Proposed Technology and Advanced Industry Overlay District Clear, factual information about the proposed TAI Overlay District

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Sources & References

We try to back the information on this site with published, credible sources so you can check it yourself. Below are the 38 sources cited across our Concerns & Responses, organized by topic.

How to read this: these are external references — government agencies, standards bodies, national laboratories, and reputable reporting — provided for context and verification. They are not statements by the City, and the binding rules for any project are in the draft ordinance.

Environment & Resources

Will a data center drain our water supply?

  1. 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for the U.S. Dept. of Energy , December 2024
  2. Data Centers and Water Consumption — Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) , June 2025
  3. Sustainable by design: Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling — Microsoft (company announcement) , December 2024
  4. How AWS will return more water than it uses by 2030 — Amazon Web Services (company commitment) , 2024
  5. Advancing responsible water use at our data centers — Google (company commitment) , 2026

Will a data center poison our water table or contaminate groundwater?

  1. NPDES Permit Basics — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
  2. Pollution Control & NPDES Wastewater Programs — Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE)
  3. NPDES Pretreatment Program — Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE)
  4. Overview of the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) Rule — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
  5. Data Centers and Water Consumption — Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI)
  6. Controlling Legionella in Cooling Towers — U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  7. Cooling Water Efficiency Opportunities for Federal Data Centers — U.S. Department of Energy (Federal Energy Management Program) , June 2025

Will these facilities be noisy?

  1. Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers — Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) , March 2026
  2. How Pennsylvania towns are protecting themselves from the noise, heat and utility costs of massive data centers — The Conversation (Penn State Center for Energy Law and Policy) , June 2026

Will a data center light up the night sky like the La Cygne power plant?

  1. Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting — DarkSky International (with the Illuminating Engineering Society)
  2. Light at Night (advocacy) — Illuminating Engineering Society (IES)

What happens to old servers and electronic waste (e-waste)?

  1. Certified Electronics Recyclers (R2 and e-Stewards standards) — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
  2. Sustainable Management of Electronics and Batteries — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Health & Safety

Are battery storage facilities a fire risk?

  1. NFPA 855, Standard for the Installation of Stationary Energy Storage Systems — National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) , 2026 edition
  2. NFPA 855: Improving Energy Storage System Safety — American Clean Power Association , November 2025
  3. BESS Failure Incident Database — Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory , updated 2026

What about flooding, natural disasters, and other location risks?

  1. Floodplain Management — U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
  2. Brownfields All Appropriate Inquiries (Phase I Environmental Site Assessment) — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
  3. Explaining the Uptime Institute's Tier Classification System — Uptime Institute
  4. Nearly 80% of data center capacity is at elevated risk to climate hazards like flooding and fire, study says — CNBC , June 2026

Community & Economy

Will this hurt my property value?

  1. Data Centers and 2023 Home Sales in Northern Virginia — Center for Regional Analysis, George Mason University , August 2025
  2. New evidence on data center employment effects — The Brookings Institution , May 2026

Will this become a cryptocurrency mining operation?

  1. Fact Sheet: Climate and Energy Implications of Crypto-Assets in the United States — White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) , September 2022
  2. Tracking electricity consumption from U.S. cryptocurrency mining operations — U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) , February 2024

Infrastructure

Will this raise my electric bill or strain the grid?

  1. Grid-Scale Battery Storage: Frequently Asked Questions — National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) , 2019
  2. Understanding Large Load Interconnection — RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute) , April 2026
  3. DOE Releases New Report Evaluating Increase in Electricity Demand from Data Centers — U.S. Department of Energy , December 2024

Will construction and operations tear up our roads or add traffic?

  1. New evidence on data center employment effects — The Brookings Institution , May 2026
  2. How Many Jobs Do Data Centers Create? It Depends — Data Center Knowledge , August 2025

Will this grow faster than the City can plan for it?

  1. 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for the U.S. Dept. of Energy , December 2024
  2. Global Data Center Survey 2024 (Power Usage Effectiveness) — Uptime Institute , 2024
  3. Zoning for Data Centers and Cryptocurrency Mining — American Planning Association
  4. How Pennsylvania towns are protecting themselves from massive data centers — The Conversation , June 2026