What they need from a community, what rules apply today, and seven draft bills for the 2027 session.
PURPOSE
This site compiles information about data centers in North Dakota: what they are, what they need from a community, and what rules currently apply. It also includes a set of draft bills meant to support a business environment that works for communities, utilities, and the companies building here.
Most of these decisions get made locally. A county or township board approves the project, usually on a deadline, across the table from a company that has done this many times before. Few local boards have done it before, and most are working without planning staff. Clear statewide standards would give smaller communities a floor to start from, while leaving room for local control and for the terms each community wants to work out on its own.
THE SHORT VERSION
These four mostly determine whether a data center works out for the community hosting it. State law sets a standard for almost none of them.
How much water a data center uses depends mostly on how it cools its computers, not on how big it is. One method boils water into the air, and most of that water is gone for good. Another seals water in pipes and reuses it, so it needs almost none.
A facility using the first method can use more water in a day than North Dakota lets a farmstead use in a whole year without a permit. There is no state standard. And if a data center buys its water from a city, its usage never comes up in a state hearing at all.
One large facility can use about as much power as 300,000 North Dakota homes. Serving that takes new substations and transmission lines costing hundreds of millions of dollars. That money comes either from the company that needed them built or from everyone else's bills.
More than twenty states have set up separate rates for customers this size. North Dakota has not, and rural electric cooperatives sit outside the Public Service Commission's rate authority entirely.
These are windowless, heavily built, single-purpose buildings that are hard to use for anything else. State law currently requires no money to be set aside to take one down.
North Dakota has required oil and gas operators to post a cleanup bond before they start work for decades. The same approach would work here.
Public officials can sign nondisclosure agreements about these projects. In one North Dakota community, people learned about a major project roughly six weeks before construction started.
Open records laws do get the information out eventually, but usually after the decision is made.
The explainer covers each of these in more detail, along with noise, backup generators, construction traffic, and the tax picture.
DRAFT BILLS
A statewide model data center zoning ordinance published in January 2026 gives counties a real starting point, and industry helped write it. It does not include numeric noise limits, a decommissioning requirement, a water quantity standard, a cost allocation rule, or a setback distance.
These seven bills are drafted to fill those gaps as a floor that local jurisdictions can exceed, not a ceiling.
| Bill | What it would do | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Water use | Limits how much water a facility can consume for its size, and requires usage to be reported publicly each year, including facilities that buy from a city |
| 2 | Cleanup bond | Requires a removal plan and money set aside before construction starts, held by the state, with the amount set by a cost schedule that gets updated instead of frozen in law |
| 3 | Who pays for the lines | Creates a separate rate class for very large customers, with contract terms and exit fees so other ratepayers are not left paying for lines built to serve someone else |
| 4 | Co-op members | Requires a cooperative to tell members whether the large customer or the membership is paying for new infrastructure, and to hold a member vote if the membership is |
| 5 | Disclosure before votes | Keeps confidentiality legal while a company is choosing a site, and requires the operator, size, water plan, and studies to be public before any board votes |
| 6 | Tax break conditions | Ties the sales tax exemption to meeting the standards above, and publishes what each facility claims and how many people it employs |
| 7 | Minimum standards | Sets a baseline for noise, setbacks, and what an application has to include, so a community without its own ordinance is not starting from nothing |
These are drafts prepared outside the Legislature. They have not been reviewed by Legislative Council and no member has agreed to introduce them. They are published so the policy choices are visible and can be argued with.
GO DEEPER
The plain-language explainer. What a megawatt looks like in household terms, why the cooling system matters more than almost anything else, why neighbors complain about noise, what the backup generators are and who permits them, what happens when a facility closes, and the tax trade in both directions. Plus the five places decisions actually get made, and what to do in the next month if a project is proposed near you.
Read the explainer FOR LEGISLATORS AND POLICY STAFFEach bill with what it protects, the problem it addresses, what it would require, and why that approach. Includes drafting intent written so Legislative Council can work from the policy outcome even where the language is wrong, draft statutory text, fiscal shape, likely opposition, and the coordination problems in the package that are still unresolved.
Read the bill briefingSOURCES
Sources for every figure are listed at the bottom of each page, with a note on how each one was checked. Some come from primary documents, some from a single news report, and a few claims were left out because nothing solid supported them.
Use this as a starting point, not a final authority. Check the sources against your own situation, confirm anything time-sensitive, and expect county ordinances and bill status to have changed. If something here is wrong, pointing it out is the fastest way to fix it.