states all sorts of berm landscaping noise mitigation is to be used, The elevation of the facility is around 1,000 to 1,080 feet and sits at the bottom of a shallow topological bowl with much of the surrounding residents up to 1,200 feet in elevation, which is over 100 feet above the facility, resulting in the residents being above the facility landscaping and its sound mitigation methods, rendering this sound mitigation ineffective. I know the CUP is stating the ever constant sound level will be 37 to 49 decibels at the property line. Until built, this is a best scenario prediction and I believe that the surrounding community does not want to be test subject for these predictions. I am also sure that during periods of power outages and normal testing, the backup generators will have a significantly higher decibel level when in use and the decibel levels of the backup generators is not mentioned in the CUP. I'm also concerned that we county residents will have legal difficulty to raise any formal complaints about the facility once the facility is annexed by the city of Topeka. The city regulations will then apply and county residents will have little to no standing to file a complaint with the city for a facility within city limits. Further, as the proposed facility is within three miles of the city and therefore requires building permit approval by the city of Topeka, and as the city of Topeka is currently in the process of establishing guidelines of what is and is not acceptable regarding data centers, how any conditional use permit can reasonably be currently reviewed without established city of Topeka guidelines for data centers is in question. This proposed facility is not appropriate for the sited area and should be denied.

Thank you.

Evelyn Davis. I live at 2928 Southwest 103rd Street. We've talked so much about these data centers and what they'll bring or not bring in the way of changes to our community, but something that I never hear people talking about is the fact that we as a society need to reduce our energy, our carbon footprint. And these data centers are hogs. And as I understand it, Evergy is planning to build two additional gas-fired power plants sometime in the near future. I think either 29 or 30 was when the first one was supposed to come on board. And a solar field somewhere, I think in Douglas County, We as a society have to start thinking about how much can the Earth abide? The Earth is our home. We have no other. I know people think they're going to live on the moon or whatever. But that is way in the future, if at all. So I would ask you, think about other things than money. We need to start taking our planet Earth into consideration and deciding how much. And, you know, you probably think, well, somebody else can do that. We want the money. But if everyone thinks that way... Nobody is going to make any changes. So please, put that in your thoughts. And while I'm here, I would like to ask that you as a group recommend to the county commission a moratorium for at least a year on any data centers in Shawnee County. Thank you.

Dennis Frankman, 3762. West, 117. The west is important because they go east on the wrong side. Mine's more technical, talking about the runoff curve that's being used in the stormwater study. And the data center itself, they're reporting which is, it would be correct, 91 on the runoff curve number. And that'd be typical for roofs and pavements and gravel. On the cropland and grassland, probably just because they don't have the experience with it, they have misinterpreted the runoff curve number you're to use for that. They use an 89, so here are just two points difference from asphalt and shingles to grassland and cropland. And the table that reflects to that, if it's grassland, you might drive out there and it's really, really lush and good, very undergrazed. The runoff curve is 80. And the cropland, when they're straight-line farming it and good residue management, they get a score of 85. So it's about 82.5. So rather than a two-point differential, you have 8.5. So back in the late 90s and 2000, I worked with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. I worked with the Shawnee County Conservation District, recognizing Shawnee County was urbanizing. We weren't knowledgeable about soil and water conservation and the flood detention. They sent me to St. Louis. And we spent several years then working on those manuals, information about common practices you could apply for stormwater management and so forth. And the whole intent was that, then bring it back. And sure enough, both Shawnee County and Topeka, through these years, they had their own manual. There's 300 pages. They referred to the MACD booklet in Kansas City as their guide. So it's important to follow the guidelines. And there's all kinds of, so this report, starting on page four, they're using that wrong number, and that wrong number translates all the way down through all the tables and information. So the very, very end, you can't have water leaving a property in excess of the volume or the speed it already was originally. So by... making the natural range and cropland at a higher number, it appears that the data center has little effect to it, and so they have to do pretty much little. And you might look on the map, they have a little teeny weeny pond that's supposed to somehow catch 250 acres. That's a small watershed type amount. Now they're gonna capture, they're gonna do some filtration, but it's not enough. It's important the person follows the rules that you do have established the engineering firm. I'm just assuming that they by accident or didn't understand agriculture and use the wrong number. So it's important we follow that because otherwise we're not going to get proper protection. Why would I care? It ends up being right below the whole thing. There's 3,000 acres coming, and the property I'm associated with has been in the family for 126 years. We work hard to maintain and manage that land. We're going to get all this. We don't mind water, but it just needs the same volume. So now we do a contract for grassland. We don't guarantee grass could be dry. Don't guarantee the water could dry up. But now we're not going to guarantee the water quality this comes in, because there's all... The battery, they call it a solution, right next to the stream. And then they aren't planning to do anything with the substation, because they say this other is going to be so good of treatment. And so the county and the city actually has a guide to follow. They just need to read it. So I would encourage, re-study and look at that.

Thank you.

I signed in over there, so I'm not sure if that's okay.

My name is Amy Gillette. I live at 5500 Southwest Mound View Drive. I'm about 2.5 miles from the proposed Compass Data Center site. First off, I want to thank I want to thank whomever within this commission or committee is responsible for asking for more information for the application. Thank you very much. Because what you've asked for is thorough and I feel like starts to answer a lot of the questions that people are having. So I just want to thank you and put that out there. Okay, first I want to talk about scale. Since according to that conditional use permit that came to us, it's planned to be a 400 megawatt facility. So let's give ourselves a comparison. At the Kansas Municipal Utilities Conference I went to a few weeks ago, Chuck Casely, CCO of Evergy, gave these facts. Their biggest single customer in the entire state at the beginning of this year was about 80 megawatts. So what's been submitted for Shawnee County here is five times the amount of electricity that Evergy's largest customer used at the beginning of 2026. That's something. On to jobs. Also from the CUP report. We get the sentence, this facility operates continuously but is lightly staffed. Approximately 30 full-time personnel across security operations and engineering. So 30 full-time jobs is what we're looking at. We've been told there would be all kinds of long-term jobs. And it could be less, right? Approximately 30 full-time jobs. And these are in securities, operations, and engineering, which two of the three of those really aren't the sort of high-paying tech jobs that have been claimed by the Compass reps at the open house and so on. So going on to a few other things that they said at that open house. We found out that one of Compass's signatures is that they do prefabricated construction. So they build their parts offsite for the data center and then come and build them kind of modularly like Ikea is my comparison. So they in fact advertise on their website that 85% prefabricated construction is what they do. They have what they call consistent scalable design that essentially Well, it says with 85% of each data center manufactured off-site using a standard kit of parts, Compass removes the risks of stick-built construction. The result, faster, more predictable delivery, and so on. So whilst this is, I'm sure, very efficient and cost-effective for them, what this means is it's not going to lead to this huge boom of construction jobs either. Because if all of those parts are being assembled at some factory that's not here in Shawnee County, That's not going to benefit us in terms of construction. That's going to benefit the people in those factory in that factory wherever it might be. Finally, I want to just call attention to a Virginia study that was released just about two-ish weeks ago, released by the governor that was held back, apparently, for about six months. And it was released by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. And to zoom ahead to some of the highlights of this report, it's about 144 pages, but if you read the executive summary, it cuts to the chase. Groundwater withdrawals in the region fell sharply about 15 years ago, and they were able to bring some of that back. But recently, those trends have entirely stalled, and the aquifer is now declining. To the extent that they've set under current conditions, the aquifer even has limited capacity for significant new withdrawals. They've said no big industrial users can come into certain parts of Virginia because of the preponderance of data centers and what that has done to the water supply. Obviously, we're not going to have that huge amount here, hopefully, but I also have a K-4 moratorium. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Alex Pantos. I reside at 2920 Southeast Stubbs Road. I'm not here to talk about the data center. I'm here to talk about a neighborhood issue that is the compost recycling that our neighbor has proposed. We have over probably 40 or 50 people attending the meeting. One of my main questions is how many times can they postpone it? when all the information the land commission has put out has been negative towards their application, it does cause a burden for the neighborhood and all the folks in our area. It does not meet any of the criteria for a residential area, which that's what our area has now become. would hope the commission could do something about it and not just keep postponing and postponing because it does make a hardship on everybody in our area. We see no benefit to the property owners, only to the partitioners that are trying to put this compost area in, so. I am asking your help to stop it or at least to address it and not just moving it down the road. So that's all I had. Thank you. Thank you.

Can we answer that question, Joni?

In regards to the question, so there's nothing in our regulations that prevents the item from being postponed and so we allow it to postpone as many times as need be as long as they're being, as long as they're actually proceeding forward and not being unresponsive and not working with the department in terms of their application.

So in short, department judgment. Yeah.

Ready?

OK. My name is Larry Miller, address 840 Southwest 97th Street, Waukarusa, Kansas. And I'm here to talk about the data centers. I'm going to start out with kind of a summary of what I'm going to talk about and end with it. And that is simply this. You, I hope, know more than I do, because I know absolutely nothing as far as accuracy, as far as the information that's been provided by the company wanting to build this data center.

Can we have you pause for a second, actually? And we're going to restart your time here in a minute. It's very disruptive. If you guys are going to leave, go ahead and stand up and leave and allow us to hear. Ma'am, please. Hold on just a second. Okay, if you want to start over, sir, you can.

Okay. Don't remember exactly what I said, so I'll probably repeat myself a little bit. But basically, my concern, and I think that's a concern of many others, is that there is so little information that we really know for sure as far as to what these data centers may or may not benefit us with. I've talked to people from the company. I get varying responses. talking about things like the closed system, the non-closed system, what it's going to do environmentally, whether the sound's going to be a problem, whether or not. And I've researched this quite a bit and tried to do it with independent places so that it's not, you know, an all I want it or I don't want it type of thing. And what I get from so many people, especially in the scientific community, is They don't really know. This is new, relatively new anyway. There are studies being done, but quite frankly, things like the sound is coming off from them. There are studies that indicate this may be a major problem with some forms of life, such as honeybees, other pollinators, maybe hummingbirds, different variety of animals. We know that they respond to sounds that we normally don't deal with. So all of these things concern me. And that's why at the end my major recommendation is very simple, to put a moratorium on this for at least a year to give people a chance to find out what's going on. And, you know, maybe they're going to be okay. I don't know. I use technology. I have a degree in biology, so I understand a lot of this stuff. But there's a lot of it I don't understand. And maybe you guys have more information than I do. And if you do, congratulations. I hope that you can share it. But unless you're absolutely positive, We need to sit back and wait. We need to remember that without a clean planet, nothing else means anything at all. If we don't have a clean and healthy planet, nothing else matters. And as far as the economic part, I got a little time, so I'll just add this. Think back on all the things that have been approved in the past that were supposed to lower our property taxes, for example, for new businesses. I know I heard that we can't ask the audience questions, so I won't do that. But just think about it. How many of you have lower property taxes now than you had 10, 20, 25 years ago? Will this data center improve that? Will it change it? I don't know. But I do ask you to think very seriously about it. I trust you. You're doing a job that is not easy. I understand that. I mean, you've got to know the facts. I know I've done a lot of research, but I know I haven't done enough, because there's a lot of things I don't know the answer to. I do know that the answers or the questions that I asked, the answers that I got at the meeting that was held at Auburn-Warshburn didn't all match up. What some of those guys told me was one thing, and then somebody else told me something a little different. I got to doing the research on the closed system, and yeah, it's closed, but then that stuff does go someplace later. It gets dumped. So we got to keep this in mind. And that's really all I have to say. So thank you. Thank you.

I'm so sorry. Testing.

Rebecca Pagel, 5524 Southwest 85th, Waukarusa, Kansas. I'm here to talk about the data center. Funny, the sound coming from the microphone, imagine if that's basically six steps from your property. Because that's where my property is at, 85th and Stewart. And the data center is pretty much about six steps from that. So imagine how annoying this is to hear it 24-7. And basically back to my speech, my husband farms and I teach. Neither of us went into our jobs looking for a lot of money. We did it because we love what we do, but we do hope that we have enough to take care of our family. We know that our crops and livestock could be affected by drought, floods, hail, up and down farming prices, but we never were prepared for the idea of a hyperscale data center. Not a regular data center. I used to live in Carbondale. They had a really small one there in the old cases. I'm talking a hyperscale. I heard 75,000, the energy that, excuse me, the equivalent of 75,000 houses using that electricity. and we just weren't prepared for that 400 megawatts i have read that it can increase temperature and sound how will this affect my kids two and four as we play there at the pond how will that affect them how will it affect our crops will they pollinate how will it affect our cows so we roughly have anywhere between 200 and 250 cows there six months out of the year Nowhere when I was looking over their CUP or any of the Bartland West, any of those surveys did I see them mention our livestock and maybe that's because they went there on a day they weren't there because it's only about half of the year. But what do we do? We have to turn in numbers every year to the FSA on our crop levels and on our cow numbers too. So if we notice, if this is built and we notice that those are affected drastically, who do we go to? What do we do? That is our income, that is all we have. I am 43, we cannot afford to start over. I'm still paying for the birth of my child who is two. Like I said, I took my job because I love it, not because I ever expected to get rich. And where I come from, Auburn and Waukarusa, your word is everything. Your trust with your neighbors is everything. That's what I have learned. And from what I heard at the Compass Open House, when I heard various things from one person to another, their trust for me is already gone. So I would hope that you would not take them out their word or what they wrote down in paper. Because if they didn't even care enough to be on the same page for their open house, I doubt that they actually care enough for their practices and what they do. So that's all I would like to say. I would just like to remind you that we are people who are there. Like that is our land. That is our home. That is where I got married. And that is where my children play. Thank you.

Colleen Campbell, 3937 Southwest 5th Drive, Kansas 66614. First, I would like to acknowledge the application put in by Compass. Thank you, Joni, for making sure that they answer questions that not only the county, but has asked, but frankly, the public as well. I would like to see an environmental impact assessment and an environmental justice impact assessment as well. As you know, this is a concern for the city as well. This past week I attended their sustainability meeting where the mayor and other officials were present. They were discussing environmental studies and one of the members asked me to speak because I have experience with this. I have now been asked by that committee as well as the mayor to help formulate requirements and studies that will help the city understand the total environmental impact on the city if a data center were to be built. Also included in that environmental environmental justice, which looks at how you can impact lower income and other marginalized communities. As you know, this proposed site is next to Montero, one of the more marginalized communities in the county. I'm concerned about the zoning of this project being at light industrial I-1. I've spoken with an expert at K-State who specializes in remediation of sites, and she has said in no uncertain terms that this should be considered heavy industrial I-2. which then changes who and what can be next to that kind of zoning. She has also spoken with me about how remediation of these sites back to anything resembling farmland would be impossible. I also want you to know that I've been speaking to the public and getting information. I've been putting out petitions and gotten a lot of responses as you can see. This isn't just a sign your name here types of positions either. These positions require the participant to state their concerns. Here's a map of those participating in the positions. It says 1200 on that for those in the audience. I have also done a word cloud of their responses on the bottom of that map. I also have a map showing those who would be neighboring the site. As you can see there's a lot of participation from Montero on this. I'm a regular person who lives in the county. I sat in lawn chairs late into the night talking with people in Waukarusa last night. I've gotten texts and phone calls from strangers asking me for help on this. I've held the hands of people as they cried about this and I hold that burden. I read these petitions. Sorry. I made it possible for people with expertise different from mine to get together and speak about their concerns. I'll read a few of those for you. Sean says I'm concerned about the Wakarusa watershed and dumping and purging from the proposed data center. What are the agriculture environmental impacts from the noise and vibrations? Do people at Lake Sherwood want this on their backyard? Probably not. Margaret says I urge you to vote against any zoning changes or other requirements that would allow such a large scale data center to be placed in Shawnee County. Potential land, water, and energy are precious resources and we need to conserve any decision that potentially impacts those Irreplaceable resources should require the most careful analysis to determine resulting full present and future costs to our residents. Sarah says many major concerns towards these hyperscale centers the lack of honesty and transparency by the companies selling them and their talking heads trying to sell them to us the health of all of us due to pollution noise included the disruption of the ecosystem and the exploitation of already depleted resources. What that means for us and the next generation the hazardous waste handling the lack of regulations the real costs to all of us now and over time the infrastructure costs the telling us what we want to hear and then going back on their word promising big tax breaks and then and pumping money into schools and then going back the lack of real problem solving and benefits for everyone rather than quick solutions. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, good evening. My name is Kendra Ansley. I live at 5738 Southwest Cedar Court in Topeka, Kansas. First of all, thank you for your time this evening. I received a copy of the response to Compass Data Centers notifying the organization that its application was incomplete. And I, like Colleen, want to commend the level of detail contained therein about what needs to be submitted. Kudos to Ms. Thadani and her team. Having read the application as well as the lengthy list of items that was incomplete honestly I find myself feeling a little bit off put about what feels like a lackluster attempt to apply to build a 600 acre behemoth in our community. Certainly not the well thought out application of a company that keeps touting itself as a Class A developer and not a fly by night operator. First, I want to urge this commission to strongly recommend a cumulative environmental impact study with qualified environmental scientists at its helm. We know that this process will have a profound and lasting impact on the land and environment. It seems a small price to pay to understand what that will mean for our community long after this data center exhausts its useful life. which many believe will be a decade at most, given the pace of technological advancement. We should also know the decommissioning and reclamation work, what that will look like for 600 acres of a hyperscale data center, and we should be contemplating what that could mean for the future of our community. I understand that you, as the Land Use and Development Planning Commission, are a little bit limited in what you can do. So I want to talk a little bit about the golden factors. First, the zoning uses and character of the neighborhood. I'm not exactly sure what the definition of the neighborhood is, but arguably it's ag, residential, and light industrial. There's a nearby neighborhood and a nearby school. It's hard to imagine this behemoth would be near a neighborhood and a school. As Colleen pointed out, it seems to me it would be heavy industrial and not light industrial, changing very dramatically the character of the neighborhood. The extent to which removal of the restrictions will detrimentally affect nearby property. We heard from another woman, a few speakers before me, who lives nearby. I can't imagine that her property value will be very high after this is built. There are many others who have spoken before me and after me and who can't be here tonight. I can't imagine their property will be worth much. We're talking also about the community of Montero. We are going to push people out of their homes. We have a lack of affordable housing in our community already. So where will those people go? relative gain to the public health, safety, and welfare as compared to the loss in value or the hardship imposed upon the applicant. Quite frankly, Compass Data Centers isn't from here. I'm not really concerned with the loss of value or the hardship imposed to a multi-billion dollar company. I can't imagine it's very significant. They'll find somewhere else. What I am worried about is the people of Shawnee County. I don't think there's a significant gain to public health to be made. Concerns about noise, light pollution, and the environmental impact are significant. Impact of the proposed development on community facilities. This includes, of course, water concerns, which I know someone else is going to speak about. But I want to talk about fire. Fires at data centers burn hotter and longer than other fires. They require specialized equipment, specialized training. They often happen more frequently. I don't think we have the resources or the capacity to manage that. opposition or support of the neighborhood residents. I think you're familiar already with how many of us do not want this in our community. I know that these are not all of the golden factors, but I hope that you'll start to consider these and take up what we're recommending, which is no data center.

Sorry, Andrea Jones, 5801 Southwest Candle Tree Drive, Topeka. I'm also an industrial hygienist. I am not paid by anyone. I do work in the city and have become very interested in the data centers whenever I moved here. And so far, there have been at least an additional dozen more cropping up in the state of Kansas. especially after SB 89 or 98 has been put into play in 2025. I'll also be going into Leavenworth County on Wednesday to do this exact same thing. I'm sorry, I do apologize. I'll be also going in to Leavenworth County to do this again, kind of making a circuit now. I'm also an industrial hygienist, so I do this for a living for another company. I don't get paid to do this, but it just became very interesting to me. The problem is the water. So this closed-loop system, and I really want you to understand the closed-loop system. They're going to have at least six to eight chemicals going in here. Most of them are inert, needing to keep a biocide, keeping the... keeping the data center basically bug free, whatever. There's two specific chemicals in there that should never touch the ground, seriously. They allowed us to see what chemicals they were going to use. And my curiosity peaked, so I started looking up the SDSs. There's two very bad chemicals that are going to be circulating in all 10 of these cells. What are they gonna do with that water when it's done? Because they said every two to five years they've gotta purge those cells. 10 cells every two to five years. It's up to you all to broker this deal between you and the data centers on where this water glycol mix is gonna go. That is the question between you and the constituents. Where is that water gonna go? I don't need an answer right now, but that is the ultimate question. It's gotta go somewhere. Come on, it cannot go back into the ground. Because there was an answer that one of the ladies gave, and she said, oh, out in Arizona, it went over the solar panels, it went back down in the water, or back down in the ground. That was her answer, and it was from Beale. And that was a horrible answer. But that was what they and the county commissioners came up with out there. I'm sorry, that is not an acceptable answer here. The Hyperscale Data Center have a wastewater system, like the one in Leavenworth County. They're gonna have a similar closed loop system, so I've been looking up the other Hyperscale systems with similar systems. And some of them are gonna use cooling towers. I'm not sure about this one, if they're gonna try to use a cooling tower system. I would like to learn more about that. And then I heard something about regulations. What regulations do you all have in place that people can look at? I've yet to find anything, or I haven't looked in the right place yet. It's really kind of hard to figure out where regulations are at. Again, I'm kind of new to the area, so I'm trying to look up where the conditional use permit is and all this other stuff to try to figure out how you all are going to try to regulate this data center and be useful if you do go through with this. God, I hope you don't because it will be a love canal if you're familiar with what the love canal is. Anybody? Is anybody familiar with the love canal? It's a super fun site. It will destroy the ecosystem and it will not come back.

Can you tell us what the two chemicals are?

They were there. The bill will give those to you. They were there. I have them, and I can give them to you after the meeting. But they were there. They were on the board with the water site.

Thank you. Thank you. Edgar Peck, 3736 Southeast Stubbs Road. I wanted just to clarify a few things on item number one that got kicked down the road again. My question, Mr. Chairman, because I think they're supposed to be directed to you, sir. My question is, how many times can an applicant make changes and then come back to you folks present something new, and then we go back to the same thing we did in June, get that can kicked down the road. How many times can that happen?

Do you have more to say, and then we'll answer that question at the end? Is there other clarifications you'd like to make, or you want that answered right now?

Well, sir, I'm hearing impaired. I've got hearing aids, but I would encourage all of you who have a microphone in front of you to use that microphone. I think you can hear me, can you not?

Yeah, we can. One of the others that spoke a minute ago posed that question, and I had Joni answer that. I didn't hear it. Okay, sure. Her response was, there is nothing in our regulations right now that limits the amount of times that the applicant could potentially make changes. She clarified that it's basically at the staff's discretion on making sure that there are changes being made and there is progress going forward and things in the staff's recommendations are being addressed. I think, Joni, you can clear this up. If that goes stagnant, then they would not let the applicant come forward again. Is that a good summation?

I'm sorry.

Well, so I would say that staff discretion may be not necessarily, we're not picking and choosing. If they are coming to us and they are working with us and responding as we are moving forward towards the public hearing, then we continue to work with them. There is a portion within our regulations that state if the applicant goes stagnant or they don't, show up and they don't move forward and they don't respond to us for a certain period of time then we can find it void or abandoned but at this point they've been in communications with us and continuing to work to try and improve their plans and so their request today was because they have the staff recommendations and recommend the recommendations and they're hoping to address some of those issues So before it comes to a public hearing, it makes sense to have all of the information because if we don't and it goes to public hearing and then they want to supplement their plan at that point, it goes towards the Board of County Commissioners and the Board of County Commissioners then sends it back up here to the Planning Commission for rehearing because there's additional information that hasn't been considered by the Planning Commission. So we're trying to streamline the process, although I know it doesn't feel like that, but we're trying to streamline the process to make sure that we have everything that we need before the planning commission hears it so that they can hear a complete package.

Well, that's one of the points I wanted to bring up, because the information that has been put out, it looked like your staff did a fantastic job in researching and coordinating and visiting with the agencies that actually have to participate. And I read this thing a couple of times, and it was so much more detailed. and showed real concern and effort and wanting to get the job done right, as opposed to the first time it came around. So your staff gets kudos for doing such a good job this time around. But thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And what was your name again, sir?

Edgar Peck.

OK, thank you.

My name's on the list over here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Scott Henson, 3218 Southwest Skyline Parkway. As I have said before, actually tomorrow I will start my 48th year as an educator with Topeka Public Schools at the Sheldon Head Start Center. I always, my mantra is stay informed and stay vocal. During the last couple months, I have learned more about the centers than I ever I guess wanted to. And I am being vocal tonight. from the shameful got-and-go process that was referred to earlier this evening that brought Compass Data Centers to Kansas, and now with the announcement by Mayor Duncan about the informational meeting next week with no public comments allowed, it's beginning to sound more and more like a done deal. I hope that's not the case. To paraphrase the Grateful Dead song, he's gone, like a steam locomotive rolling down the tracks. It's done, it's done, and nothing's gonna hold them back. Again, I hope that's not the case. But if it is the case, we must ensure there are guardrails in place, such as those proposed by Cindy Holscher in her campaign for governor. So that train does not careen off the tracks and cause massive chaos and destruction to our environment and the health of our citizens, especially the children at the Pauline schools. Thank you for your time this evening.

Thank you.

Justin Malloy, 7940 Southeast 29th Street. I want to talk about item number one on your agenda, compost pile. If you could, by a show of hands, how many of you have actually driven out by that site? Do you notice anything? What does that site look like compared to the rest of the area? I am one of four new houses in the last five years within a quarter mile of that house on the same road. I built that house for me and my child to be out of town, out in the country to enjoy the air. That's not going to happen if this goes through. Bringing up, pushing this, do we know how many different compost practices there are? Because they already tried open air. Now it's a leach. What else is there to fix? Can a property pass the Burke test? There's a lagoon on the property. Do we know any of that? According to the county, the house on that property is 70% complete, meaning the building permit is out of date unless it's asked for an extension. So one can only assume that whoever is at that location is staying in the trailer behind the house. So if that house is not inhabitable, how is the person running that compost pile going to be there 24 seven, that house isn't complete. How are you going to be there 24 seven? If that's the only person there now, this goes, this stays with the property from how I understand it. Is that correct? This conditional use permit will stay with this property, is that right? Johnny, do you want to answer that?

But I do believe.

It stays with the land unless there's a condition added that it would terminate with the sale of the property. But typically, yes, it runs with the land.

And where would that come with? Would that come with what they are asking, that it would terminate? Or does that come after the fact?

Uh, you mean the conditions, the conditions, if it's recommended for approval, we list out a list of conditions that it would take to be approved. And if that were to be one of the conditions, then that would be listed at the recommendation to the planning commission, which has been reviewed and voted on, and then goes to the board of County commissioners for review and, and vote.

Okay. Thank you. Another stipulation is that the values of the homes in the area. If you do your research, you will see homes around this kind of activity. Their values drop because no one wants to buy a house in that area. No one wants to live next to a compost pile.

The members and also everyone that took the time to attend. I'm here to express just how happy I am about being given the gift of time. How often are we granted just a little bit of extra time when we need it the most? I'm talking specifically about the delay until August 28th when Compass can submit another data center proposal. Let's use this just few precious days to research, to get questions answered in a way that actually makes sense to us. Let's listen to others who have experienced this because they lived within two, three or five miles away from a data center. Not only residents, let's talk to and listen to environmental agencies. Even governors of states such as New York and Texas are sounding alarms about their water and electric uses. Shouldn't we take heed and listen to their warnings? The proposal for the data center submitted by Compass on July 24th was incomplete. It lacked information. Was it because Compass doesn't want us to have the time to research, to listen, to weigh the pros and cons? Was it because Compass, in their rush to get it submitted, made mistakes or even showed just a little bit of incompetence filling out their proposal?

I don't know.

What I do know is that when someone is rushed to make a decision, being told, do it, sign now, you'll lose out if you delay. And I'm going to quote them. This is the goose that lays a golden egg. Sign it. Do it. Do it now. Wow. I don't know about you, but red flags should pop up warning. of later regrets and maybe even remorse. Please recommend the moratorium so that we have a little bit more time and so that there'll be no regrets for Shawnee County and its residents. Thank you. Thank you for listening.

Diane Denham, Northern Osage, very close to the border of Shawnee. An industrial data center does not belong in the middle of rural farmland. And I hope you can all watch and pay attention. Not when it requires rural, agricultural, or residential land to be rezoned for industrial use. The land carries the history of the people who cared for it. the character of the community surrounding it, and the responsibility we have to those who will inherit it. God created our land, and we are to be good stewards of it, not to destroy it with a data center. The developers do not care about preserving farmland, protecting the communities and their health and safety, or the residents' right to peacefully enjoy their property. It's all about the money for them. The county has promised tax revenue, but after all the tax abatements, it may not be what the officials think it will be. The tax revenue, it rarely makes the taxes go down, and they'll just find something else, spend it on anyway. And the surrounding community is left to absorb permanent consequences. Residents will be made to suffer with the transmission lines, substations, backup generation, skyrocketing electric rates, road impacts, noise, water concerns, lost views, health issues, and the gradual industrialization of places that were never intended to be that way. Once a county begins rezoning rural land for industrial use, it becomes harder to argue that the next property should remain protected until the rural character everyone claimed to value survives only in old photographs. So for every official, what are you actually willing to preserve? Where is the line you will not cross? A rural area should not have to sacrifice irreplaceable land just because a developer has decided they want it. This is about preserving our rural heritage, and we must ensure what we leave behind is a legacy worth inheriting. Because once rural land is rezoned, cleared, and industrialized, the money may be spent, but the land does not come back. The next generation will not judge us by tax revenue we were promised. They will judge us by what we chose to leave for them. Leave a legacy worth inheriting. And I would strongly hope that maybe you could put at least a one-year moratorium on this to do more research. And technology is changing all the time. So in a year, things might be a lot different and might be better. So thank you very much for your time.

My name is Ben Marple. I'm very good friends with Terry Robertson. I just don't see him very often. I live at 10249 Southwest Wanamaker Road. And it's important that I express my concerns. First of all, Becky Pagel is Becky Marple. She just got married, so I'll clarify that. OK. The property I'm talking about is 5524 Southwest 85th. So if you stand in my front yard, you could probably throw a ball and hit the building of the data center. I'm the only one in the county that has a house right there. But we also, as Becky said, have 480 acres. Now, it's important that I explain our cattle operation. We have cows and calves. We take them to 10 different pastures in three counties. We have, whoop, we gotta bring them in an area where they won't take harm and they grow in the fields and everything. Now, I'm almost certain the 250, and we've had as many as 300, is probably as many cows or more so than any part of that county. It's just that our operation has grown so. My son, we have two or three hired men, and another concern on that Blum farm, I call it, I've complied with all the regulations with the conservation. I've built tile drain terraces and they drain west of the house and I'm not clear what, you can't make water run uphill. So is that, are they gonna provide a way for that water to get away from my field? And I will mention that I've built a pond and it's got huge bass in it. My family really enjoys it. But there's a lot of things involved. So I will respect your decision, but keep things in mind. Thank you.

Maybe I can get this up. Okay, I'm Brett Blackburn, 5340 Southwest 77th in Waukarusa, here to talk about the data center. Sorry, I just have a broken leg and just had kidney surgery two days ago. I am a fourth generation Shawnee County resident, third generation Shawnee County business owner. I owned a business for 33 years. We had a family business that was in Shawnee County for 82 years. I'm a former planning commissioner, former city council member, and I'm an engineer. I'm not here representing anybody but myself. You know, I'll have more to say at an official public hearing, but my family has property within 2.2 miles of the data center and has for over 60 years. I never heard about the project till about two weeks ago. I think my past record, for those of you who know me, that I am probably the singly most pro-development planning commissioner or city council member that ever hit this area, but... The county has been given broad claims right now. And normally I will do this without reading, but I had to put this together pretty quick. But we haven't done independence, there haven't been the independent studies needed for responsible approval. We need verified numbers on power use, seasonal water use, noise level, environmental impact, emergency response requirements. This isn't about anti-development, it's about due diligence. Approval of this scale should not move forward until the community sees real data and not real marketing language, which is basically what they get. What everybody needs to understand is that a hyperscale data center isn't just about another building. It's a two to 600 megawatt industrial power consumer with millions of gallons per day of potential water demand. Those impacts last for decades. Even with alternative cooling methods, they still need water for humidity and backup cooling. Other issues involved in this, two to three years of where with heavy trucks on the roads, who pays for those roads, who will pay for the upkeep. Stormwater runoff and impact to local water bodies and the impact of affected species. Nearly every project I do in my retirement job we have to do NEPA approvals and we have to do environmental studies for everything that we do. And this is not something that should be done after the planning process, it should be done before the planning process. Sunshine is always the best disinfectant, it just is. We can look at, sorry I skipped a page. What everybody needs, sorry. Anyway, getting back to people mentioned the golden criteria, relative gain. I could spend two hours going through the reasons why under the golden or maybe Taco Bell, you know, other than Arkenberg, which basically says, you know, not in my backyard. But I could go through all the different reasons why this isn't ready to be approved by you guys. But we don't need to walk through Golden. You know, I only got 28 seconds left. But there's just a few simple questions. What is the max power load? Who pays for the grid upgrades? What is the water usage? What knows the level to be expected at the property lines and beyond? What are the stormwater plans and the pervious surface percentages? What are the energy plans? What are the emergency plans and something happens? And... That's all I got. This is quick. When I'm hobbling around and dealing with this, I'm sorry I had to read the paper. Thanks for your time.

Yeah, I'm Richard Johnson, 3536 Huxman Road, Silver Lake. I have family that lives out in Montero. Government officials are expected to step back from matters that impartially could reasonably be questioned on when their participation could undermine public confidence and in fairness and the integrity of county government. The charter does not limit conflicts only to money or family ties. It also includes the situations involving appearance in impropriety, corrosion, undue influence, and impaired objectivity. In February of this year, Mr. Robinson, a developer on the committee, made a last minute proposal to increase the solar acreage from 240 to 1,000. It was immediately second, and all but one member voted in favor of the increase, with no discussion as to why the increase was recommended. After the vote, by his own volition, admitted that he has been in favor of solar farms for some time, so he should have recused himself, which includes a situation involving an impaired objectivity. When the rest of the committee didn't ask questions to justify the increase, suggest the possibility of coercion, undue influence, when you see what happened in county commission meeting. At the county commission meeting, the final approval was reduced to 640 acres, which turned out to be the property that was partially owned by Go Topeka. A commissioner and an advisor, while not directly connected, ran in circles that would raise more suspicion to a heavy external influence. Of course, they had to know that Joe Caldwell, the CEO of Bartlett and West, was on the Go Topeka board and was commissioned by the data center to work at the data center site. Go Topeka and JADO approved the purchase, so now we have a suspicion of financial influence. There are no secrets in Shawnee County. They had to have known that the city owns some of the land. The feasibility ground testing had been done back in 25. Evergy had been in discussions with unknown data center. This suggests pressure may have played a part in the increase in acreage due to JADO, Go Topeka, the council, and commissioners. Members are expected to step back from matters when their impartiality could reasonably be questioned or when their participation could undermine the public confidence in the fairness and integrity of government. Then there is the Open Records Act violation of the private meeting or the appearance of the meeting at Washburn Rural High School where members of Compass Data Center and members of the city and county were photographed entering the school several hours before the open house on the data center. Mind you, this practice was also done when our lawmakers approved the 20-year tax-free agreement on everything involved in the construction and operation of the data center. To me, you only have two options. One, do not approve the zoning to heavy industrial and restore the community's faith in the government process. Or two, become one more minion for Evergy and the state legislators. The tears of strangers are just water to those who approve a data center. Thank you.

DAVID BURRAGE- Mr. Chairman, do I get a chance to defend myself?

Yes, go ahead.

Sir, I made that proposal at the request of the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters, who sat in those chairs and asked for that to be amended to a higher level. I had no intention in regards to any kind of impropriety And I suggest that you should understand or talk to me before you make such insinuations.

You didn't clarify that at the time because I was sitting out here. And I'm not saying particularly, but when you look at all of the other situations that occurred after the approval, Thank you. Next.

Good evening, everybody. I think all of the Planning Commission is appointed or volunteer, correct?

Correct.

Thank you for being here. Thank you all employees of the county for being here. We appreciate it. We respect you. My name is Peter Trimbley. I live at 10021 Southwest Jordan Road, Waukarusa, Kansas, 66546. My house is 1.87 miles from 85th Street. due south of the proposed data center. I want to say how awesome it is to see democracy at work tonight, even though this is not on the agenda. That whole room out there was full of people. Probably 80% were data center, and the other 20 were probably the first compost issue. I wrote some notes. I wasn't texting, so if you saw me on my phone, I was actually writing my speech. So I have three minutes. All right, so I am what I consider a river rat. I grew up on the Waukarusa River. I have the water in my blood. I kayaked and canoed my whole life, fished there. I've seen bait in all the local creeks. I have kayaked from Auburn Road to Clinton Lake and spent the night on the river when I was a kid, did that, huck fin stuff. Lately in the last few years, Colby Creek, I go down to the bridge that the county just replaced, there's nothing swimming in that water. There's nothing swimming in, in, uh, towhead Creek of a couple of miles Southwest. So I've spoken to some people. Nobody seems to care that there are no critters in those waters anymore that we can send bait for, you know, so that's, that's disturbing to me. What Colby Creek drains straight from Montero Walmart distribution center. What is poisoning the water? You know, uh, next thing, uh, All these people here don't want to come to speak. They have better things to do. You guys have better things to do than listen to us talk. I saw people here tonight that I haven't seen in years. One of them just left. It was cool to see those people. That means something's happening globally in our area to get these people here. We don't want this. And I'll finish with that. The amount, this isn't a threat, but the amount of people later will dwarf what came tonight. And I guarantee that'll happen. I've seen it within the last few days of how many people, once they realize what's happening here, They're not going to like it. I drove to Omaha like a month ago. I'm jumping topics. But there's a giant Google data center there. It's called Google Southlands. Look it up on Google Maps, Google Street View. You will see buildings as big as Walmarts in South Topeka, half mile long, 500 feet wide or whatever, four stories tall, full of servers. They're only like a mile from the coal plant there. So they have easy access to their power. There is no easy access. I used to work for Evergy. I know where all the transmission lines come from. I helped design power lines out of the New Heartline sub on Topeka Boulevard at 77th Street. So I'm pretty familiar with all the electricity part of this, and I don't understand how in the hell they're ever going to produce the energy that that's going to take because they're not. And I saw they're going to have two short cycle plants in Wichita and somewhere else, like 97 megawatts. That ain't going to touch it. So and then we get SPP telling us we need to conserve energy when it's hot or cold. Where are they going to get this excess power? Uh, also I was going to talk about the greater Topeka partnership has 35 employees and go Topeka nine. They may be all the same, but what are those people doing that many jobs that we're paying for the half cent sales tax to get this kind of crap and recommend this, you know, why are we paying that for jobs for a plant that doesn't produce jobs? You know, we need to all look at ourselves when we vote again to not vote for that you know because that's ridiculous that those that many people are employees due to that tax you know those people aren't doing their jobs thank you all very much seeing no further public comment we will move on discussion of planning related issues

So we have two rezoning cases. Two parcels are being, they're requesting a rezone. Both of them, which are side by side from commercial to multifamily. So you'll see that coming up.

As you've heard tonight, the application for the data center was deemed by the department as incomplete, and the next filing deadline for that is August 28th. At this time, no public hearing has been scheduled, as we don't know if they will get application details resubmitted by August. So we will keep you all posted as that proceeds forward. if it proceeds forward I suppose I should say if it is submitted by August the earliest we would see it's November the earliest we would see it would be November correct questions can can you comment on some of the lack of details or what Sure.

Deficiencies?

Do you have a particular question or you just want me to give a... Yeah, so we spent a lot of time going through the application and everything that was submitted and felt that there were details missing that would help with the case moving forward, including information about the phases of construction, when it would start, how many buildings would be constructed at a time, how long construction would be anticipated to proceed forward. Had questions about the substation, the Evergy substation or the large utility substation, as well as two smaller substations that would be owned or maintained by Compass. Had some questions about ownership. Who is gonna continue to own the land? Obviously Compass is the one who had applied, but would they maintain ownership? Are they renting it out or leasing it out to a tenant? Or are they selling it? What are the future plans if it were to be approved? A lot of questions about the staffing of it. They've indicated that there would be 30 employees, but early conversations that I had had indicated 30 employees per building, so there's quite a big difference between 30 and 300. And so we needed some clarification about that. lighting in regards to the lights that they had proposed. We wanted to get some light plans at night to see how that would impact. There isn't yet an identification of the public utility connection. Obviously, they would prefer to connect to city services so that they could have city water and sewer. but at this point the city has not agreed to do that and so then the other option would be to do a state permitted lagoon as well as rural water district connection for water service. However, they didn't provide us details about where the location of the lagoon would be and if it were not to fall on the site, there wouldn't have been room for it on the site with the buildings, and so if they were gonna be purchasing additional land, then that would change the site of the CUP, which then changes the 1,000 foot notification, and so we requested that they give us additional details about where that lagoon would fall. Questions about the electrical load. They indicated that it was a 400 megawatt critical load, but that's different than total site demand. So asking about information on the differences and at what phase would those different demands occur? So if they had four or five buildings up front, what is the site load for that? And then if it moves on to eight or 10, at what point in those stages is the various electrical load identified? We had questions about the generators. They skimmed over the number of generators that would be on site, how often they would run, the type of fuel that would be used to run those. And my understanding is that they're backup generators, but they have to be tested. So how many would be tested each day, or each week, or each month, and for how long? They had indicated that the building density was 9.98%, but again, I question whether that's per building, because if you have 10 buildings on even the size of acreage that are there, plus the utility substation and the Compass substations, it appears as though 9.98% is not accurate. So I asked for clarification and details about what that all included. Asked for information on the hazardous material that could be used on the site, if they're gonna be using any hazardous materials. If so, how those are contained or what waste would be generated. Wanted some additional information about the noise, whether or not the compass substations were included in a sound survey that was submitted as well as the utility substation. And then again, like I said, some additional details about the various substations that would be on site. I believe that's pretty much it. So again, in reviewing all of that, I had sent out a detailed request for them to supplement their application if they wish to proceed forward. We felt like it was needed before we could move forward. and we didn't want to start a review process before having all the information because all it would do would cause unnecessary delay and lack of detail for us to be able to review. And you may have heard the commission has approved a resolution to allow us to go out to find an engineer consulting company to represent Shawnee County in reviewing all this. So one of the commenters talked about the drainage report that was submitted as a part of that application. Obviously we have, you know, our public works department and engineers with our own department who will assist in reviewing all of that. But we want to have that additional engineer firm who can help get us to the right places in terms of what it is that we would need to study in regards to noise, water, electrical load, all of the things. And so that's out there at this point as well. A lot of things pending in regards to this application. That's a question.

Uh-huh.

So are there a variety of fuel types that might be used in in the backup generators So they indicated that they were diesel generators, but there's also the ability to use as an example hydrogenated vegetable oil and so there's quite a big difference between HBO and diesel and so we need to know what it is that they would be planning on utilizing and and It could be that they say, well, let's go worst case scenario and say diesel, but maybe if we can best case scenario, we'll try and do that HVO. But we need to know that as part of the plan. And it could be that they've never done a conditional use permit process before. Most most of the data centers that you see that are out there even within the industrial zones that they fall They fit within the scope of what's allowed within an industrial zone. And so there's very little oversight into What a governmental entity looks at if they get a look at it at all before a data center gets put into place the way we handled it by going forward with the conditional use permit, it forces them to give us all this information, we get to review it, we get to say yay or nay, and then we get to put conditions on whether or not they get to use it in a certain way or we tell them how it is that they can use it. So they may not be used to providing all of the detail that we've requested because it could be that this is the first time they've had this kind of oversight into a project. I don't know. But that being said, we have to have what we have to have so that we can review it and do so in a logical manner.

What about the hazardous chemicals, I guess, that might be used? I think one of the speakers thought maybe in the cooling process. That, I guess, would need to be dumped someplace, I guess, every couple of years. the speaker was suggesting that there may be a couple of chemicals in that mix that would be particularly hazardous.

Yes, and so I did ask about the hazardous materials. I did asterisk her comment about that because in my review of it, I believe that the chemicals and the water that goes into the cooling system, with it being closed-loop, My understanding is that it can stay active within that loop for a long period of time. And so if it's possible that they would have to replace that or dump it and then replenish it every couple of years, then they would have to include a plan that would identify that.

the initial request was for the water to be supplied by the city of Topeka?

That's the hope, but within their original application, they gave us an option, a two-fold option. The first option would be city services, and the second option would be if it's county services. And until they have an answer from the city on whether or not they could use city services, then they haven't proceeded forward in regards to the county services, but they have information on both of those available. And then we've requested them to supplement that in quite a bit of detail.

Which is rural water district service.

Rural water district three.

I think you've cautioned us about, of commissioners, about how we participate in discussions. Ex parte communications, yes. About data centers. Would that mean that we probably would be prohibited from going to the city meeting that's scheduled for, is that the 18th or the 19th?

So any contact that you have, you sit on one of the decision making groups. Now your decision is a review, an intensive review, and a recommendation to the BCC. And you do have open meeting requirements, open record requirements, and so if you have contact with people on either side and get input from anybody on either side, those contacts have to be disclosed. So my email that I sent to all the planning commissioners was to remind you that you do sit on this committee and that you do have these CORA and COMA requirements and that any contact you have with anybody would have to be disclosed as ex parte communications so that the others know what communication you had and then if someone from the other side wanted to get additional details that they could. I think attending any meeting I would be cautious. It is an open meeting. So to clarify, it is an open meeting, but they are not allowing public comment. And that is a valid open meeting aspect under COMA. You can have meetings. It doesn't mean you have to have public comment. And so attending, take note, make sure that you identify that you were there. I would not be necessarily gathering information from the various respected parties and maybe we'll do a little research and make sure that it wouldn't be a violation that you need to avoid. And I can let you know.

Thank you.

Another question about the water. Um, so let's assume for the sake of this discussion that the city of Topeka is going to provide the, well, we'll be able to provide the water. So. How does that work? Is this property in the Topeka city limits or is it in Shawnee County, correct?

The property falls outside of the city limits. It's in unincorporated Shawnee County. It does fall within the three mile radius, but that doesn't impact us in this regard. It does abut against city land, but it is abutted against city island annexed land. And so any extension of any island annexation has to go through a statutory process of if the city were wanting to annex it, they would have to make a decision that they wanted to annex it, and then they would have to request from the county to annex it, and the county would have to agree to allow them to annex it. So it's a whole process. But there are plenty of properties outside of city boundaries that connect to city sewer and water already. It's not unusual. This is not an atypical request. So it's just whether or not it fits within the city's guidelines or policies and whether or not they could allow it to connect.

Maybe one more. So I guess I just wasn't aware, didn't realize, hadn't maybe thought about it. So it's possible that Compass might not be the ultimate owner of this data center, is that right?

I mean, anybody who owns property, even if they obtain any sort of permit or special zoning or whatever, always could potentially sell. And so we wanted them to identify if that was their intent. Now, even if they state that they intend to keep it, doesn't mean that one day down the road that they wouldn't sell it. But my question more stems from Are you just the buffer to get to the end point? Are you gonna continue to own it? Are you the one that's gonna be responsible if there's issues? Or who is it that's gonna be responsible? And if you recall when we did, our solar regulations, one of the clauses within that indicated that if there was any sort of transfer of ownership that they would have to give us notice within a certain period of time and they may have to submit some specific application information and or pay an additional fee. So if this were to move forward, that could be a condition that we have that if the ownership were to transfer that they would have to send us a specific amount of time notification so that we could identify whether or not they needed to sign off on any additional documentation affirming their understanding of the rules and requirements. Just a consideration.

I just wanna say thank you for all of that information. Super transparent, appreciate it. I'm sure everybody else does too. And thank you, I'm a big rule follower and so when we talk about this is the time to come up and approach everyone, even though we have taken the compost off of the agenda for this evening, but everyone who stayed and still wanted to share with us their thoughts on the compost center. I appreciate everyone coming out and saying that while they were while we had that time open for them has nothing to do with us not wanting to be here or having something better to do as was indicated before. This is where I want to be on my second Monday of the month unless a family member or emergency should happen. Chris, I want to thank you for telling us about Senate Bill 98. very enlightening and also a good reason why you really need to decide on who you're gonna vote for in any election because those things do happen Colleen I wanted to thank you for being an ear for everyone for someone to coming up to you I can tell that your heart is in this. Mr. Blackburn I am sure that as a city council member and as a planning commissioner you had a lot of tough decisions to make especially since you were very integral in development and those are not always easy and you always have to listen to both sides and I'm I'm assuming that you had some questionable votes because being on City Council that's what it is and so thank you for your service thanks for spending time here and telling us how this will affect you as well and There was someone else I wanted to thank for being here. There were actually two people. I think it was Ben who was, nope, Scott. Scott who was celebrating his 48th year at Sheldon and Rebecca who is also a teacher and owns farm. I know school is starting this week and wanted to say thank you for what you are doing, for taking the time to be here. And just know that we really do listen. I think we can all hear what everyone is saying. We really try to make the best decisions we can. We do not get paid for this position. It is a volunteer position that we are so lucky to be blessed with to sit up here and listen to everyone. So again, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you, Chad. I'm glad I didn't have to run this meeting as I did a couple months ago, so I appreciate everybody's time, but it's been very informative, so thank you.

With that, we're adjourned.