Concerns about data centers:
Opponents worry about land devaluation, and the use of water and power
STORY BY RYAN HALL | RURAL MONTANA EDITOR
Lewistown native Kassi Solberg and her husband moved to just outside Broadview in November 2025, looking to find their Montana paradise and establish a property that could be handed down for generations.
On Jan. 3, 44 days later, she learned Quantica Infrastructure and Big Sky Development Infrastructure (BDSI) were planning to build a large 1,100 Megawatt (MW) generative AI data center in phases just four miles away. She soon found out that neighbors had leased the companies up to 45,000 acres of additional land for potential wind turbines, solar panels and a likely baseload power source such as a natural gas plant.
Quantica noted that it initially announced the Big Sky Campus in a press release in August 2025, sharing that the 5,000-acre campus located outside of Billings would be a 1 gigawatt energy and digital infrastructure campus.
“This is the worst mistake I ever made moving here. Worst choice. Ever,” Solberg said. “I would have never bought near wind turbines or solar. They brought my property value down before I even walked in the door.”
She added that selling and leaving is not an option.
“We poured our entire life savings into this place. We will be lucky to get what we paid for it out of it – if it’s not completely destroyed,” Solberg said, adding her adult children have no interest in joining her in Montana or inheriting the home now. “What’s going to be left for them? This was supposed to be not only our little nest, but it was supposed to be for (future) generations.”
Raising concerns
Solberg is not alone, national polls show 70 percent of Americans oppose data centers being built near them, and a recent Montana Free Press/Rutgers Eagleton poll showed nearly 75 percent of Montanans oppose a data center being built near by. While there are many reasons people oppose data centers, the most common are residential power rate increases, power availability, water use, noise pollution and land use.
A quick recap
This series has already shown how some communities have embraced data centers, and the benefits that can come from them, such as a substantial increase in property taxes leading to newer schools and city buildings. But Washington, where those data centers are located, offers no property tax incentives for those centers. Montana offers an attractive .9 percent property tax rate for data centers, meaning any influx would likely be less tax revenue than in Washington. This series has also discussed power, noting in some areas such as Georgia and Virgina, residential rates have increased greatly, while in Washington, a Grant County Public Utility District (PUD) official said the data centers pay more than the cost to serve themselves, while residents pay significantly less than the cost to serve their homes.
In Montana, Quantica has said it wants to cover the costs of serving the data center.
“As a developer we want to pay our own way, we do not want ratepayers to have increased costs in power rates,” said Charlie Baker, accounting officer for Quantica.
The how-to power question is an important one, but opponents also note data centers could lead to loss of access to power for residents — and it’s already happened.
Earlier this year, NV Energy announced that it will end its power supply agreement with Liberty Utilities in 2027, leaving approximately 49,000 residents as well as local ski resorts without a power provider. Liberty, which serves the Lake Tahoe area in California and Nevada, currently gets 75 percent of its power from NV Energy. The reason for the change is to send the freed-up energy to new industrial data centers near Reno, Nevada, where major tech companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft are building large facilities to run AI systems, according to an article in Fortune.
In that case, some groups blame the utility for not planning for the abundance of new data centers, while others blame the data centers themselves, according to the article.
In Montana, electric cooperatives have long maintained that their long-term preferential power agreement with Bonneville Power Administration and the long-term contract many eastern Montana cooperatives have with the Western Area Power Administration and/or Basin Electric Power Cooperative would protect members if data centers were to come to electric co-op country. They also have said any data center would be responsible to either bring its own generation or pay for the generation and transmission upgrades and construction needed to serve any large new load, without impacting members.
Solberg is not an electric co-op member. Her utility, NorthWestern Energy, has filed a large load tariff with the Public Service Commission that it says protects consumers from high rates. The PSC has not issued a final ruling on that filing.
“I don’t believe a thing they say,” Solberg said of her utility. “I believe they will prioritize data centers over people.”
Water
One issue raised by Solberg, and people across the country, is how much water data centers use for cooling.
Ryan Beebout, vice president of Sabey Data Centers – West, said that there are many different kinds of data centers, and the type and size of data center, and especially the type of cooling system used, determines their water use. At Sabey’s facility in Quincy, Washington, some buildings use virtually no water because they use a closed-loop cooling system. Others use older evaporative technology, which requires more water.
Beebout said cooling is basically a tradeoff between power and water usage, air-conditioners that chill the pipe containing water in a closed-loop system consume more power, while evaporative coolers use much less power, but are heavy water users.
Walking through the 57-megawatt Quincy facility earlier this year, Beebout explained how the closed-loop cooling system works. The server rooms in this non-AI data center must be kept at a temperature of 65 to 81 degrees Fahrenheit, and a relative humidity of about 50 percent.
He explained how each set of servers is grouped in a pod, and how the heat from that pod rises into a containment area, keeping the hot and cold air separated. The exhausted air is about 20 degrees warmer than room temperature. The server room has a 14-foot ceiling, with 8-10 feet above the ceiling for the hot air. The hot air is brought through an air handler, where cold water is circulated through pipes to cool down the air, which is then recirculated into the room. It’s essentially a large radiator. This helps keep outside dust and smoke from coming into the server rooms. The water in the pipe is warmed during the air-cooling process. It then travels outside, where a series of air conditioners cools the pipe, and thus the water, before the water is recirculated to begin the process again.
“This building, we are not consuming any water at all,” Beebout said, adding that the water never leaves the pipe. “We don’t ever have to replenish it.”
He noted that in the summer the system uses more energy, while in the winter there are days when the coolers don’t even have to run, as the ambient air cools the water.
In Montana, BSDI is planning for a closed-loop cooling system at the Big Sky Campus, meaning minimal water will be used for cooling. Closed-loop systems are initially charged during commissioning and do not require routine water replenishment during normal operations, the company said in an email.
“When the Big Sky Campus is fully operational, it’s estimated that the campus will use 20,000 gallons (of water) per day, primarily for domestic use,” Baker said.
“My research showed it’s not a fully closed loop, that it must be discharged somewhere, that the water is so mineralized they would need to add chemicals,” Solberg said. “Which chemicals, we don’t know. The company is not telling us. Where will these be stored?”
In the September news release, the company said it planned to tap into the deeper Madison Aquifer, at a depth of a least 4,000 feet, not the Eagle Aquifer used by local residents.
According to the online water rights database maintained by DNRC, BSDI currently owns two wells and has five surface water rights that came with the property it purchased. None of those rights would satisfy the company’s stated plans.
The existing wells on the property are about 100-feet deep and would only produce about 3,000 gallons a day even if they had enough water to meet the limit of the right. The surface water rights, which are listed under the stock category, are measured by an estimated 30 gallons of water a cow could drink a day, multiplied by the carrying capacity of the land.
Changing the existing stock rights to industrial or domestic use would require approval of the DNRC, pending the determination that the change would not affect older water rights. The oldest water right the company owns is dated 1936; the newest is 1992.
Other Concerns
Water, power availability and power rates are the chief concerns with any data center project, particularly AI generative data centers such as the one proposed in Broadview.
Other concerns also exist. Locally, Solberg is concerned about the construction phase’s impact on traffic. She said that if access to Highway 3 is closed off or delayed during the approximately three-year construction phase, it will severely impact residents’ ability to go to Billings.
“That’s how you get anywhere from here,” she said.
In an email, BSDI said that construction will generate temporary truck traffic, and it is currently working on designating construction routes to minimize impacts on local roads, traffic management plans to reduce congestion during peak hours and communication with neighbors about construction schedules.
Noise is also a concern at some plants, depending on the abatement measures installed. The Sabey center in Quincy was quieter than most industrial sites. A conversation could be held inside the server rooms at normal volume, and it was even quieter outside.
In Broadview, both noise and light concerns will be partially mitigated by the location of the site, which is set back from the main road, said Taylor McCarthy, director of communications for Quantica. There are aso plans for additional noise and light mitigation measures.
Eminent Domain
Another concern of opponents is the use of eminent domain in order to build the infrastructure needed for data centers.
A recent example of this involves our much-cited example of Quincy, Washington, where Grant County PUD filed a lawsuit in 2025 to condemn parts of customer’s properties that sits in the path of a planned transmission line to Quincy.
A judge ruled in August that the utility has the legal right to take private property to build electrical lines, according to the Seattle Times. The issue of compensation was left for a jury to decide, unless the parties come to an agreement or waive the right to a jury.
The transmission line would roughly double the amount of power that can be delivered to Quincy. The Times said approximately 37 percent of Grant County’s power was consumed by data centers in 2025.
The line would impact 34 homes, cutting across some of their front yards.
In Montana, utilities have access to eminent domain, but it is believed that no electric cooperative has ever exercised it. A NorthWestern Energy spokesperson said that utility has not used eminent domain in Montana. The spokesperson said the company could not comment on whether its predecessor, Montana Power, which NorthWestern purchased in 2002, had used eminent domain.
Sabey’s Beebout noted that across the country, most data centers try to be good neighbors and support their communities, but he said there are a few that don’t operate that way, and it gives the industry a black eye.
“There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it,” Beebout said. “There’s certainly examples of bad ones. But most do it well.”
Done well or not, Solberg doesn’t think AI data centers belong in Big Sky Country.
“We have been in a drought for six years, why would anyone even think AI Hyperscale data centers are a good idea in Montana?” she asked.