Residents in El Dorado, Kansas, gathered enough signatures to force a vote on whether hyperscale data centers should be banned, but local officials are now asking a judge to keep the question off the ballot.
As The Wichita Eagle reported, the fight in the city has become part of a wider Kansas debate over who should control the future of power-intensive artificial intelligence infrastructure.
What happened?
Residents in El Dorado, a city of about 13,000 located roughly 30 miles east of Wichita, collected more than 700 signatures in June for a proposed ordinance that would prohibit "high impact" data centers and large-scale battery energy storage systems.
Under Kansas law, the City Commission had to either enact the ordinance or send it to voters in an election. Instead, the Eagle reported that commissioners voted unanimously on Monday to treat the petition as invalid and asked Butler County District Court to keep the proposal off the ballot.
City officials say the proposal is administrative in nature, which they argue makes it ineligible for the initiative-and-referendum process. On Wednesday, they also sought a temporary restraining order, writing that "the injury is both immediate and irreparable."
At the same time, Kansas has been offering generous incentives to companies building hyperscale data centers during an AI-driven tech boom, the Eagle noted. Emporia is facing a similar dispute, where KSNW reported a resident-backed petition against data centers and battery storage was initially rejected over a technical issue before organizers submitted it again.
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Why does it matter?
The dispute centers on whether communities get a say in projects that could reshape land use, infrastructure, and local priorities for years to come.
Hyperscale data centers are massive facilities built to power digital services and AI tools, and they can require enormous amounts of electricity and supporting infrastructure.
That can put a strain on water and electricity resources while altering the character of a community. More and more, residents are fed up with not having enough input on where these data centers are, as well as insight into how they will impact their daily lives.
What's being done?
The Wichita Eagle also reported that the El Dorado City Commission approved a temporary moratorium on data centers and battery storage systems, postponing any potential permit applications until November 30, 2026.
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Officials also said in a statement that if the court finds the citizen petition invalid, they could pursue a nonbinding advisory ballot instead.
"The City Commission would use the results of an advisory ballot to inform its decision on a path forward that represents the interests of the community," officials added.
The case is before Butler County District Judge Jan Satterfield, who had not ruled as of Thursday afternoon, according to the Eagle. Organizers in Emporia are also continuing to push their own petition forward.
In the statement, the city also described the moratorium as a sign of its "willingness to allow the process to proceed without considering a development proposal."
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