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Discussions About AI Data Centers in Broadwater County
Author: Nancy Marks, MT43 News Reporter

Discussions About AI Data Centers in Broadwater County

Last month, 70 people took part in a presentation about the controversial subject of AI data centers in Montana. Candidate for the 2nd Congressional District Representative Brian Miller gave a lengthy talk at The Lodge about the impact of allowing AI data centers to be built in Montana.

Miller, who is an attorney for a lawsuit to stop the building of the centers in Yellowstone County, presented several video clips promoting the facilities, which would bring great economic value to counties. The centers house the servers, networking equipment used in AI, and other digital services. According to these videos, water use impacts of the new Walmart- sized buildings would be minimal because they use a closed-loop water system to cool the computers. The centers would bring large numbers of jobs to Montana and provide millions of dollars in tax revenue.

Miller countered the video information with his research, which showed a data center might take as much water to eliminate heat from the computers as is used to water a golf course. He said cooling the computers takes huge amounts of electricity to cool the water. Once built, these centers need few employees and while tax revenues increase, so do needs for roads and schools.

He pointed out Yellowstone County residents’ lawsuit to stop Quantica, Inc. from building a data center at Broadus, just north of Billings, on 5,000 acres of land. Other states have called for moratoriums on building the facilities in their communities. His take-away point: We, as landowners and taxpayers, need more facts before we can make decisions about allowing data centers to be built in Montana.

Two Broadwater County Commissioners attended the gathering. Debi Randolph and Lindsey Richtmyer suggested the presentation was loosely organized and based on scare tactics. They suggested people should study the issues, including the economic bonuses of data centers. They also noted that landowners have the freedom to sell their land to whomever they want. The Commissioners pointed out that the Department of Natural Resources would protect individual water rights that might be impacted. They also mentioned that growth in the county is inevitable and that government needs to look at the economic value.

According to people close to workings of the Targeted Economic Development District in South Broadwater, there have been inquiries about building a data center near Three Forks.

Folks- we are closer to this major economic and environmental change than we would like to admit.

I strongly encourage our county commissioners to not commit to any data center locations in Broadwater County until we have many public meetings. We need citizen forums with professionals in the industry who are not connected financially or politically to data centers. AI data centers are coming to a community near you – we need to better understand what comes next.

Nancy Marks, Publisher