The De Soto City Council took another step forward on the Beale data center campus in a meeting on July 2, 2026, approving engineering and construction agreements to build a new water main connecting the site to the city’s municipal system. The council voted to authorize an amendment with engineering firm HDR and a preconstruction services agreement with contractor Garney to design and price a one-mile water line along a 99th Street alignment between Sunflower Road and Edgerton Road.

The vote requires the city and Beale to finalize a supplemental agreement documenting Beale’s shift to a fully air-cooled, closed-loop design and the resulting change in water demand. Because air cooling requires far less water than the evaporative systems originally contemplated, Beale’s new design does not need the full slate of water-treatment expansions envisioned in the original 2025 development agreement. 

In recognition of the community benefits that the larger upgrades originally contemplated would have provided, Beale confirmed, on the record, that it remains committed to funding $10 million in water system improvements, including a new well north of the Kansas River and replacement of the river’s raw-water crossing. When a council member asked directly whether Beale was standing behind that commitment given that the supplemental agreement has not been finalized, the answer was an unambiguous yes. Beale also noted it had already issued a public statement affirming the $10 million pledge.

Council members also used the meeting to press on two recurring resident concerns – groundwater and noise. Beale confirmed again that it has no plans and no need to drill private wells on site, since all water will come through the city’s system in partnership with Rural Water District No. 7. 

On noise, city staff acknowledged that the science around low-frequency sound from large cooling systems is still evolving, and reiterated plans to engage an independent acoustic consultant (an RFQ process is expected to be presented to the council on July 16, 2026).

How De Soto Is Thinking About Data Centers

Beyond the specific vote, the meeting offered a clear window into how the city frames its approach to data center development generally. City staff were candid that they aren’t endorsing the data center industry wholesale; rather, their confidence rests on nearly two decades of deliberate industrial land-use planning in De Soto, dating back to the community’s experience hosting the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant. The message from staff was that the same careful, long-range planning that shaped Astra Enterprise Park is now being applied to data centers, and that a data center is, by design, less impactful to neighbors than many of the other uses already permitted under the site’s light-industrial zoning, such as distribution warehouses and manufacturing.

That framing lines up closely with what the city has since published on its new Data Center Projects Hub. The website emphasizes that these properties were already zoned M-1 (Light Industrial) years before data center development began to expand rapidly, and that the city cannot legally exclude a permitted use simply because some residents object. 

It also mirrors the fiscal points made at the meeting – that large power users like data centers are required under Kansas’s new Large Load Power Service rate structure to fund their own grid upgrades and pay elevated rates, which the city argues helps stabilize costs for everyone else rather than raising them and that De Soto’s senior water rights on the Kansas River (roughly 8 million gallons per day) dwarf both current demand and anything a data center would require.

On the fiscal benefits of the project, the city’s projections remain substantial. Between electric franchise fees, sales tax on electricity, and PILOT and future property tax payments, De Soto expects more than $300 million in city revenue over the next 25 years from the Beale data center  alone, averaging around $12 million annually, a figure city leadership pointed to during the meeting as potentially transformative for future community investments like a new community center.

At the same time, the council isn’t treating these questions as settled. One council member introduced a slate of proposed ordinances covering an environmental health compliance officer, developer-funded third-party environmental review escrows, urban forestry and dark-sky lighting standards, and stricter local oversight of well drilling, explicitly framed as responses to growth driven by projects like this one. The council voted to direct staff and the city attorney to begin researching these concepts in phases, with a first report on findings on August 6, 2026.

What’s Next

With this vote, design work on the water main can proceed, and the city and Beale will continue negotiating the formal supplemental agreement reflecting the project’s air-cooled design and Beale’s infrastructure commitments. We’ll continue to share updates here on Beale’s Community Hub as the project advances through 2026 and beyond.