THE LAUNCH DOCK

Data Centers, Power, and the Business of Not Asking Questions

This Was Never a Public Decision

Public meetings are not where decisions are made.
They are where decisions are revealed.

By the time residents are invited to listen, the land is already spoken for.
The zoning already fits.
The infrastructure is already promised.
The development narrative is already written.

What remains is performance.

Montgomery County is not debating whether massive data center projects will move forward. That question has already been answered—quietly, administratively, and without meaningful public leverage.

The Scale Is Not Ambiguous. The Silence Is.

The confirmed scope of proposed development near New Florence includes:

• Four initial data center buildings, each approximately 220,000 square feet

• Up to 13 additional buildings in subsequent phases

• On-site wells, stormwater ponds, and wastewater treatment facilities

• Hundreds of acres converted from agricultural or undeveloped land

• Infrastructure commitments designed to serve private operators long-term

This is not incremental growth.
This is regional transformation.

Yet critical information—operators, long-term water usage, environmental modeling, cost distribution—remains either undisclosed, deferred, or buried in administrative language inaccessible to the average resident.

That is not an oversight.
It is a strategy.

“Certified” Does Not Mean Accountable

Certification programs like REDI and “shovel-ready” designations are framed as economic achievements.

In reality, they are risk-reduction tools for corporations, not protections for communities (Site Selectors Guild, 2023).

Certification prioritizes:

• Speed to construction

• Utility availability

• Regulatory ease

• Transportation efficiency

• Investor confidence

It explicitly excludes:

• Cultural or historical land significance

• Long-term ecological strain

• Water depletion risk

• Community consent

• Irreversibility

Once land is certified, community debate becomes irrelevant. The site is no longer evaluated on merit—only on efficiency.

This is not development planning.
It is pre-approval.

Public–Private Partnerships: Power Without Visibility

Public–private partnerships are sold as collaboration.

In practice, they function as authority concentrators (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2020).

They allow:

• Negotiations outside public view

• Accelerated timelines

• Administrative approvals in place of votes

• Infrastructure commitments before residents understand the scope

• Legal compliance without democratic legitimacy

When projects “meet zoning requirements,” officials stop answering questions—as if zoning were designed for projects of this scale and permanence.

It wasn’t.

Zoning did not anticipate hyperscale data centers with private wells, massive energy demands, and multi-decade land control.

Compliance is being used as cover.

Land Is Not Empty Just Because It Is Profitable

This region is repeatedly described as underutilized.

That framing depends on forgetting.

Montgomery County sits on land shaped and sustained by Native nations long before counties, certifications, or development authorities existed. The Osage, Kickapoo, Shawnee, Ioway, Otoe, and Delaware peoples were removed so this land could later be described as “available” (Missouri Department of Conservation, n.d.; National Park Service, n.d.).

Prairies were burned deliberately—to maintain balance.
Forests were stewarded.
Waterways were protected.

What we now call “undeveloped” is land stripped of its history, then marketed for extraction.

Data centers do not erase that history—but they do finalize the removal.

Why Rural Communities Are Targeted

Data centers are not choosing Montgomery County because it is ideal.

They are choosing it because it is quiet.

Because:

• Land costs less

• Water rights face less scrutiny

• Energy infrastructure can be negotiated behind closed doors

• Zoning codes lag behind technology

• Public resistance arrives after approvals

• Local governments lack leverage once momentum begins

This is a repeatable model (Energy Information Administration, 2023).
Montgomery County is not an exception.
It is the next stop.

“Economic Growth” Without Local Control Is Extraction

The language is always optimistic:

Jobs
Investment
Infrastructure
Progress

The reality is often:

• Public utilities subsidizing private operations

• Long-term tax abatements limiting community benefit

• Specialized jobs filled from outside the region

• Environmental costs absorbed locally

• Land locked into single-use industrial function indefinitely

This is not anti-development.
It is anti-deception.

Growth that cannot withstand scrutiny is not growth—it is transfer.

Approval Is Not the End. Silence Is the Risk.

Even now, residents retain rights.

They can:

• File Missouri Sunshine Law requests for planning documents, development agreements, and analyses (Missouri Revised Statutes §610)

• Ask who calculated water demand—and how

• Ask what environmental impacts were modeled—and what was excluded

• Ask who pays when infrastructure fails

• Ask why public input was structurally minimized

The question is no longer Can this be stopped?

The question is:
Will the public accept decisions made without them?

Methodology

This reporting draws from publicly available zoning records, planning documents, historical sources, conservation data, and economic development materials. No individuals are accused. Readers are encouraged to verify all source material independently.

Closing: Speed Is Not a Virtue

Fast decisions benefit those who already have power.

Communities are left to manage consequences.

Land does not regenerate on investor timelines.
Water does not respond to press releases.
History does not disappear because it is inconvenient.

If development is inevitable, transparency should be nonnegotiable.

Anything less is not leadership.
It is abdication.

In solidarity,
Lyndsay LaBrier
Merchant Ship Collective

References

Energy Information Administration. (2023). U.S. data center energy consumption and infrastructure demand. https://www.eia.gov

Missouri Department of Conservation. (n.d.). Missouri conservation areas and land stewardship. https://mdc.mo.gov

Missouri Revised Statutes §610. Missouri Sunshine Law. https://revisor.mo.gov

National Park Service. (n.d.). Native American land use and displacement in the Midwest. https://www.nps.gov

Site Selectors Guild. (2023). REDI sites program overview. https://siteselectorsguild.com

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2020). Public–private partnerships: Key practices and oversight considerations. https://www.gao.gov