Montana communities are being asked to take data center developers at their word — and some officials have decided that's not good enough. The Fort Peck Tribe recently banned official talks with companies pursuing data center deals on tribal land, a clear signal of how little trust these projects have earned.

A similar fight is now playing out in Broadview, north of Billings, where Quantica Infrastructure wants to build a large data center. Brian Miller, a Democratic candidate for Montana's Eastern Congressional District who has represented opponents of the project, says the problem goes beyond one company: "They don't disclose what they're doing with water... they use a lot of nondisclosure agreements to kind of hide the data that they are operating under," according to Miller.

Quantica has said its Broadview project would use roughly 20,000 gallons of water daily, using closed-loop cooling, and that it's still in early talks about sharing water with nearby farmers and ranchers long-term. Those numbers only became public because of pressure — and eastern Montana communities shouldn't have to fight for basic information every time a new project shows up.

We're calling on Yellowstone County commissioners and Montana state legislators to require every data center developer to publicly disclose water use, energy demand, and cooling technology before any permit is approved — the same standard of transparency the Fort Peck Tribe is already demanding. Water is too scarce in eastern Montana to hand out on a promise.

Sign the petition to require real water transparency from data center developers — before another Montana community is left in the dark.