Data centers require a discretionary Conditional Use Permit before development or operation, with a public hearing before the Zoning Board, a recommendation, and approval by the Board of County Commissioners.

Conditional Use Permit approval is not automatic and may be denied based on compatibility, transportation, utilities, public welfare, surrounding-property impacts, and consistency with the Comprehensive Plan.

A Conditional Use Permit application must include a detailed Development Plan showing the project boundary and footprint, buildings, substations, roads, construction areas, flood hazards, setbacks, acreage, utilities, drainage, lighting, parking, screening, and an engineer-stamped preliminary design.

Applicants must provide extensive supporting materials, including proof of land rights, a certified list of owners within 1,000 feet, an independent economic-impact report, Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks consultation documentation, cooling and water plans, power-demand and utility-source information, construction schedules and costs, stormwater, noise, and emergency-response plans, and required third-party studies or certifications.

A conditional-use application requires a $300 fee plus $10 for each name on the certified mailing list.

A proposed Conditional Use Permit may require review by an affected city for up to 30 days; if the city recommends denial, approval requires a three-fourths vote of the County Commissioners.

A qualifying protest petition filed by owners of at least 20 percent of the affected or nearby property within 14 days after the public hearing raises the approval requirement to a four-fifths vote of the County Commissioners.

The County may require the applicant to obtain a professional traffic study when the project could substantially change traffic patterns or create congestion.

Construction must begin within one year after Conditional Use Permit and Development Plan approval or the permit terminates automatically. The data-center-specific provision allows up to three one-year extensions with nonrefundable fees of $100,000, $200,000, and $300,000; the general zoning regulation separately describes up to two one-year extensions.

Additions or structural alterations to an approved Conditional Use must undergo the same Conditional Use procedure, creating an additional approval requirement for expansion.

A zoning certificate and a certificate of occupancy are required before a new or existing building, vacant land, or changed use may be occupied or used. Zoning certificates become void after 90 days without commencement and expire after one year.

A building permit is required for the data center and all structures within the project boundary, with a fee of $1.50 per square foot, in addition to third-party inspection costs and applicable entrance-culvert costs.

Data center projects must comply with applicable zoning-district height, setback, lot-size, yard, parking, loading, paving, and other underlying-zoning requirements, with the more restrictive applicable requirement controlling.

Data center buildings and most associated structures must be set back 200 feet from public roads and non-participating landowners' property lines, subject to exceptions for certain interior or participating-owner lines, transmission facilities, substations, and utility access points.

Structures in a data center development may not exceed 80 feet in height unless a variance or waiver is approved, subject to specified exclusions for rooftop equipment and safety-related appurtenances.

Data centers generally may not use evaporative, adiabatic, once-through, or open-loop water-consumptive cooling. Liquid computer-equipment cooling must generally use a sealed closed loop with air-cooled or other non-water-consumptive heat rejection unless the County approves otherwise.

A third-party water study must establish supply adequacy, identify the source and expected use, assess effects on current users and groundwater and surface water, address contamination risks and mitigation, and provide a contingency plan for interrupted supplies.

The developer must enter into a Good Neighbor Water Agreement requiring compliance with state and local water regulations during droughts, emergencies, or other water shortages.

Groundwater contamination must be reported to the County within 12 hours of discovery, and mitigation and remediation must be performed at the applicant's cost.

Stormwater plans must address drainage, detention and retention, contamination prevention, the 10-year and 100-year storm events, and KDHE requirements; plans must be sealed by a Kansas-licensed professional engineer and supported by required construction-stormwater authorization, Notices of Intent, and pollution-prevention plans before construction.

A separate floodplain development permit is required for construction or other development in mapped flood-hazard areas, and floodplain projects must meet flood-resistant design, anchoring, utility, elevation, drainage, and related standards.

In floodways, new construction, substantial improvements, fill, and other encroachments are prohibited unless engineering analysis demonstrates that flood levels will not increase during the base flood.

Hazardous-material storage and handling sites must be outside special flood-hazard areas, and buoyant, flammable, explosive, or otherwise injurious materials may not be stored in those areas.

Generators must meet or exceed EPA Tier 4 standards, use Level 3 or equivalent enclosures, be tested only Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and generally may not operate more than 60 hours per calendar year; emergency and utility-outage operation is excluded from the 60-hour limit.

Project noise requires a site-specific sound study and is limited to 60 dBA at the project property line and 55 dBA during daytime or 50 dBA during nighttime at sensitive receptors, subject to limited exceptions or Good Neighbor Agreement waivers.

After a certificate of occupancy, the Zoning Administrator must conduct monthly sound testing. Violations must be corrected within seven days, and two or more violations in a calendar year or a citizen complaint may trigger another sound study and required mitigation.

Conditional Uses may not produce perceptible off-site smoke, radiation, vibration, concussion, heat, toxic or injurious dust, fly ash, or gas, and may not cause off-site electrical disturbances.

A dual-fence system is required, consisting of at least six-foot opaque concrete or equivalent perimeter fencing and a wrought-iron fence at least 50 feet inside the perimeter around the footprint; barbed-wire perimeter fencing is prohibited.

Parking must be approved by the County Engineer and Planning and Zoning Director and provide at least one space per employee on the largest shift plus three visitor spaces, with ADA compliance. General zoning standards may also require one space per 300 square feet for office classification or two spaces per 1,000 square feet for industrial classification.

Required off-street loading spaces apply based on floor area, including two spaces for office buildings between 10,000 and 100,000 square feet and additional industrial loading spaces for each 50,000 square feet over 60,000 square feet.

Commercial and industrial parking areas and access drives generally must be paved with asphalt or concrete when the adjoining road is paved, and parking must be completed before operations begin.

Exterior lighting must generally use shielded downward-directed LED fixtures, prevent light trespass, remain at or below 0.1 footcandles at the project boundary, use a color temperature no higher than 3,000 Kelvin, and comply with nighttime reduction and automatic-control requirements. Lighting plans and annual engineer certifications are required, and additional testing may follow a citizen complaint.

The applicant must coordinate with County fire, emergency-management, communications, and law-enforcement officials; obtain required confirmations; fund necessary emergency infrastructure or equipment; and update the approved site plan to show final as-built conditions before a certificate of occupancy.

Before approval, the applicant must execute required agreements, including road-use maintenance, decommissioning, water, reporting, and community-benefit agreements and, when applicable, a payment-in-lieu-of-tax and school-donation agreement.

The decommissioning agreement must cover equipment and structure removal, environmental testing and cleanup, access-road removal where required, restoration of disturbed areas, removal timelines, successor liability, and financial assurance sufficient to cover estimated costs.

If the project is exempt from ad valorem property taxes, it must enter into a PILOT and school-donation agreement requiring at least $100,000 annually for each of USD 381 Spearville, USD 459 Bucklin, USD 443 Dodge City, and USD 613 SKACD.

The developer must pay a one-time community-impact payment of $7 per square foot of the combined building area within 30 days after construction starts.

For each calendar year of operation, the developer must make $100,000 available for Ford County residents and organizations to apply for community-benefit distributions.

The operator must submit biannual reports covering installed electrical capacity, electrical consumption, water use, building square footage, generator compliance, community-benefit distributions, and acreage under mitigation nondevelopment leases.

A data center may seek a Conditional Use Permit for uses not specifically listed as permitted or prohibited, including commercial, industrial, office, warehousing, storage, and utility uses. Approval is discretionary and requires a public hearing, development plan, and Governing Body approval. Other land uses may also be permitted by Conditional Use Permit.

A conditional-use development plan may adjust requirements for height, open space, setbacks, parking, loading, and signs when necessary for reasonable development and consistent with the regulations' general intent and public-welfare requirements. The requirements and regulations herein prescribed.

The Zoning Board or Governing Body may waive standards, requirements, or development-plan information if the applicant shows they are unnecessary for the particular case. Waiver of any standards, requirements or depiction of information.

One conditional-use approval may cover multiple uses on the same property when the approved permit clearly identifies them, allowing a data-center campus to include associated offices, utilities, storage, and service uses.

Commercial or industrial sites may contain more than one main building on the same lot if all buildings meet the applicable open-space requirements, supporting campus-style or phased data-center development. More than one main building may be located on the lot.

A project approved with a development plan may be built in phases, subject to the applicable conditional-use construction deadlines.

After development-plan approval, the Zoning Administrator may approve minor adjustments that remain within the plan's minimum standards without requiring new Governing Body approval. Such adjustments may be made by the Zoning Administrator.

Required parking may be provided jointly or on another site within 300 feet, subject to the required written agreement, County Counselor approval, and filing with the Zoning Administrator. The required spaces may be located and maintained not to exceed 300 feet.

Zoning certificates generally must be issued or denied within 10 working days after a complete application is received, unless the applicant agrees to a longer period. Within 10 working days after the receipt of the application.

A data-center conditional-use permit may receive up to three successive one-year extensions before construction must begin, if approved by the Board of County Commissioners and accompanied by timely nonrefundable payments of $100,000, $200,000, and $300,000, respectively.

The data-center definition allows associated infrastructure such as generators, substations, utility lines, cooling systems, water and wastewater facilities, pump stations, fiber-optic facilities, security structures, and related offices, logistics, and storage buildings to be developed as part of the project on the same tract or adjacent parcels operated as a unified development.

Backup UPS and battery-storage systems within the data-center project boundary may be reviewed as part of the data center's conditional-use permit rather than under a separate BESS permit. When used for ancillary backup power, power quality, load management, or grid protection, they are also exempt from separate BESS payment-in-lieu-of-taxes, school-donation, and impact-fee requirements.

The 200-foot setback does not apply to interior lot lines within the project footprint, property lines shared with participating landowners, roads, fencing, landscaping, utility-service access points, transmission facilities, or substations.

Closed-loop liquid cooling, including direct-to-chip cooling, is permitted when heat is rejected through air-cooled or other non-water-consumptive systems; other water-consumptive cooling systems may be used if approved by the County.

Rooftop mechanical and cooling equipment, screen walls, penthouses, antennas, lightning protection, exhaust stacks, solar equipment, and similar appurtenances do not count toward the 80-foot height limit. The data-center height standards also supersede height-equals-setback rules elsewhere in the regulations.

Noise limits may be waived for a property whose owner signs a Good Neighbor Agreement consenting to alternative sound levels.

Construction, generator testing, and emergency-equipment operation during listed outages, emergencies, or force-majeure circumstances are exempt from the specified maximum-noise limits, subject to the ordinance's conditions.

The 60-hour annual operating limit for onsite generators does not include operation during emergencies, utility outages, or circumstances involving the loss or imminent loss of electrical service.

If a data center receives an exemption from ad valorem property taxation, it may use a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement to compensate the County for governmental services instead of paying ordinary property taxes.

A single building permit may cover the data center and all structures within the project boundary, instead of requiring a separate building permit for each structure.

Illuminated identification signs at the project's primary entrance identifying the owner, operator, tenant, or principal use are exempt from the exterior-site-lighting illumination and footcandle limits.

A lawful data-center use that later becomes inconsistent with a zoning change may continue as a nonconforming use, subject to limits including six continuous months of nonuse and the general requirement to rebuild in conformity with current regulations when a structure is damaged by more than 50 percent. The lawful use of a structure existing on the effective date.

A valid permit issued under previous zoning regulations may allow development to continue until the permit expires, provided construction begins before the permit expires. Validly issued permit under the previous