“Data centers threaten public health with their excessive air, water, light and noise pollution.” “Major construction projects bring a significant increase in heavy truck traffic.” “If Kansas is in fact the rarest of jewels for these trillion-dollar tech companies, why are we the ones bending over backwards to accommodate them?” Those were a few of the comments made by more than 60 concerned speakers at a packed Sedgwick County town hall this month with mounting questions over the evolving data center industry that has made its way to Wichita. The Kansas Legislature rolled out the red carpet last year to attract large data centers — which house critical IT infrastructure for technology like streaming and smartphones — with an incentives package offering 20-year sales tax exemptions for construction, equipment, site costs, and labor services for data center projects.
Read more: Wichita Business Journal
