Community members will soon gather to host a public information session on data centers and discuss concerns about potential development within Douglas County.
The meeting comes after community members urged city commissioners earlier this month to adopt a moratorium on data center development over concerns of large amounts of energy and water consumption, noise pollution, higher utility bills and more.
The Douglas County Data Center Watchdogs will meet from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, June 23 at the Lawrence Public Library auditorium, 707 Vermont St.
They will discuss potential problems of data centers coming to the area and how the community can take action.
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Event speakers include former Planning Commissioners Chelsi Hayden and Lisa Harris; Coalition for Collaborative Governance member Dominique Sexton; former Kansas Rural Center director Dan Nagengast; and former Douglas County Commissioner Nancy Thellman.
There are no current plans for development of a local data center, but advocates want to get in front of the possibility.
“We’ve been listening and learning from other nearby communities and what we know when it comes to pushing back on data center development, it’s important to organize opposition early,” Thellman said. “The concern is real, the interest is high, and the time is now.”
The city’s current land development code allows data centers to be built in all industrial zones without public process or commission approval. The code also does not specifically define data centers, different types of data centers or contain regulatory standards for size, water consumption, energy consumption or impacts on the surrounding area.
Lawrence city commissioners said during their June 9 meeting that they want to look into a potential moratorium on data centers. Douglas County commissioners also have heard public concerns and voiced some of their own regarding data centers.
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Maya Smith (she/her), reporting intern, has worked with The Lawrence Times since February 2026. She was born and raised in Lawrence and is a journalism student at the University of Kansas. She works at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications as a communications assistant and has been a freelance reporter for the Kansas Reflector since 2024. Read her work for the Times at this link.
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