Grady County Data Center Hits Water Wall Before Ground Even Breaks

An affiliate tied to Aligned Data Centers has spent $17.02 million on roughly 800 acres of rural land just north of Amber, Oklahoma, but the sprawling project is running into trouble before a single shovel hits the dirt. A local rural water district has already rejected the company's request for water and wastewater service, and county officials say they have no legal power to slow the project down even if they wanted to.

The land sits about three miles north of Amber, close to Tuttle and Minco in Grady County, according to Oklahoma Energy Today. As News 9 reports, the Grady County data center remains in early planning phases, and Aligned Data Centers has said the project has not broken ground and is not yet operational, even though the land purchase has already closed.

The company behind the proposal, Aligned Data Centers, operates more than a dozen data centers across multiple countries, per the same News 9 report. Aligned says its facilities rely on a closed-loop cooling system designed to minimize water use, a claim the company has repeated as it seeks to reassure Grady County residents already wary of the project's thirst.

A Rejection Before the Project Could Get Off the Ground That reassurance ran headfirst into local infrastructure limits in August. Grady County Rural Water District 2 rejected Aligned's request for 80,000 gallons of water and 22,000 gallons of daily wastewater capacity, according to the same Oklahoma Energy Today report. The request alone exceeded the district's entire existing daily wastewater capacity of 18,000 gallons, and it also encroached on territory belonging to Rural Water District 6. District board officials confirmed that their current lagoon systems and water supplies simply cannot accommodate a facility of that scale.

The rejection lands in a county still recovering from a brutal summer. During August's heatwaves, several Grady County towns imposed emergency water restrictions: Chickasha ordered mandatory rationing as its aging plant neared a breaking point, Minco cut back outdoor watering, and Tuttle moved to Stage 2 restrictions, as previously reported by Hoodline. That regional water scarcity forms the backdrop against which Aligned's request landed.

Why County Commissioners Can't Just Say No Residents raised concerns at a special public meeting in Chickasha on September 8. Grady County leaders confirmed to News 9 that they lack the legal authority to pause the project, even amid vocal local opposition to the plan.

That legal reality sets rural Grady County apart from Oklahoma's incorporated cities, which do have zoning tools at their disposal. Unzoned county land near Amber has no equivalent municipal safeguard available to it.

Local Opposition and a Statewide Fight Over Data Centers The proposal has produced local opposition in Grady County.

Oklahoma lawmakers are already wrestling with the broader issue. State Senator Kendal Sacchieri introduced Senate Bill 1488 in January, proposing a statewide moratorium on new data center construction through November 2029 to give the Oklahoma Corporation Commission time to study grid, water, and property value impacts, according to the Oklahoma Senate.

The Scale of the Project Part of what's driving the pushback is the project's scale.

For now, the Grady County project remains stuck in the planning phase, with land purchased but no construction underway, according to News 9. Between the rural water district's rejection, the county's lack of moratorium authority, and a rare bipartisan local revolt, Aligned Data Centers faces a thicket of obstacles before its 800 acres near Amber could ever host an operating facility.

Grady County Data Center Hits Water Wall Before Ground Even Breaks

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