A county’s data center moratorium doesn’t include a small city considering huge project

In early July, the city of Burgin unsuccessfully tried to advance an ordinance to annex land into its city limits for developer Panattoni Data Centers to build a hyperscale data center. Local residents packed that special Burgin city council meeting voicing a range of concerns over the environmental and land use impacts of such a large data center. 

But months before that July meeting, emails and text messages show the proposed project also had significant backers among the city’s independent school district who saw the potential for enormous tax revenue for their district, which serves a little more than 500 students. An email from one school board member who works for the state’s largest utility also indicates the data center project could have immense power demand as well.

Ben Bradshaw, a Burgin Independent School board member who works for Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, wrote to fellow board members in June that the data center developer there wants up to 1.3 gigawatts of power. 

If realized, such massive electricity demand would make the proposed hyperscale data center in Mercer County among the largest in the state in terms of its need for power, up there with the power demand of proposed data centers on federal land in McCracken County and a former steel mill in Eastern Kentucky. 

The Lantern received emails and text messages from a member of the We Are Mercer County group, which has been organizing around concerns over the impacts of the potential data center. The group received the records through an open records request made to Burgin Independent School. 

In a June 20 email that he carbon-copied the district’s superintendent on, Bradshaw wrote that Panattoni had “applied for 1300MW of power for the project in Mercer Co. per their TSR.” 1,300 megawatts is equal to 1.3 gigawatts.

He wrote that under the rules and rates for data centers that electric utility Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities has, the resulting tax revenue for the city of Burgin and the school district could be hundreds of millions of dollars over 15 years.

An email signature lists Bradshaw’s position as a “Lead Electric System Coordinator for the utility, which serves nearly 1.4 million natural gas and electricity customers in the state including parts of Mercer County. 

Bradshaw told the Lantern over the phone Wednesday that he did not receive the information about the power request from Panattoni internally from LG&E and KU and that it was “public record.” When asked about his advocacy for the data center project, Bradshaw deferred questions to Burgin Independent School Superintendent Chris LeMonds. 

A spokesperson for Panattoni did not provide a response to requests for comment about Bradshaw’s email asking if Panattoni Data Centers had requested, through a transmission service request to LG&E and KU, for 1.3 gigawatts of power capacity. 

In an emailed statement, LG&E and KU spokesperson Liz Pratt said the proposed Mercer County data center is located within the territory of Kentucky Utilities and “is proposed to be developed in phases to a capacity of 1,300 megawatts.”

“Load requirements remain subject to further evaluation and planning,” Pratt said.

A long string of communication

The emails and text messages between school board members and the superintendent, stretching back to February, also show efforts by Bradshaw and another school board member to share information with Burgin Independent School Superintendent Chris LeMonds advocating for the data center project. 

In a June 15 email to LeMonds, Bradshaw shared a document that appears to be associated with the PPL Corporation, the investor-owned parent company of Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities. The document has a list of talking points that largely advocate for data centers, including the subhead, “What’s PPL’s role in all of this?” 

Pratt, the LG&E and KU spokesperson, said through the utility’s website, newsletters, and other materials created for customers and employees, “we try to help keep our employees, customers and communities informed about a variety of important community topics, issues and projects” involving the utility.

Bradshaw also sent another email June 21 to school board members with information about LG&E and KU’s rules and regulations for data centers. He included in his email a social media post from the Data Center Coalition, a national lobbying group for the data center industry, that highlighted the tax revenue data centers generated in Virginia. 

“While I do work at LG&E and KU, I’m sharing the resources and information below in my capacity as a fellow school board member and as someone who lives in this community,” he wrote in his email. “It’s information anyone can access online. I, like you, care about our community and this district. My family has been here for generations.” 

LeMonds would then send an email to school district staff that highlighted Bradshaw’s email, saying that “the potential revenue generated through utility and property taxes could create opportunities that many small rural school districts and communities can only dream about.” LeMonds did not respond to a voicemail or emails requesting an interview about his advocacy.

School board members and the superintendent also appear to have discussed the data center project in a text message group chat labeled “Board.”

In a June 24 text message, school board member Bryan Vanidiere wrote in a text message he thought it was “funny how the blue shirts are now concerned” with “a DC coming and no P&Z.” Vandiviere did not respond Wednesday to emails from the Lantern requesting an interview.

Members of We Are Mercer County have been wearing blue shirts with the group’s name to meetings.

“I hope our city council realizes one is coming and we hopefully won’t miss out on the benefits if it is already not too late,” Vanidiere wrote.