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If you're in the #Agriculture business I need you to imagine having 1400 more acres to work with and please tell me what that means for you. In Wyoming we're being told Data Centers are somehow a better use for our land than how we've been using it. It's more than slightly insulting.

There is a loophole in our state "zoning" which means the evironmental quality work (DEQ) we do here is subverted by putting data centers in existing Industrial Parks.

My county developed industrial parks way before data centers so that we were setting aside what land we had available for industrial work, should we need it. But large-scale data center projects are showing up on private ranch land, apparently attempting to lease it.

With all due respect to Lancaster, PA: The average coal mine acre is $15000 to reclaim. Just on a proposed 1400-acre data site itself, that is a $21 million bond. So when we ask data centers to show us the money, it will not be a $20 million pat on the ass.

If you don't like the idea of burning coal, fine, but know we tax the shit out of it, because it's valuable and can't be replaced or resold once it's used up for power. We aren't dipshits. Coal mining leaves us with hundreds of millions of dollars of safety and restoration work that we have to do.