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# They Already Told You Where They Go If Piedmont Says No
- URL: https://guerrilla.news/canadian-county-moratorium-data-center-piedmont/
- Published: 2026-08-24T15:06:39.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T03:26:53.000Z
- Description: Cloverleaf says it can build in the unincorporated county. Canadian and Kingfisher counties have no zoning, no building codes, and no way to stop it. Here is what Cloverleaf actually said, in its own documents.
- Author: Ronald E. Durbin II, J.D.
- Tags: Oklahoma, Piedmont, Data Centers, Canadian County, Government Transparency, #datacenter-series

*Cloverleaf says it can build in the unincorporated county. Canadian and Kingfisher counties have no zoning, no building codes, and no way to stop it. Guerrilla News drafted the resolutions that fix that. They are free. Take them.*

The Piedmont City Council votes tomorrow night on Project Open Sky. Six data center buildings. Roughly 633 acres, with another 393 held for expansion. Up to 1.4 gigawatts of electricity, which the developer’s own materials compare to the demand of a small metropolitan area.

Hundreds of residents have spent five months fighting it. The Planning Commission recommended denial. The council refused to amend the Future Land Use Map. Organizers spent last week collecting signatures on three petitions at Williams Foods, chasing 170 valid names on each.

And through all of it, the developer has been telling anyone who would listen that none of it has to matter.

## The Quiet Part, Said in Open Session

At the July 27 council meeting, Cloverleaf representatives asked Piedmont to annex the site. They said annexation would let the campus receive city services and city water.

Then they said something else. According to Fox 25’s account of that meeting, the representatives told the council that developers **could build in unincorporated areas** but chose to pursue annexation into Piedmont to receive city services and to work with the community.

Read that again. The pitch was not “we need your approval.” The pitch was “we would prefer your approval.”

Three weeks later, the preference got a backup plan.

On Thursday, August 20, Cloverleaf announced it had secured options to purchase more than 330 acres in Kingfisher County. Chief Development Officer Aaron Bilyeu told reporters that Piedmont remains the company’s preferred location. Then he said this:

*“But if the city elects that they do not want the project within their jurisdiction, the project would be moving forward in Kingfisher County.”*

That is not a threat. It is worse than a threat. It is a statement of fact about how weak Oklahoma county government is, delivered four days before a council vote, by a company that did its homework.

## Why It Works

Here is the part nobody at the podium is going to explain to you.

**Canadian County’s own website says this:** excluding areas designated by FEMA as Special Flood Hazard Areas, the County “does not at this time have any codes that restrict the use or development of property located in the Unincorporated portions of the County.” A permit is required only if you are working in a county maintained right of way or in a flood hazard area.

**Kingfisher County’s own website says this:** the unincorporated portions of the county have “no implemented zoning restrictions, separate building codes, code enforcement, nor do we offer certificates of occupancy.” The Board of County Commissioners states it has “no intentions to implement any such rules, regulations, or ordinances beyond the statutory right-of-way boundary,” except for flood hazard areas, which it must enforce as a condition of the National Flood Insurance Program.

That is the whole story.

In unincorporated Canadian County and unincorporated Kingfisher County, a company can build a 633 acre industrial campus with gas turbines, battery storage, and a substation, next door to a house, and the only piece of paper it needs from the county is a driveway permit.

No setback. No height limit. No noise standard. No water study. No decommissioning bond. No hearing. No vote. Nothing.

Piedmont has a noise ordinance that Cloverleaf itself described to the council as among the strictest it has encountered. Piedmont has a planning commission that recommended denial. Piedmont has a council that has now delayed this three times. Piedmont has petitions circulating.

The county has a permit clerk.

## A "No" Tomorrow Night Is Not a Win

This is the trap, and residents need to see it clearly before the gavel comes down.

If the council denies it, the project moves five miles up the road into a county where none of that exists, and the people who beat it in Piedmont have no standing, no hearing, and no vote.

The developer knows this. That is why the Kingfisher option was announced on August 20 and not on August 25.

Whichever way the vote goes tomorrow, the county exposure is the same, and no county commissioner in either county has done anything about it. Yet…..

## What a County Moratorium Can Actually Do, and What It Cannot

We are going to be straight with you, because the people selling these projects are counting on you not knowing the difference.

A county with no zoning cannot simply ban a data center. Under Oklahoma law, a county exercises only the powers the Legislature gave it. *Tulsa Exposition & Fair Corp. v. Board of County Commissioners*, 1970 OK 67, 468 P.2d 501\. A commissioner who stands up and declares a ban tomorrow is writing a press release, not a law, and the first developer to sue could well win.

What a county **can** do right now, today, without any new authority from anyone:

- Suspend right of way and utility crossing permits for these projects
- Refuse haul route agreements, oversize load permits, and road use agreements
- Refuse to sell or lease county land
- Refuse to sign letters of support for state tax exemptions
- Refuse to participate in tax increment districts under the Local Development Act
- Refuse development agreements and payment in lieu of taxes deals
- Put every one of those decisions on the public record instead of in a back room

A campus that size does not get built without county roads. Every truck, every transformer, every mile of fiber crosses a county right of way. That is a lever neither county has ever pulled.

And while the pause runs, the county goes and gets the authority it should have had twenty years ago.

## Two Roads to Actual Zoning

Oklahoma gives these counties two paths. Both are in the resolutions we drafted.

**Track One: a vote of the people.** Under 19 O.S. § 865.52, the commissioners adopt a resolution and put the question to county voters. A majority at that election creates a county planning commission and a board of adjustment. It is durable, it is democratic, and it is very hard for a developer to unwind. It also costs money, needs an election date, and can lose.

**Track Two: a municipal zoning agreement.** Under 19 O.S. § 866.1 and following, a county where no city exceeds 200,000 people can create a joint city-county planning commission. The commissioners adopt a resolution stating an intention to contract with a named municipality. **No election is required.** 19 O.S. § 866.5\. That commission can regulate the location, height, bulk, number of stories, and size of buildings and structures in the unincorporated area. 19 O.S. §§ 866.2, 866.16.

Track Two is faster. It also requires a partner city, and residents should ask hard questions about which city. A municipality that wants to annex these projects and collect the franchise fees is not a neutral partner in deciding where they go.

There is one open legal question, and we are flagging it rather than hiding it. The Attorney General’s February 2025 guidance to counties states that the Legislature vests boards of county commissioners “in large and small counties” with authority to enact and enforce zoning regulations, citing 19 O.S. §§ 868.9 and 868.11 through 868.16\. But 19 O.S. § 868.1 is written in terms of counties over 500,000 in population. Canadian County has roughly 187,000 people. Kingfisher County has roughly 15,800.

That gap is where a developer’s lawyer will aim. Our drafts direct county civil counsel to answer it in writing and to consider requesting a formal Attorney General opinion. Any county that adopts a moratorium without resolving that question is building on sand.

## We Drafted Them. They Are Yours.

Guerrilla News prepared two complete resolutions, one for the Board of County Commissioners of Canadian County and one for the Board of County Commissioners of Kingfisher County. Each is seventeen pages, ready for a county clerk to put on an agenda.

Each one contains:

- An eighteen (18) month moratorium limited to what the county actually controls, with an express provision stating that it does not suspend anything committed to the Corporation Commission, DEQ, the Water Resources Board, or any federal agency
- Fifteen sections of findings on water, groundwater, electric load and ratepayer cost shifting, on-site gas generation, lithium battery fire risk, volunteer fire department capability, noise, roads and bridges, county fiscal impact, and abandonment risk
- The statutory carve-outs for public utilities, farm buildings, and mineral extraction, so the resolution does not overreach
- A hardship waiver procedure, which is what keeps an eighteen month pause defensible against a takings claim
- A month by month study and adoption schedule, so the county has enforceable standards in hand before the moratorium expires
- A ban on nondisclosure agreements between county officials and developers, a records hold covering personal phones and personal email, and a conflict disclosure requirement for every commissioner and staff member
- Both zoning tracks laid out with the statutes, the limits, and the questions counsel has to answer

We are not charging for them. We are not asking for credit. **Any citizen, any commissioner, any county attorney, any journalist, and any community in Oklahoma facing the same fight is free to download these, change the county name, strike what does not fit, and file them.** If a commissioner in Beckham County or Lincoln County or Mayes County wants to use them, use them.

We drafted them because nobody else did.

📥 Download the Resolutions & Petitions

County Moratorium Resolutions:

- [⬇ Canadian County Data Center Moratorium Resolution](https://docs.guerrilla.news/canadian%5Fcounty%5Fdata%5Fcenter%5Fmoratorium%5Fresolution.docx?ref=guerrilla.news) (.docx)
- [⬇ Kingfisher County Data Center Moratorium Resolution](https://docs.guerrilla.news/kingfisher%5Fcounty%5Fdata%5Fcenter%5Fmoratorium%5Fresolution.docx?ref=guerrilla.news) (.docx)

Initiative Petition Templates:

- [⬇ Initiative Petition — Ballot Title A](https://docs.guerrilla.news/initiative%5Fpetition%5Fballot%5Ftitle%5Fa.docx?ref=guerrilla.news) (.docx)
- [⬇ Initiative Petition — Ballot Title B](https://docs.guerrilla.news/initiative%5Fpetition%5Fballot%5Ftitle%5Fb.docx?ref=guerrilla.news) (.docx)
- [⬇ Initiative Petition — Ballot Title C](https://docs.guerrilla.news/initiative%5Fpetition%5Fballot%5Ftitle%5Fc.docx?ref=guerrilla.news) (.docx)

Free to download, modify, and use. No credit required.

## What to Do This Week

**Tomorrow, Monday, August 24, 6:30 p.m.** Piedmont City Council, Piedmont Area Veterans Association. Go. Whatever happens, that room is where the record gets made.

**Tuesday morning.** Call your county commissioner. Canadian County residents, all three districts. Kingfisher County residents, all three districts. Ask one question and write down the answer:

> *“Will you place a data center moratorium resolution on the next agenda, yes or no?”*

Not “will you look into it.” Not “will you study it.” Will you agenda it. A commissioner who will not answer that question in August is a commissioner with an answer he does not want to give you in public.

**Then ask for the records.** Under the Open Records Act, 51 O.S. § 24A.1 and following, ask each county for every communication between any county officer or employee and Cloverleaf Infrastructure, Beltline Energy, BLE Landholdings LLC, Cimarron ProjectCo LLC, Cimarron DevCo LLC, or their agents and attorneys. Ask whether any county official has signed a nondisclosure agreement. Ask for any right of way permit application, haul route discussion, or road use inquiry touching these sites.

We have already asked. We will publish what comes back.

**And understand the clock.** Cloverleaf holds options on that Kingfisher County land now. Options expire. Options also get exercised. The window in which a county can act before an application lands on the counter is measured in weeks, not years, and once a developer has spent real money in good faith reliance on a permit the county already issued, the law starts protecting him instead of you.

Eighteen months of pause is not a ban. It is the time a county needs to write the rules it should already have.

The developer told you exactly where he goes if Piedmont says no. Believe him.

## Editor’s Note

The quotations attributed to Cloverleaf representatives are drawn from contemporaneous news accounts of the July 27, 2026 Piedmont City Council meeting and from reporting published August 20, 2026 on the Kingfisher County land options. The characterizations of county regulatory authority are drawn from Canadian County’s and Kingfisher County’s own published guidance to the public and from the Oklahoma Attorney General’s February 2025 frequently asked questions on county and township authority to zone.

No allegation of unlawful conduct is made against Cloverleaf Infrastructure, Beltline Energy, or any officer of either company. Announcing an alternate site and building in an unincorporated county are lawful acts. That is precisely the problem this article describes.

The model resolutions are drafting aids prepared by Guerrilla News. They are not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship arises from downloading them. Any county considering adoption should have them reviewed by its district attorney or civil counsel, who must independently confirm the statutory authority questions flagged above and insert county-specific data, including the groundwater basin determinations from the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.

*Corrections: ron@guerrilla.news*