Episode Four:  The Consequences

In episode three, following the money tells only half the story.

In episode, episode four, we examine the consequences for local communities across this state, the costs paid by Kansans when back-room deals bend the rules.

For every dollar, every exemption, every special privilege granted to benefit a few, comes at a price to someone else. That someone is you, it’s every kitchen table, it’s every Kansas community, it’s every Kansas school that will do with less and pay more.

But there are some consequences that don’t come with a price tag, things that once they are lost are gone forever. It is the Water beneath our land that once depleted will forever change Kansas, a price our children will pay. The loss of our natural aquifer, that has enriched the lives of Kansans, will leave a scar upon this state, a scar left by those who voted in favor of passing Senate Bill 98.

SB 98, was a Trojan Horse, that elected legislators felt rushed to pass, it was a tariff, a special rate request by the KCC, with a docket filed by a Kansas Power company for an unnamed customer with no fiscal note attached to SB 98. Under this negotiated tariff the Kansas Corporation Commission approved this spring; the unnamed companies do not pay the same rate. They do not pay under the same rules. And when the bill for the build-out comes due, they will not pay in the same proportion.

Evergy, the utility that powers most of eastern Kansas, has told its own shareholders on the record in writing that it is now growing what it calls its large load customer pipeline to over 15 gigawatts. That’s not our number, that’s Evergy’s number, in Evergy’s own 2026 proxy statement, confirmed in their Q4 2025 earnings call, confirmed again in their Q1 2026 earnings call.

For context, Wolf Creek, the nuclear plant that has run Kansas for the last 40 years, is about 1.2 gigawatts. 15 gigawatts is more than 12 Wolf Creeks. This was announced in Evergy’s disclosures, to serve primarily data centers. The last time Kansas built power on this scale, it was Wolf Creek. Ratepayers remember groundbreaking May of 1977. First commercial power September of 1985.

The estimate at construction start about $1 billion. The final cost per federal court records more than 3 billion. And the Kansas Corporation Commission ruled in a decision later upheld, that roughly $183 million of that overrun had been imprudently spent by the utility. The KCC disallowed it. The shareholders ate it. The ratepayers didn’t have to. That was for 1.2 gigawatts, and it took eight years, $3 billion and a federal courtroom to sort out who paid.

Now, Evergy is planning for more than 12 times that much in a fraction of the time. And the question in front of the KCC right now this year is who eats the overrun this time? The generation is only half the receipt. The wires cost to the Southwest Power Pool, the regional grid operator that covers Kansas, has approved two consecutive transmission portfolios to move all this new power around. $7.7 billion in 2024, $8.6 billion in 2025, $16.3 billion in transmission upgrades across the Southwest Power Pool grid in two years.

That cost gets allocated under federal formula to every state on the grid. Kansas is one of them. Every ratepayer connected to that grid pays a share, including the meter on the farmhouse, including the meter on Main Street. This spring, the Kansas Corporation Commission approved Evergy’s Large Load Power Service tariff. KCC docket 25-EKME-315-tariff.

On paper, it says large customers pay a separate rate for their own load. The Kansas Legislative Research Department, in its own summary for the legislature, not an advocacy group, the legislature’s own research staff flagged what the tariff does not do. The tariff does not fully insulate residential and small business ratepayers from the cost of the generation and transmission buildout required to serve large loads.

That’s not us saying it. That is the legislature’s own research department, on the record, in writing. There are two pending Evergy rate cases in front of the Kansas Corporation Commission right now. One case is asking to raise the average residential bill by roughly $8.47 a month. A second case is asking for roughly $13 a month on top of that. Two pending cases, same utility, same year, roughly $20 a month, $240 a year, out of every household’s pocket, out of small businesses operations budgets, before a single new data center server is plugged in. That’s receipt number one. The power is the receipt they’re already sending you. You can pay it. You can fight it. You can in an election year, vote against it.

The water is different. Water doesn’t come back, it’s not easily or quickly replenished.

On July 15th of this year, in an interview with Kansas Public Radio, Kansas Chief engineer Earl Lewis, the state’s top water regulator, the man who signs off on every legal withdrawal of groundwater in this state was asked a direct question about data centers and water. His answer verbatim, we have not had any data center applications for new permits or changing existing water rights. Read it again.

Not one application, not one filing, not one docket for projects that at full buildout cumulatively, will consume tens of millions of gallons of water, a day from an aquifer that is already going dry.

Under the western third of this state lies the Ogallala (oh-guh-laa-luh) Aquifer. It is not a lake. It is not a river. It is a slow, immense body of water buried in sand and gravel that took the last ice age and the 10,000 years that followed to gather.

It is what makes Kansas, Kansas. The wheat, the cattle, the corn, the feedlots, the small towns. It’s all possible because of the oh-guh-laa-luh aquifer, and it is disappearing. The Kansas Geological Survey, the scientific body that measures every well every year across every district, reports that in the worst hit areas of the Kansas Ogallala, more than 60% of the original water is already gone.

In Groundwater Management District three, the district covering the western quadrant of the state, the aquifer has dropped on average more than 100 feet since predevelopment, and it is still dropping. The 30 year average annual decline in that district. 1.66 feet per year, the steepest of any district in the state. In parts of Greeley County, Wichita County, Scott County KGS uses one word, exhausted.

That’s not an activist word. That is not our word. That is the state’s own geological survey describing the ground under three Kansas counties.

What the numbers alone don’t tell you is that the Ogallala Aquifer does not refill from the sky. Not on any timescale we live on. In western Kansas, natural recharge, the rate at which rainfall actually makes it down through the soil, through the gravel, and into the aquifer is measured in fractions of an inch per year, in some places less than an inch, in some places effectively zero.

What took the last ice age to fill is being drawn down in a single lifetime. The United States Geological Survey has measured the total loss. Since 1950, across the entire eight state High Plains aquifer, the volume of water in storage has fallen by 286 million acre feet. Kansas alone accounts for roughly 72 million acre feet of that loss, 72 million acre feet.

Gone from under Kansas in 75 years.

That is a subtraction that does not have an addition. Some of these towns are already living with the answer. A town does not vote itself dry. A town runs out of water because the wells around it stopped producing, because the farms around it stopped irrigating, because the water table dropped below the pump.

When that happens, the farm doesn’t come back. The school doesn’t come back. The main street doesn’t come back. The town becomes a place people used to live. Parts of southwest Thomas County, per the Kansas Geological Survey’s own projection, have a remaining aquifer life span of less than 25 years at current pumping rates, not at the rates we’re about to add to the rates we already have.

Kansas water law starts with a statute KSA82 dash A dash 701 that says the water of the state belongs to the people of the state, held in a public trust administered by the Division of Water Resources. But the statute has a threshold, below a certain daily withdrawal, and outside a defined groundwater management district, a use can proceed without a full permit hearing.The statute was written for irrigation wells for municipal water supply, for livestock, for farms. It was not written for a single industrial user pulling 500,000 or 1 million, or 9 million gallons a day.

The City of Emporia, in its own review of the proposed Flint Hills Digital campus, disclosed a projected water demand exceeding 500,000 gallons per day, and the city’s own municipal review threshold triggers additional scrutiny at that level.

The state, outside the city has no equivalent trigger, that is the gap. On July 15th, Chief Engineer Lewis laid out the three ways a data center can obtain water in Kansas under current law.

One, buy it from a municipal utility that already holds the water rights.

Two, apply for a brand new appropriation right from the state, which in western Kansas, the aquifer no longer supports.

Three, buy the water right from someone who already has one, most of them irrigators, farms.

That third way, that’s the one that transfers a farm’s water to a data center, one section at a time.

For a sense of what a single hyperscale campus uses, we look across the state line. Just outside Kansas City in Clay and Platte counties, Missouri, not Kansas. A NetChoice member companies operating data center campus has reported water use of approximately 9.5 million gallons per day. One campus, in one metro, in one calendar year. That project is in Missouri. It is on the record because Missouri’s disclosure regime required it. Kansas has no equivalent disclosure, which is why the question, how much will the Kansas projects use has at this moment, has no answer that the state’s own chief engineer can give you.

This is not a debate about whether data centers use water. They do. This is about whether the state of Kansas is allowed to know before the pumps start, how much water the biggest new industrial users in a generation will draw from an aquifer we have already spent down for generations.

On July 15th, the state’s top water regulator said he did not know, because no one has asked him to know. The meter you pay every month, the school you fight every levee, the land you argue at the county commission. The water is the one you don’t get back. That’s receipt number two.

Now, we have to make a correction.

In episode three, we called Senate Bill 98, a tax exemption. That’s true, but we need to be specific about which tax. SB 98, the enacted signed session law is a sales tax exemption. It exempts qualifying data center projects from Kansas sales and use tax on their construction materials, on their equipment. That matters because the schools were about to talk about are funded from a different pot.

The Kansas Legislative Research Department, again, not an advocacy group, the legislature’s own staff attached a fiscal note to SB 98. Per the fiscal note, for every $250 million of qualifying data center investment. The state of Kansas will forgo approximately $9.8 million in sales tax revenue, over the 20 year exemption window.

$9.8 million per project not going into the state general fund, not available to be transferred in the annual appropriations bill to the state school fund. The classroom never sees that dollar because it never enters the Treasury. But before we walk through the mechanics, understand what we’re talking about. The school funding formula in this state is not just a spreadsheet. It’s the roof over your kid’s classroom, the bus that picks them up, the book on their desk, the teacher’s aide in the reading circle.

Every one of those things is paid for out of three different levers. And SB 98 touches all three, just not the way most people think.

Kansas school funding runs on three levers. The base aid for student excellence, a base set by the legislature, this is the state per pupil floor.

The local option budget LOB, which lets a district add up to 33% on top of base, drawn from local property taxes, state equalized, so poorer districts aren’t left behind.

And the capital outlay fund, an eight mill property tax levy the district uses for buildings, busses, technology, roof repairs, everything the classroom actually sits inside of. Base and LOB depend on the state general fund. Capital outlay depends on local property tax on real property inside the district.

Now watch what SB 98 does to both. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

First, USD 232 DeSoto, is the host school district for John Peterson’s Sunflower Redevelopment Astra Enterprise Park cluster, Panasonic, the Digital Realty Hyperscale Data Center Campus, Beale Infrastructures project pilot.

And second, USD 253 Emporia’s host school district for the Flint Hills Hyperscale Data Center Digital Campus.

Two very different school districts, same statutory frame, same SB 98 exemption. But look at the property tax side. Panasonic on its own DeSoto plant site is contributing approximately $200,000 a year into USD 232’s capital outlay fund, because Panasonic’s property tax abatement, negotiated separately under article 11, section 13 of the Kansas Constitution, explicitly preserves the eight mil school capital outlay levy. The classroom still gets the roof money. But Beale Infrastructure’s project pilot, 190 acres, next door, was structured with an eight mil carve out in the abatement. The capital outlay levy on that parcel on the abated portion does not flow to the school district.

Same statute, same schooldistrict, two different outcomes depending on how the deal was written.

USD 253 Emporia, meanwhile, is already levying at the eight mil statutory cap for capital outlay. There is no headroom. If the Flint Hills tract lands with a carve out. The district cannot make it up. They’re already at the ceiling.

This is what SB 98 supporters have argued, the sales tax exemption is federal money left on the table. Property tax stays on, the schools are protected on paper for the sales tax. That’s technically correct, but property tax is negotiated per project. SB 98 doesn’t touch it. Neither does article 11, section 13. Every abatement is a separate deal, negotiated by a separate city or county council, on a separate night, with a separate quorum.

When Panasonic’s deal preserved the eight mil capital outlay, USD 232 kept the roof money. When Beale Infrastructure’s project pilot deal carved it out, USD 232 lost it on that parcel. USD 253 has no room to lose anything. They’re already at the cap. One statute, one state, two districts. Two very different classrooms. That’s receipt number three.

We’ve paid the meter. We’ve watched the aquifer. We’ve counted the classroom. Now we walked the fence line.

Across five Kansas counties Lyon, Johnson, Leavenworth, Wyandotte and Miami. Seven projects have been publicly disclosed to date. Flint Hills Digital Campus in Lyon County. Panasonic, DeSoto in Johnson County. Project Bluestem, in Leavenworth County. Project Jayhawk Digital realty, in Johnson County. Red Wolf, in Wyandotte County. Project Catalyst, in Miami County. Project Pilot, Beale Infrastructure, in Johnson County, Combined, disclosed or optioned acreage, approximately 4,853 acres, nearly all of it, with limited exceptions, was formerly zoned rural or agricultural. Nearly all of it sits within the state’s productive eastern belt, where USDA classifies roughly half of all Kansas acreage as prime farmland.

We have to correct one thing on the record. Meta’s Kansas City area data center is not in Kansas, it is in Clay and Platte counties, Missouri. Google’s Project Castrol and Project Mica are also Missouri side. That’s roughly 1,700 to 1,800 additional acres, but they’re across the river. The 4,853 acre figure is Kansas only, on the ground, optioned or rezoned in the last 18 months.

In Lyon County. The Flint Hills digital campus project. The public record is complete and it is worth walking through.

June 3rd, 2026, Emporia City Commissioners annex approximately 1,000 acres, 11 tracts into city limits. After nearly 90 minutes of public comment, almost all of it opposed.

June 23rd, the Planning Commission holds a 6.5 hour public hearing. 4 to 500 people fill the William L White Civic Auditorium. More than 50 residents testify. Roughly 71% oppose. The Planning Commission votes unanimously to table.

July 30th, the Planning Commission votes 4 to 3 to recommend rezoning, 6 to 1 to recommend the overlay district.

July 22nd, the Emporia City Commission votes unanimously to approve every matter related to the project, the overlay, the rezoning, the application.

In under two months annexation to industrial, a thousand acres under one city council’s authority, with no state level agricultural impact review.

This is the trap. Every one of those seven rezonings was decided by a single city or county commission, voting on that one parcel. On that one night, under Kansas statute, chapter 12, article seven, the states local control zoning statute. There is no state agency that reviewed the cumulative acreage. Not the Kansas Corporation Commission, its siting authority is limited to electric transmission lines above 230 kilovolts and to nuclear plants.

Not the Kansas Water Office, its Kansas Water Plan contains no cumulative industrial impact study.

Not the Kansas Agriculture Department, it’s farm facts publications, track land in farms but not industrial rezoning.

Seven votes five counties, 4,853 acres. No cumulative review, anywhere, in state government.

But other Kansas counties are catching up.

Jackson County solar moratorium 2022.

Coffee County 12 month moratorium tied directly to the Flint Hills project, the county that hosted Wolf Creek, saying this time, not until we know.

Lyon County Data Center moratorium.

July 2026 unanimous LeavenworthCounty 90 day data center moratorium 3 to 2.

May 2026, Sedgwick County temporary pause on data center applications.

Early 2026, Harvey County moratorium through the end of 2028.

Six counties, in one state, in 18 months, saying the same thing. Not until we know.

For receipts the meter you’re already paying $20 a month, 240 a year.

The classroom $9.8 million in sales tax for $250 million invested over 20 years. Not to mention the property tax carve outs, negotiated one deal at a time, one district at a time.

The land 4,853 acres, seven project, five counties under two years.

And the water, 72 million acre feet already gone from under Kansas, parts of three counties exhausted, parts of a fourth with less than 25 years left.

No permit filed, no application on the docket. The state’s own chief engineer, on the record, on the 15th of July, said we do not know.

The meter, you can vote against.

The classroom, you can rewrite.

The land, you can rezone.

The water, you cannot put back.

SB 98 is not a business incentive. A business incentive is a rebate on a tax you are going to pay. SB 98 is a transfer from the ratepayer to the load, from the aquifer to the pump, from the classroom to the general fund, from the section to the substation. Every signature legal, every receipt real, every consequence, yours.

In our final episode, episode five, we walked the last piece of ground. The land itself. Who owns it? Who gets to keep it?

And whether? After everything you’ve just heard, there is any part of rural Kansas that is not, right now, up for sale.

Next, Episode 5…The Land.

This is episode four of a five part investigation. We are going to name the players, the lobbyists, the politicians, the out-of-state money. Because Kansas did not lose its water, its land, its power grid and its property tax base by accident. It lost these things in a single afternoon behind a Gut and Go legislative hat trick.