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What We've Found:
The following reflects our good-faith analysis of public records and published research. Each finding cites its source so you can verify it independently.
By The Numbers:
Piedmont Water
78¢ — what Piedmont's water system already recovers for every $1 it spends, per the City's own audit. The system was under strain before any new large user.
Source: Piedmont Municipal Authority annual audit, FY2022–23.
By The Numbers:
OK Water Use
1.1+ billion gallons — water used by a single Oklahoma data center (Google, Pryor) in one year, per water-utility records.
Source: The Frontier, Feb. 2026.
By The Numbers:
Power Scale
100–500 MW — the continuous power a single hyperscale campus can draw: as much electricity as 100,000-plus homes.
Source: International Energy Agency; Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026.
By The Numbers:
OK Demand
~96% — the rise in electricity demand Southwest Power Pool, Oklahoma's grid operator, projects across its region within a decade, driven largely by data centers.
Source: Southwest Power Pool, via Oklahoma Energy Today, Oct. 2025.
No Named Operator- & One Applicant Doesn't Yet Own The Land
Neither applicant is the end user. Both are land/entitlement developers; the operator who would run the facility is undisclosed. Cloverleaf §9.0(1) makes its application contingent because it does not yet own the land it seeks to annex and rezone.
Our view:
Compatibility, water demand, and fiscal impact all depend on facts deferred to a future, unnamed "end user" — facts the Commission would be approving the project without.
Source: Cloverleaf PUD §9.0(1), §9.21.
Shell Creek is
Already Impaired
Shell Creek — which borders the Beltline site — is listed as impaired under Clean Water Act §303(d) per state records. Beltline proposes private septic/lagoon systems and private wells at hyperscale scale. Separately, cooling water returned to a water system carries higher concentrations of dissolved solids, which published research links to edrinking-water taste, reduced crop yields, and harm to aquatic life.
The question for the record:
How will the project avoid adding pollutant or stormwater load to an already-impaired creek, and has a wetlands determination been made?
Source: EPA/state §303(d) list (per public records); MOST Policy Initiative / U.S. EPA, 2025–26.
The Water System Already Can't Keep Up
Per public records, the City's January 2024 engineering study identified capacity needs BEFORE any new industrial demand. The City carries roughly $25.46 million in OWRB-related water debt for improvements that are not complete, and its 2024 water-quality report reflected radiological exceedances.
The question for the record:
Before adding one of the County's largest single water demands, will the City obtain and publish an independent, third-party capacity study?
Source: City of Piedmont engineering study (Jan. 2024); OWRB records; 2024 Consumer Confidence Report (per public records).
The Adequacy Finding is Being Deferred
The rezoning is the entitlement. Yet both staff reports defer infrastructure-capacity questions to a later "Preliminary Plat" stage, and neither application states a water- or wastewater-demand figure.
The question for the record:
How can the required infrastructure-adequacy finding be made now, when capacity is expressly deferred to a later stage — approving the use before adequacy is known?
Source: City staff reports; PUD applications as filed.
Was it ReallyAn Emergency?
Ordinances 2026-002 and 2026-003 were adopted with emergency clauses, which can shorten or bypass the citizen referendum window under
City Charter §2-14-C.
The question for the record:
What documented emergency justified suspending residents' referendum rights on a permanent land-use decision? (This is a Charter matter for the City Council — we raise it to preserve it for the June 22 Council meeting.)
Source: City of Piedmont Ordinances 2026-002 and 2026-003; City Charter §2-14-C.
Southwest Power Pool projects steep regional demand growth, and a Harvard energy-law expert has warned the traditional "spread the cost across everyone" utility model fits concentrated data-center growth poorly. A 2025 Carnegie Mellon/NC State study projects data centers could raise the average U.S. electricity bill about 8% by 2030 — and over 25% in the highest-demand markets — absent policy action to prevent cost-shifting. Oklahoma's new HB 2992 (Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act, signed May 2026, effective July 1) now requires large-load users adding 75 MW or more to cover their own infrastructure and energy costs and to give nearby landowners 60 days' notice.
The question for the record:
Could Cimarron Electric Cooperative members or other ratepayers bear any interconnection or grid-upgrade cost, and how will HB 2992's cost-causation requirement be applied here?
Who Pays For The Grid?
Source: Southwest Power Pool; Carnegie Mellon/NC State (via Pew), 2025; Harvard Electricity Law Initiative (via Data Center Knowledge), 2026; Oklahoma HB 2992 (2026).
The Tax-And-Jobs Picture Communities Rarely Hear
Industry developers commonly seek multi-year property-tax exemptions and sales-tax relief on equipment. Independent research consistently finds the permanent job count is small:
• A typical large data center employs on the order of dozens of permanent workers; Virginia's JLARC found the state loses roughly 52 cents for every dollar abated. (Good Jobs First / Virginia JLARC, 2026.)
• Rural facilities, where jobs exist, tend to be well-paid but few — typically 50 to 250 per site, with many roles filled from outside the area. (NPR, 2025; Brookings, 2025.)
• One Pennsylvania analysis found data centers contributed about $1.36 billion in state/local taxes in 2023 while adding roughly $2.75 billion to electricity bills in 2025–26 — a net loss for households once both sides are counted. (Ohio River Valley Institute, 2026.)
As written, the applications include no clawback tied to job/investment promises and no decommissioning bond to fund teardown and site restoration. Adoptable models exist — Lake County, Indiana requires decommissioning after 15 months of inactivity. (We estimate Oklahoma incentive exposure for an end user in the range of $200M–$500M over ten years; this is our estimate, not a confirmed figure.)
Source: Good Jobs First / Virginia JLARC; NPR; Brookings Institution; Ohio River Valley Institute; Lake County, IN ordinance.
What You Were Told
V.
What The Applications Authorize
Residents were told these are "data centers" — server buildings. The filed PUD applications authorize far more, by right. These are not our characterizations; they are the text of the applications. ("B"=Beltline; "C"=Cloverleaf. Section numbers as filed; confirm against the official record.)
• Oil and gas operations — by right. Cloverleaf §9.0(2) permits oil, gas, and disposal-well drilling, production, well pads and tank batteries. §9.0(2)(d) requires NO buffer between those operations and the data center.
• On-site power plants — by right. Cloverleaf §8.1 permits natural-gas combustion-turbine and combined-cycle plants, battery storage, and geothermal wells. Beltline folds backup generation, batteries, and substations into its own "data center" definition.
• Private wells and septic/lagoon sewer at hyperscale. Beltline §7.2–§7.3: private water wells and "private sewer solutions, which may be septic or lagoon systems" — bypassing the City system. Neither application states an engineering water-demand figure.
• The PUD overrides the City's own safeguards. Beltline §8.1 says the PUD "supersedes any Special Use Permit requirements in the IT District"; §9.19 says the District's monitoring, compliance, and revocation provisions are "replaced and superseded in their entirety."
• 150-foot structures, by right. Beltline §9.13 allows accessory structures — cooling towers, exhaust stacks, comm towers — up to 150 feet.
• Noise limits that miss the part you'd hear. Both PUDs set day/night limits in A-weighted decibels (dBA) only — no C-weighting (dBC) for the low-frequency hum that travels farthest. The applicant's own background study took ~30-minute readings; one point already measured 59.9 dBA — at the 60 dBA daytime cap before anything is built.
Source: Beltline and Cloverleaf PUD applications as filed; applicant's noise exhibit.
Hundreds of Neighbors Are Asking Questions
Hundreds of residents have reached out trying to understand what these projects mean for their land. We are building a collaborative effort to identify regulatory gaps and work toward enforceable solutions — and to ensure the people of Piedmont can take part in decisions that will permanently reshape our hometown and family farms, as the City Charter provides.
Questions We're Asking Our Officials
The following reflects our good-faith analysis of public records and published research. Each finding cites its source so you can verify it independently.
Which cooling technology will the end user use, and what is the projected PEAK (not average) water demand?
Neither application states a water-demand figure.
SB 259 is moving to bar groundwater permits for evaporative-cooled data centers.
Who is the operator, who owns the land at the time of the vote, and which tax incentives will be sought?
Both applicants are entitlement developers, not the end user; compatibility and fiscal impact depend on those deferred facts.
What volume of industrial wastewater will the facility generate, and will those streams be treated separately from sanitary sewage?
Both PUDs are silent on industrial pretreatment;
Beltline proposes private septic/lagoon (§7.2).
Has either applicant applied for an OWRB groundwater permit, which aquifer underlies the site, and what yield/basin life can it support?
Beltline proposes private wells (§7.3); OWRB rules set yields on a minimum 20-year basin life.
Does the $19.5M USDOT BUILD grant for Waterloo Road (Resolution 02-23-26A) reference data-center development, and was that disclosed to ODOT?
Goes to transparency and the true purpose of publicly funded road infrastructure.
What binding road-repair and traffic-study commitments exist for the construction phase?
Heavy construction traffic for comparable rural campuses has been tied to road damage and crash spikes elsewhere.
What monitoring, reporting, and revocation tools remain if the PUD deletes the City's own oversight provisions?
Beltline §8.1/§9.19 supersede the IT District's compliance and revocation tools.
Public-records reviews in other states found most data-center localities had broad NDAs covering exactly these terms.
Does any NDA exist that limits public disclosure of project scale, power/water demand, the operator's identity, or community-benefit terms?
Binding text controls over illustrative exhibits, so the weaker protection is what actually gets approved unless bound.
Where the concept-plan exhibits show stronger protections than the binding PUD text, which controls — and will the better numbers be written in?
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