A landowner is offering land for sale. Nothing has been approved.

You are right, and we want to say so plainly.

Some data systems, especially the earlier ones ten or fifteen years ago, used over a million gallons of water per day. Newer designs use dramatically less. We said here on 20 September that we were checking a report that at least one recently built system uses none at all. We checked: Microsoft (December 2024) and Oracle (February 2026) both publish designs in which the cooling loop is filled once and then sealed, with no water consumed for cooling after that. The buildings still use water for the people in them, and none of this is a claim about this property, where there is no buyer and no design. The sources are in section 09. Checked 14 Oct 2026

“Closed loop” is a term that gets thrown around and it shouldn't be. A closed-loop system circulates its cooling water instead of consuming it, but it still loses water to evaporation and still needs replacement water. It is less. It is not zero. A number of facilities marketed as closed loop are in fact hybrid systems.

The useful response isn't to argue about the label — it's to demand a figure. Gallons per day, in writing, enforceable, on a meter someone local can read. A buyer unwilling to put that on paper has told you what you need to know.

This is correct about how a cooperative works, and we're not going to pretend otherwise to protect our own position.

Howell-Oregon Electric is member-owned. Its members have standing with its board, and that board is a legitimate decision-making body. If members examine the terms and say no, that is a real answer arrived at properly.

On the substance: a large load should pay its own way — its own interconnection, its own substation, its own line upgrades — and should not be subsidized by people already on the system. It should not be a factor in future rate increases. If any arrangement shifts those costs onto ratepayers, residents should oppose it. So would we. See commitment 2.

We're not going to argue with anyone about their own power outages.

Those outages happen on the distribution system — the poles and lines running to houses in and around Thayer. A facility of this kind would not connect to that system. It would take service off the transmission line crossing the property, behind its own substation and its own equipment. You can see the 161 kV corridor on the map in section 02 — it has run through that ground for decades.

Whether the distribution system ends up stronger, weaker or unchanged is a question for Howell-Oregon and Sho-Me, and residents should put it to them directly rather than take our word for it. Their details are in section 07.

The skepticism about job numbers is warranted. Here is what we presently see.

Permanent staffing at a facility like this is modest — electricians, HVAC technicians, security, network staff — and it is measured in dozens. The larger employment figure is construction, and construction ends.

So the honest case is a small number of skilled permanent jobs, plus those required for the construction period. If anyone describes this as an economic transformation for Oregon County, treat that as a reason for suspicion.

Mr. McCullough is a lifelong resident of the state line area. His late wife, Jo-Carroll, also taught school here. His children went to Thayer schools. He owned a wireless telecommunications company, built radio towers across southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, and designed several of the region's first E-911 systems.

He is 80 and is simply divesting himself of various assets. He has not, nor is he specifically looking for, a data center buyer.

While he has the right to accept or reject any offer on the property from any buyer, when the question of a data center arose, he learned there is some controversy surrounding those facilities. Therefore, he chose to go public at the outset and hear the voices and concerns of people in the area. He was under no requirement to do that.

True.

Cooling equipment runs continuously and produces a low-frequency hum that carries, particularly at night and particularly in a valley. It is less pronounced in recent systems, but anyone who has stood near one knows the sound.

The way it gets handled elsewhere is a hard limit on loudness measured at the property line, with the operator paying for monitoring. Setbacks and berms matter too. These are conditions that can be imposed, but only before a design is fixed, which is now. See section 06.

Nations Media Partners, of Kansas City. We have handled telecommunications and infrastructure transactions since 1996. We are hired by sellers — so we are paid to sell this land, and we'll say that out loud rather than present ourselves as neutral.

Which is exactly why nothing on this page should be taken on our word alone. Every claim here names a source you can check, and section 07 lists the agencies and boards that can answer questions when we don't know the answers.

Yes, and residents have already started.

Section 07 sets out which bodies actually have authority here, when they meet and how to reach them — because a petition delivered to the wrong body accomplishes nothing.

Our hope is that people organize around the real verified problems rather than some of the versions circulating online. Commissioner Parker is drafting county policies for the spring ballot. That process is the one that will actually decide how this county handles projects like this, whether it is our client's property or someone else's, which will likely come along anyway in the near future.

The petition is real, the number is real, and we are not going to pretend it wasn't said.

Earlier that evening Mr. McCullough was asked directly whether enough community resistance would make him reconsider putting a data center on this land. His answer was one word: “True.” That is on the recording at 1:35:06 and we are repeating it here rather than leaving it for someone else to find.

What we will not do is put a number on it. He has not said “1,115 and I stop” and we are not going to invent a threshold he did not set. What we can tell you is that this is his decision, he made that statement in a room full of people, and he has to live here afterwards.

This was the most serious question asked all night and it deserves better than a brush-off, so here is what we know and what we believe to be the approach to prevent that problem.

She is right that these buildings are not chemical-free. The categories are real: refrigerants in the cooling plant, glycol in closed-loop systems, corrosion inhibitors and biocides in any open cooling tower, dielectric fluid in immersion cooling, and whatever agent is used for fire suppression. Anyone who tells you a data center is just computers and air is skipping a step.

Where we would push back on the detail, while agreeing with the concern: not all of those are PFAS. Propylene glycol in a sealed loop is not a forever chemical. But some immersion cooling fluids have historically been fluorinated, and some firefighting foams contain PFAS — which is exactly why it matters what a specific buyer specifies, and why “trust us, it's modern” is not an answer.

So the proposal we suggest is a prohibition rather than a vague promise: no PFAS-containing coolant and no PFAS-containing fire-suppression agent on this site, written into the sale, plus a publicly posted inventory of every fluid held on the property in any quantity, updated annually. If a buyer will not accept that, they are the wrong buyer. Proposed — being documented

On the aquifer: she is correct about what sits underneath. That is also why the baseline hydrology study in our recommendations matters — a chemical question and a water question are the same question here.

This one is easy to fix and expensive to ignore, and it should be addressed.

A dark sky is an asset that this county has and most places have lost. Industrial sites wreck it through habit rather than necessity — unshielded fixtures throwing light sideways and upward, and everything burning dusk to dawn whether anyone is there or not.

What should be required are fully shielded, full-cutoff fixtures with no light emitted above horizontal; warm colour temperature; lighting aimed and metered so that illumination at the property line is effectively zero; and motion-triggered rather than all-night operation everywhere security does not strictly require otherwise. That is a normal dark sky standard. It is cheap and it can be required. Proposed — being documented

The same condition addresses the wildlife question asked a moment earlier — deer, birds and insects respond to light spill more than to the building itself.

You are right that a promise on a website is worth nothing, and we would rather answer the mechanism than repeat the promise.

A commitment is only worth the document it sits in. Three things make one enforceable.

One — put it in the deed. Conditions written as restrictive covenants run with the land. They bind the buyer, and they bind whoever the buyer sells to in fifteen years. They do not depend on anybody remembering a meeting.

Two — give somebody standing to enforce it. A covenant enforceable only by the seller is close to worthless once the seller is out of the picture. That brings us to the county; the county, and adjoining landowners, should be named as parties able to enforce it.

Three — the county ordinance. Commissioner Parker's ordinance is the part that does not depend on this landowner or this firm at all, which is precisely why it makes sense. See section 06.

Commitments mentioned in section 06 can be recorded as covenants rather than stated as intentions. That is the answer to “how do you guarantee it.” Proposed — with counsel

He is right, and we are not going to argue the point.

Large construction projects arrive with their own crews. The mechanical and electrical trades on a build like this are specialised and they travel. Anyone promising this county a construction boom is overselling it.

What is realistically local is the lower end of the supply chain — rock and aggregate, hauling, site clearing, fuel, equipment rental, and the food and lodging spend while crews are here. That is real money for a few businesses for a year or two. It is not a jobs programme.

We would support a local-first requirement on subcontracting and materials be written into a sale, but we are not going to claim it changes the basic picture he described.

This is the risk nobody in the industry likes discussing and the questioner has it exactly right.

Hardware cycles are short. A building designed around today's equipment can be economically obsolete well before it is physically worn out, and the failure mode is not dramatic — it is a fenced, empty structure whose assessed value falls away, leaving the county with something it cannot tax at anything like what it cost to build.

The protection is a decommissioning bond: a surety posted before construction, sized to demolition and full site restoration, indexed to inflation, held by the county, and released only when the ground is back to grass. It costs a serious buyer very little and it costs an unserious one a great deal, which is the point.

We think this belongs in the county ordinance, whether or not anything ever happens to this property.

We are publishing this one because leaving it out would prove the point.

The incentive is exactly what he says it is. Our firm is paid on a completed sale. Mr. McCullough would be paid for his land. Neither of us is disinterested and we have said so on every page of this site.

So do not weigh our motives — weigh things you can check. We are not seeking a tax abatement, and you can confirm that with the county at any time. We asked the commission to write an ordinance that would constrain us. Mr. McCullough said on the record that enough community resistance would make him reconsider. Every question we have received is posted here, including this one, unedited.

Any of those can be tested, and if we break one of them you will have it in writing. That is the only kind of trust worth offering and it is the only kind we are asking for.