A Sedgwick County moratorium on data center projects that was set to expire next month will continue through the summer and into the fall. The county commission unanimously voted to extend the ban by 90-days, to Sept. 11.
The extension came at the request of county planning staff who said they needed more breathing room from the moratorium’s previous end date — June 11 — in order to meet state notice requirements for zoning changes.
Kansas requires a 20-day notice period for the public before the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission considers new zoning rules for Sedgwick County .
It’s not just staff who said they need more time. Commissioners did as well.
“The June 11 date is way too close,” commissioner Jim Howell said, “only because I have a ton of questions that I still haven’t got answered.”
Howell said he has suggestions for additional regulations that he wants reviewed by county staff. Those suggestions, and the work of the planning department, would fill a current gap in the county’s zoning code.
As it stands, Sedgwick County doesn’t have specific regulations for data centers. Depending on the project, the unified zoning code’s rules for offices, utilities or outdoor storage might be applied to a data center — but none of those categories covers everything that goes into the energy-hungry facilities that store digital information and processing power for artificial intelligence.
Since the start of the year, county planning staff have worked to fill that gap.
To help that work along, the county commission imposed an interim development control on data centers on Jan. 14. It’s a tool which allows the Metropolitan Area Planning Department to stop accepting or considering data center applications in order to take time to study and draft regulations for data centers.
The effective ban on data centers came as residents began reporting a surge of property deals in a northwest section of the county.
Two companies, Monarch Energy and NextEra Energy, began purchasing or negotiating for land in Garden Plain, Colwich and Andale. Both companies are involved in massive, hyperscale data center projects.
Monarch Energy has a $12 billion data center development in Rockford, Illinois. Next Era Energy is the nation’s largest electricity company and signed a deal with Google in 2025 to develop several hyperscale data centers throughout the country.
Together, the companies secured a batch of agreements to buy or option more than 1,000 acres of fertile farmlan in Sedgwick County.
In the meantime, the MAPD and county have commissioned research about the design, energy needs, economic impact and current web of regulations and incentives surrounding data centers. They’ve conducted surveys, public input events and preliminary planning meetings.
It’s that work, Commissioner Ryan Baty said, that has him feeling like the county may have a decision on data centers by mid-September.
“We can make reasonable policy with all the resources we have and all the information coming to us,” Baty said. “We don’t need that long to make a reasonable policy decision.”
Commissioner Pete Meitzner said that the new 90-day timeline sent a message that the county was working on the issue and that, “we’re getting there.” He said the three-month extension would also let the market know that county leaders didn’t plan to “discourage economic development based on long delays.”
While Meitzner and Baty made the most optimistic overtures about when the county would have a response to data center developments, not all of their peers saw the discussion wrapping up soon.
Commissioner Stephanie Wise told county staff that she anticipated she would need an extension in order to review the planning department’s eventual suggestions. Commissioner Jeff Blubaugh also hinted at further delays, saying “we can continue to kick it out every 90 days if we don't have the answers.”
If the commission decided to pursue another 90-day delay after the current deadline, the county would be close to a year-long moratorium.
Even so, commissioners continued to say they weren’t receptive to calls for a multi-year ban, which they said would be ineffective.
Kansas Senate Majority Leader Chase Blasi, who represents Andale, lobbied for that approach earlier this year. He initially urged, and then unsuccessfully tried to legislate, a three-year ban on data center developments in counties that experienced a drought within the prior year.
Commissioners in Harvey and Saline counties opted for a three-year ban anyway. Baty said that move was “a political decision, it’s not a practical policy decision.”
Meitzner said it’s a tactic several counties are considering in order to avoid controversy and “watch and see what everybody else is doing.”
Whether it’s a 90-day ban or three-year moratorium, concerned Sedgwick County residents told the commission they just want them to take their time understanding data centers.
“This is a national debate,” said Mike Betzen, a Colwich resident and former DuPont operations director. “When it’s that big and it's everywhere, you know you’ve got yourself a tiger by the tail, and you’ve really got to spend time on it.”
