I'm a Kearney resident with a newborn at home, and I live near the new data center being built at TechoNE Crossing. The City Council approved the land sale in September 2025, and the facility opens in 2027. After my initial post, which over 200,000 of you saw, I realized there is a real appetite for change.

The facility is small (5 MW), and the city negotiated a 60 dBA noise cap into the purchase agreement — a protection many cities don't require in writing. Credit where it's due. However, conversation around this project surfaced two real problems that go beyond one facility, and I think we need to fix them before they break ground on this data center.

The noise code has a 20-year-old hole. Chapter 33 of the Kearney city code (Enhanced Standards for High Impact Uses in Sensitive Settings) was written exactly for situations like industrial facilities near nursing homes, schools, and hospitals. Its substantive sections were repealed in 2003 and never replaced. Section 32-103, which sets performance standards for general industrial uses, lists seven categories of nuisance — sewage, air contaminants, odor, gases, vibration, glare/heat, and chemical storage — but doesn't include noise at all. The 60 dBA cap protecting us on this one project lives in a single purchase agreement, not in the code. Every future facility starts from zero.

For this facility, dBA isn't the right metric anyway. The 60 dBA standard only measures audible sound. It doesn't capture the low-frequency hum (sub-100 Hz) that's been driving health complaints near data centers in Virginia, Arizona, Arkansas, and Texas — sleep loss, headaches, elevated blood pressure, chronic stress. Low-frequency sound travels much farther than audible noise and slips right through a dBA-only ordinance. A modern code measures both dBA and dBC, with stricter limits at night and near sensitive locations.

The other problem is who pays for the grid. If data center growth in Kearney requires new substations, transmission upgrades, or generation capacity, those costs should be paid by the data center operators — not by Kearney households on their monthly utility bills. NPPD has been responsible about this so far, but "so far" isn't a policy. We need it in writing. Virginia, Indiana, and Ohio are all moving on legislation that holds residential ratepayers harmless from data center infrastructure costs. Nebraska should do the same.

I'm asking for four specific things:

1. Update Chapter 32-103 to include a noise performance standard that measures both dBA and dBC, with property-line limits calibrated for nighttime and stricter standards near sensitive receivers (the Veterans' Home, schools, hospitals, senior care).

2. Reinstate Chapter 33 with modern enhanced standards for high-impact industrial uses near sensitive locations — so every future siting decision is governed by written rules, not negotiated one project at a time.

3. Hold ratepayers harmless. Any expansion of the Sequitor Edge facility beyond 5 MW — and any new data center siting in Kearney — should require a binding written agreement that infrastructure costs are paid by the operator, not recovered through residential utility rates.

4. Publish the agreement. Release the Sequitor Edge development agreement and any side letters in plain language so residents can see exactly what was agreed to and how it will be enforced.

Despite the bad reputation, data centers can be run safely and responsibly. Kearney can host these facilities to benefit our economy and keep people and the environment safe. However, "responsibly" means rules that are written down, measured the right way, and applied equally to every operator who comes through.

If you sign, you're telling the City Council and our state senator that Kearney residents want these protections in writing before the next, larger facility shows up. And if you can, please come to a City Council meeting (2nd and 4th Tuesdays, 5:30pm, 18 East 22nd Street) and say so in person. That's where this actually gets fixed.

Thank you for caring about this town.

— Joshua Lillyman, Kearney resident