Rural families in the Colwich and Andale areas are raising urgent concerns about a proposed data center near Garden Plain—and their written objections are now formally before Wichita-Sedgwick County’s planning staff.
The Wichita-Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department’s Advance Plans Committee held a special meeting in late April to review data center regulation approaches, as residents sent multiple emails and letters urging planners to weigh the impacts tied to a proposed Monarch Energy project near Garden Plain. The California-based company is seeking to build a facility on land described in public testimony as less than one mile from Colwich’s city limits.
At least one resident, Emily Gaeddert, has called for a county-wide moratorium on large-scale data center approvals while the community works through what rules should govern facilities like this one.
A geologist’s warning about the water
The most technically detailed opposition came from Andrew Tobias Eck, a certified professional geologist who lives about two and a half miles east of the proposed site on West 29th Street North in Andale…