PIEDMONT, Okla. On the night of July 27, a woman named Stephanie Burdine walked to the microphone in front of the Piedmont City Council, said her handwriting was so bad she could barely read her own notes, and then pressed play on a recording.
It was the sound of a hyperscale data center. She pulled it from a University of Texas engineering recording made in 2025, a closed-loop campus, the quiet kind, quieter than a gas turbine. She let it run into the room. Then she asked the six men at the front how that sound, going twenty-four hours a day, every day, never stopping, compared to a park, a restaurant, a hotel, a tourist destination.
Mary Allred followed her and told the council she was shaking.
Janice Mills went later. Her late husband’s grandfather was the first baby boy born in Piedmont, in 1903. Four generations of her family have run businesses on Main Street. Garages, monograms, antiques. She thanked the council. She thanked the farmers. And then she said the thing she had come to say, which had nothing to do with zoning law: she does not understand where the water is going to come from, because Piedmont is low on water right now.
Twenty-three days later, on Wednesday morning, residents of this city of 7,402 walked into City Hall and filed initiative petitions to ban data centers inside the city limits. Then they drove out onto Edmond Road and started collecting signatures.
They have ninety days.
The Piedmont City Council has five.
On Monday night, in a rented hall at the Piedmont Area Veterans Association, the council takes up Items 8A and 8B on a 224-page agenda. Item 8A rezones 633.55 acres of Canadian County wheat ground from agricultural to a Planned Unit Development with Industrial Technology as its base zoning. Item 8B annexes two more parcels to feed it. Aaron Bilyeu signed both applications, listing himself as the agent for Cimarron ProjectCo LLC and Cimarron DevCo LLC, of 712 Main Street, Suite 3100, Houston, Texas.
Neither company runs a website. Neither keeps an office in Oklahoma that we can find. The email address printed on the cover of the design statement filed at Piedmont City Hall belongs to a third company entirely: abilyeu@cloverleafinfra.com.
EXHIBIT 1. The rezoning application, page 109 of the August 24, 2026 agenda packet. Applicant: Aaron Bilyeu, Cimarron ProjectCo and Cimarron DevCo LLC, 712 Main St. Suite 3100, Houston, Texas. Filed April 29, 2026. Filing fee $1,650. Notice published in the Yukon Progress and the Kingfisher Times, neither of them a Piedmont newspaper.
The Company Behind the Shell
Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Houston and Seattle. Three hundred million dollars of private equity from NGP and Sandbrook Capital. Three founders who spent their careers building power plants and buying ground for Microsoft.
Bilyeu is Cloverleaf’s chief development officer. Two weeks ago, in Hollywood, Florida, he stood in front of the Florida League of Cities annual conference and clicked through a slide deck that tells those officials more about what is coming to Piedmont than anything Cloverleaf has filed in Piedmont.
The Florida League of Cities posted the deck on its own website. Anyone can read it. Almost nobody in Canadian County has.
Slide 7
Slide 7: One Campus Can Grow a City Budget by More Than Half
Cloverleaf titled the slide “One Campus Can Grow a City Budget by More Than Half.”
It describes “a Cloverleaf project in active development.” More than a billion dollars of initial investment. A floor of roughly 600 megawatts. More than $13 million a year in property tax, set against the roughly $5,700 the land generates today. More than $9 million a year in gross receipts. More than $400 million over thirty years, about seventy percent of the property levy flowing to local schools.
Then Cloverleaf identifies the host city, without naming it, by the size of its budget. The slide reads “$9M+ annual gross receipts vs. a ~$15.5M city budget.” The footnote sources that figure to the “host city’s adopted FY 2024-25 budget.”
Turn to the transmittal letter City Manager Joshua A. Williams signed for the City of Piedmont’s fiscal year 2024-25 budget. It reads: “The estimate of available resources for the budget fiscal year 2024-25 is $15,569,039.”
Cloverleaf has not confirmed Piedmont is the city on Slide 7, and Guerrilla News is not asserting it as established fact. The identification rests on three numbers landing on top of each other: a budget of about $15.5 million, a floor of about 600 megawatts, and farmland currently generating about $5,700 a year in tax. Readers can weigh that for themselves. What is beyond argument is that Cloverleaf put a dollar figure on the deal in a Florida ballroom in August and has never put one in the document the Piedmont council actually votes on. Section 9.22 of the PUD, the section titled “Tax Revenue and other Community Benefits,” contains no numbers at all. It says data centers “can contribute millions annually to property taxes.”
Slide 3
The Florida deck sells. Slide 3 screens.
Before Cloverleaf commits capital anywhere, the company runs a checklist. It wants a strong point on the grid with interconnection redundancy. It wants near-term utility headroom. It wants fiber, gas, and highways close by. It wants a metro of 200,000 or more within an hour of an airport, and favorable tax exemptions.
And it wants this, printed in the deck under the heading “What We Look For”:
A “supportive AHJ.” The slide defines it: “jurisdiction favors data center development and shows real conviction to withstand opposition.”
AHJ means authority having jurisdiction. In Piedmont, that phrase has faces. Mayor Kurt Mayabb. Mayor Pro Tem Matthew Myers. Rob Jones, Ron Cardwell, Jonathan Hisey, Byron Schlomach.
Cloverleaf told city officials in another state, in writing, that it screens for local governments willing to hold the line against their own residents. Not persuade them. Withstand them.
The Planning Commission Said No
Piedmont’s residents have been showing up since March. On June 1, the Planning Commission listened to them and recommended denial, asking for independent third-party studies on infrastructure, on infrasound, and on environmental impacts, and for preservation of the historic Chisholm Trail. A friendly amendment added a finding that the city lacks the safety apparatus to move the project forward. Community Development Director Julie Steele typed that recommendation into the staff report that sits on page 108 of Monday’s own packet.
EXHIBIT 2. Page 108 of the packet. The Planning Commission recommended denial. Staff’s answer was to add a Special Use Permit and a decommissioning clause, not to deny.
On July 27, after Burdine’s recording and Allred’s shaking hands and Mills’ worry about the water, Councilman Ron Cardwell moved that the Future Land Use Map not be amended, because it needs further study. Myers seconded. The vote came back 4-0.
That amendment was the step that would have squared the data center with Piedmont’s comprehensive plan. Kelly Work, the attorney appearing for Piedmont Informed Inc., told the council that night it was a critical prerequisite.
EXHIBIT 3. The July 27, 2026 minutes, page 22 of the packet. Cardwell’s first motion failed. His second motion, that the Future Land Use Map not be amended because it needs further study, carried with four ayes and no nays.
The prerequisite failed. The PUD sits on Monday’s agenda anyway. And Section 6.0 of the design statement still tells the council the project “is consistent with the Piedmont Comprehensive Plan,” while Section 7.8, three pages later, concedes that “The Land Use Plan projects this parcel to be in the Agricultural land use category.”
Both sentences live in the same document. The council votes on both.
EXHIBIT 4. Section 7.8 of the second submittal, page 130. The applicant’s own document states the land use designation the applicant is asking the council to override.
Three Names, One Project
Three names, one project
The packet gives the same 633.55 acres three different names.
The cover page of the first submittal, dated May 5, 2026, reads “Project Open Sky.” Turn four pages to Section 1.0 of that same submittal and the introduction reads “The Planned Unit Development (PUD) of Piedmont Technology & Energy Campus.” The second submittal, dated May 21, calls it Project Open Sky throughout.
EXHIBIT 5. Section 1.0 of the first submittal, page 114. A different project name than the cover of the same document.
The traffic study calls it something else entirely. Olsson engineers Pavel Karamshin and Shannon Jeffries addressed their May 14 memorandum to the “Cimarron DevCo LLC Team” and headed it “Project Matthewson AOI.”
EXHIBIT 6. Exhibit F, page 172. Note the last two lines of the introduction: traffic counts and a traffic impact study are needed to confirm anything in the memorandum, and none were taken.
That third name is not a codename. It is a map.
The OG&E Mathewson Substation squats on NW 248th Street in southeastern Kingfisher County, off the north edge of the proposed campus. Multiple 345-kilovolt lines converge there. Southwest Power Pool planners identified the site in 2023 as the western anchor of a new 38.4 mile transmission line running east to OG&E’s Redbud Energy Facility near Luther, and awarded the $72 million project to Transource Oklahoma, a partnership of American Electric Power and Evergy. SPP expects it in service in 2027. The line was supposed to relieve congestion on the west side of the Oklahoma City metro and return $138 million to $225 million in savings to ratepayers across fourteen states.
EXHIBIT 7. The title block of the concept plan drawing, Exhibit C, page 139. Olsson labeled the sheet “MATTHEWSON AOI, CIMARRON PROJECTCO LLC,” and drew it out of Lincoln, Nebraska.
“That’s one of the strongest points on the electrical grid in the state of Oklahoma,” Bilyeu told Oklahoma Watch in June.
Nobody has strung a conductor yet. Two developers have already converged on the endpoints. Cloverleaf at Mathewson. Atlanta-based Beltline Energy at the Redbud end, and also in Piedmont, and also in Yukon, and also in Luther, and also in Oklahoma City. Beltline declined repeated requests from Oklahoma Watch to discuss its Oklahoma plans. We will be sure to ask them next time we see them.
Forty miles east, Linda and Lewis Rainey are fighting a 130-foot easement across two 80-acre tracts of the 400 acres her great-grandfather acquired shortly after the 1889 Land Run. One hay field on that ground still carries buffalo wallows, depressions bison pressed into the prairie that now hold rainwater. To their knowledge nobody has ever plowed it. They told KOSU in July they are fighting the line because they believe it will serve the data centers at both ends of it.
American Electric Power’s outreach specialist told KOSU the same thing SPP says, and it is true: engineers identified the need for this line in 2023, before data centers entered the popular conversation. Both facts can stand. Planners drew the line to fix congestion. Developers bought the land at both ends because the line exists.
What Cloverleaf sells
David Berry, Jonathan Abebe, and Brian Janous founded Cloverleaf Infrastructure in 2023.
Berry, the CEO, developed renewable projects at ConnectGen and at Clean Line Energy Partners, the company behind the failed Plains & Eastern high-voltage line across Oklahoma. Abebe, the chief technical officer, held senior engineering posts at the Department of Energy, at Pattern Energy, and at Clean Line. Janous, the chief commercial officer, took the first energy job Microsoft ever created and rose to vice president of energy there.
Bilyeu arrived in August 2024. He had run land acquisition and site development for Meta’s data centers worldwide. Before Meta, he held global director roles at Microsoft, responsible for the real estate development of Microsoft’s data center campuses. Before Microsoft, he worked as a principal at the engineering firm Jacobs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Nebraska and a master’s from Iowa State, and he works out of Redmond, Washington.
In July 2024, NGP Energy Capital Management and Sandbrook Capital committed more than $300 million to the company. Sandbrook’s own portfolio page says the firm worked with Berry and Abebe for over a decade before writing the check.
Now understand what Cloverleaf actually sells, because the misunderstanding of it runs through every meeting in Piedmont.
Cloverleaf does not build data centers. It does not operate them. It options or buys farmland beside strong grid interconnection, walks that ground through annexation and rezoning until it is entitled and shovel-ready, and sells it to somebody else. Bilyeu described the model to Bisnow in 2025 while discussing a 1,200-acre project in Monroe County, Georgia. The firm ties up land, entitles it, and hands it off.
The Florida deck puts numbers on the machine. Five gigawatts sold to date. More than twelve gigawatts in the active pipeline. Thirty-some employees. An eighteen-month cycle from first screen to sale, ending at a stage the deck labels “Ready to Design / Sell,” where “a buyer can stand up a fully functional data center in <24 months.”
For Piedmont, that business model creates a specific legal problem, and it sits in plain sight on every page of the design statement.
Every meaningful obligation runs to a party the document calls the “End User.”
The End User shall coordinate with the City to evaluate fire protection and emergency response needs. The End User shall provide a full Traffic Impact Study. The End User shall address any required off-site improvements in a development agreement. The End User shall enter into that development agreement before submitting a preliminary plat. Between the first and second submittals, even the closed-loop cooling promise moved: the second version now reads “The End User shall design, construct, and operate the data center using a closed-loop cooling” system. Staffing levels, the document says, “will ultimately be determined by the end user based on their unique data center design.”
The End User has no name in the packet. The End User has signed nothing. The End User does not yet exist.
EXHIBIT 8. Section 9.21, page 135. Fifty to one hundred permanent jobs, with staffing “ultimately” left to a party that has not been named.
Cloverleaf is asking six men to rezone 633 acres and annex more on the promises of a company that has not been introduced to the city it will operate in.
And Cloverleaf does not own the ground either. Special Condition 1 states: “Annexation and PUD approval are contingent upon transfer of title to the subject property to the Applicant or its assigns.” A city reviewer left a comment in the margin asking that annexation be pulled out of that contingency, “because it’s a separate application.” Which would leave the annexation standing even if the rezoning collapses.
EXHIBIT 9. Special Conditions 1 and 2, page 132. The approval is contingent on the applicant acquiring title it does not hold. Condition 2(d) waives any buffer between oil and gas operations and the data center.
The six owners are named on page 127. Annette Gravitt, with a post office box in Edmond. The Richard Maxon and Leaunna Joint Trust, on Crestmere Lane in Edmond. Danny R. and Lorree N. Norris, at 4201 Moffat Road NW. Andrew Meiwes, at 4320 Moffat Road NW. The Jerald K. Schroeder and Deborah J. Schroeder Revocable Trust, post office box, Eufaula. The Sandra Thomas Revocable Trust, 211 Mission Trail, Wimberley, Texas.
Two of the six still live on the road that runs through the project.
EXHIBIT 10. Section 3.0 of the second submittal, page 127. Two owners list addresses on Moffat Road NW, inside the project area. One lists Wimberley, Texas.
What Happened in Port Washington
What happened in Port Washington
Piedmont does not have to guess how this ends. Cloverleaf already ran the play to completion, in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, and the record there is public.
In late 2024, offers started landing on farmhouse kitchen tables north of Port Washington, between Interstate 43 and the Ozaukee Interurban Trail. A commercial broker carried them. Landowners were told the ground might become a semiconductor plant. Paul Krauska, one of the farmers who got an offer, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he was frustrated with how hush hush all of it was. Nobody would say who was buying.
On January 7, 2025, Bilyeu walked into the Port Washington Common Council and told them. Cloverleaf, he said, was fully prepared to buy the land, and had created a real estate entity to do it.
He named it: Red Granite DevCo LLC.
That name now appears in the City of Port Washington’s own development agreement, which identifies “Developer’s predecessor in interest, Red Granite DevCo LLC ('Cloverleaf’)” as the party to a pre-annexation agreement made as of January 21, 2025. Two weeks after Bilyeu’s presentation. Cloverleaf’s website carries the case study under the title Project Red Granite.
Now read the Piedmont filings again.
Cimarron ProjectCo LLC. Cimarron DevCo LLC.
Same construction. Take a landmark so local it disappears into the background, attach DevCo, and buy. In Kingfisher and Canadian counties, where the Cimarron River runs and the name hangs on the electric co-op and half the businesses in the phone book, nothing about that entity would catch a landowner’s eye.
Amber Ramsey found out how well it works. She told the Piedmont council on July 27 that the entity name in the public notice was misspelled, “and in a place where the word Cimarron is very common, it can cause some confusion.”
She was right about the misspelling. The cover of Cloverleaf’s own first submittal, sitting on page 111 of Monday’s packet, reads “Cimmaron DevCo LLC.” The second submittal corrected it.
EXHIBIT 11. First submittal, May 5, 2026, page 111. “Cimmaron DevCo LLC.” The Cloverleaf email address appears directly beneath it.
EXHIBIT 12. Second submittal, May 21, 2026, page 124. Same applicant, spelling corrected.
In Port Washington, the confusion held until the buying was done. Cloverleaf assembled roughly 1,900 acres. Bilyeu told the council in January 2025 the company held options on 40 to 45 properties. He told Ozaukee Press each building would represent about a billion dollars of investment, that the complex would need a gigawatt or more, that it would phase in over five to eight years, and that it would roughly double the city’s valuation. He also said the buyer was not in place yet. “That buyer will likely be a very large data center company,” he said.
At that same meeting, asked about power, Bilyeu said: “There’s plenty of energy. The rumors that data centers are taking up all the energy are not true.”
Christine Le Jeune, who helped organize the residents’ group Great Lakes Neighbors United, later told the Shepherd Express that the mayor downplayed the situation at that meeting, that he disarmed her concerns, that he promised community feedback. She says she saw nothing about the project in city newsletters before it moved to approval over the summer.
In May 2025, the Common Council annexed and rezoned about a third of the site. On May 30, Cloverleaf assigned its agreements to Vantage Data Centers. In August, the city signed an $8 billion development agreement. On October 22, 2025, OpenAI, Oracle, and Vantage announced the campus as part of Stargate: 672 acres, four buildings, 902 megawatts across 2.5 million square feet, more than $15 billion. The largest single private investment in Wisconsin history.
Cloverleaf took its money and left.
Here is what stayed.
Construction began in December 2025. By February 2026, Great Lakes Neighbors United had stopped trying to stop the campus and started holding panels on how to live beside one. About 200 people came to hear speakers on policy, wildlife, health, water, and energy. WISN reported that one Port Washington couple lives under a near-constant layer of dust from the construction.
Midwest Environmental Advocates filed open records requests with the City of Port Washington asking a simple question: how much water. The responses came back showing Cloverleaf had sought one million gallons per day in the spring, and that the city was studying whether it would have to expand its water treatment plant.
One million gallons a day.
Slide 4 of the Florida deck, under the heading “The Loudest Critiques Don’t Match the Data,” answers the water objection with a single figure: “75,000 gal/day max.” The slide explains that closed-loop cooling recirculates water instead of consuming it, calls the volume about four backyard pools a day, and says a year of that use equals the consumption of 229 homes.
Seventy-five thousand gallons a day is also the number Cloverleaf gave Piedmont.
The farmers did well on the dirt itself. Wisconsin Watch analyzed Ozaukee County land records and found developers spent at least $125 million assembling the ground, including $10.2 million for a single 173-acre parcel the county had valued at $590,000, with members of one family collecting at least $20 million across several properties. Some of them told reporters afterward they wondered whether they had sold too soon.
The people who did not sell got the dust.
Where the numbers stop matching
Lay the documents side by side and the same project changes size depending on the audience.
Jobs. Section 9.21 of the PUD filed at Piedmont City Hall estimates 1,000 to 1,500 construction jobs, then states that when the facility becomes operational, “it will support approximately 50-100 good-paying jobs.” Fox 25 reported that at the July 27 meeting, a Cloverleaf representative told the council the project would supply up to 500 permanent jobs. The Florida deck says a typical hyperscale data center produces more than 3,000 construction jobs and more than 300 long-term jobs, footnoted to a Meta announcement in Alberta.
Fifty. Or five hundred. Or three hundred. Only one of those numbers appears in a document with legal effect, and it is the smallest.
Power. The PUD design statement contains no megawatt figure anywhere in its eleven sections. Not one. The Florida deck’s case study puts the floor at about 600 megawatts. Fox 25 reported the Cloverleaf representative told the council on July 27 that the project would use up to 1.4 gigawatts, comparable to a small metropolitan area.
Darren Blanchard, the Wagoner County farmer who fought Beale Infrastructure’s failed Coweta project, told the Piedmont council he attended the Cloverleaf town hall and was told one gigawatt. “And now that power demand is somewhere north of one and a half gigawatts,” he said. “That’s more power than the city of Boston.”
Piedmont draws its electricity from Cimarron Electric Cooperative, a member-owned co-op run out of Kingfisher. By the co-op’s own published account, it distributes power from 22 substations, across more than 4,596 miles of line, to about 18,000 meters in nine counties. Utility data compiled from federal filings by FindEnergy shows the co-op sourced 775,101 megawatt hours on the wholesale market in 2023. Spread that across a year and the entire cooperative averages under 90 megawatts of load.
Six hundred megawatts is roughly seven cooperatives. Fourteen hundred is roughly sixteen.
Blanchard put it to the council in one sentence: “The math is simply not mathing.”
Money. The Florida deck promises its unnamed host city more than $9 million a year in gross receipts and more than $13 million a year in property tax. Fox 25 reported the Cloverleaf representative told the Piedmont council on July 27 that the city would make $9 million a year through franchise fees and other payments. None of those figures appear in the PUD.
Roy Nelson saw the gap before any of this surfaced. He told the council on July 27 that developers keep offering money, promises, firetrucks, and that none of it goes in writing. In Yukon, he said, some of it did go on paper, with a clause stating that upon transfer, it all dies. He asked the council to make any commitment irrevocable and tie it to the land, so it survives with the ground.
Nothing in the packet does that.
The redlines
The packet holds two versions of the design statement with the city’s tracked comments still visible, which means anyone can watch the protections move.
They move one direction.
Buffer berms: minimum height cut from 12 feet to 6.
Facades facing a public frontage: articulation elements cut from three to two.
Screening of roof-mounted and ground-level mechanical equipment: the words “from all offsite view” struck and replaced with “public frontages.” Screen it from the road. The neighbors can see whatever they can see.
Buffer protection: the requirement that buffer area “be protected and memorialized by a Conservation Easement or similar legal mechanism prohibiting future disturbance” struck, replaced with “in accordance with site plan approval.”
Alternative landscaping plans: “shall submit” softened to “may submit.” A city reviewer flagged it back.
Meanwhile the concept plan attached as Exhibit C still carries the old numbers in its site data table. Twelve-foot earthen berms. A twelve-foot opaque wall. Triple-row evergreen plantings with native understory. Maximum building height: 65 feet.
The body of the same PUD says the maximum height is 75 feet. Section 8.1 splits the difference and says 65 to 75.
Whichever number a councilman believes he is voting for on Monday, the document does not agree with itself.
What the Packet Actually Says
EXHIBIT 13. Page 131 of the packet, with the city’s tracked changes intact. Facade elements cut from three to two. Screening narrowed from all offsite view to public frontages. Berms cut from twelve feet to six. The conservation easement requirement struck entirely.
EXHIBIT 14. The site data table on the concept plan, Exhibit C, page 139. It still requires twelve-foot berms, a twelve-foot opaque wall, and a maximum building height of 65 feet. The text of the same PUD says 75.
What the PUD actually permits
The agenda calls it a data center. Section 8.1 permits considerably more, and permits it by right:
“Data Center, Power Generation Facility, Technology Research and Development, Public utility and services, and Oil and Gas Operations shall be permitted by right within this PUD.”
EXHIBIT 15. Section 8.1, page 130. The last sentence is the one that matters most: “This PUD supersedes any special use permit requirements in the IT District.”
The applicant wrote its own definition of power generation into the special conditions. It covers battery energy storage systems, standalone or co-located. Natural gas-fired power plants, “including combustion turbines and combined-cycle facilities.” Geothermal plants and their associated wells and surface facilities. Substations, inverters, and transformers.
The concept plan draws it. The southern block of the site is not data center at all. It is a power plant: a substation, a 10,000 square foot gas treatment facility, stormwater ponds. A note on the northern block marks a “potential substation location” for battery storage.
EXHIBIT 16. Exhibit C, the concept plan, page 139. Six data center buildings at 352,800 square feet each fill the north half. The south half, between Richland Road NW and Moffat Road NW, holds the substation, the gas treatment facility, and the flood hazard zone. Frisco Road runs down the right edge.
And then there is Special Condition 2(d), which the second submittal states this way: “No buffer shall be required between oil and gas operations and other permitted uses.”
City staff, on page 108, recommend the council add a Special Use Permit requirement so it can impose specific conditions, and add a decommissioning clause to Section 9.0.
Section 8.1 of the applicant’s second submittal reads: “This PUD supersedes any special use permit requirements in the IT District.”
Somebody should ask, out loud, on the record, which of those two sentences wins.
Four more provisions belong on the table before anyone moves.
Noise. The PUD caps continuous operation at “60 DBA in the daytime and nighttime at the property line.” The ambient baseline supporting that cap is Exhibit E, a study by Olsson’s Ryan Doty out of Omaha. It consists of four thirty-minute measurements taken on a single morning, April 17, 2026, beginning at 8:30 a.m., in wind running 8 to 18 miles per hour. The packet contains no nighttime ambient measurement at all. Piedmont’s council is being asked to set a nighttime noise limit without anyone having measured a Piedmont night.
The generator provision reads: “No testing of generators or emergency backup power is allowed after 3 pm or on weekends or federal holidays.” As written, that restricts nothing between dark and dawn.
The Sixty-Decibel Question
EXHIBIT 17. Section 1(14), page 132. Sixty decibels day and night at the property line, and a generator testing window that closes at 3 p.m. and reopens at midnight.
Roads
Roads. The Olsson memorandum states that Frisco Road “is expected to be vacated within the boundaries of the project site, from NW 248th Street to 5,300 feet south,” and terminated as a dead end north of Moffat Road. The same memo measures NW 248th Street and Waterloo Road at approximately 24 feet wide with no paved shoulders, and a bridge on the route at roughly 23 feet of clear width. It recommends someone check whether the culverts and bridges can carry heavy truck traffic.
EXHIBIT 18. Page 176 of the packet. A public county road, closed inside a private perimeter, described in a consultant’s memo rather than in any item the council has voted on.
It projects 1,746 daily trips once the campus operates, and 1,220 daily trips during construction, with 520 vehicles inside the morning peak hour. It assumed 500 construction employees per building and 352,800 square feet per building, six buildings.
The memo is a desktop review. Olsson took no traffic counts. Its own first page says traffic counts and a full traffic impact study are needed to confirm anything in it. And one version of the table of contents carries the applicant’s handwritten-sounding note beside Exhibit F: “Our consultant is still preparing. This is not required to be submitted but would like to include.”
On the same Monday agenda, buried in the consent section where items pass in a single motion without discussion, sit Resolutions 08-24-26A, B, and C. They ask the Oklahoma Department of Transportation for a combined $2.9 million from the Municipal Roads Drilling Activities Fund to rebuild Apache Road, Edmond Road, and Frisco Road. Piedmont’s share of the match, out of its own $15.5 million budget: roughly $1.4 million.
Floodplain. The first submittal says the property “is not within a FEMA floodplain, except as illustrated.” The second says it “has a portion within a FEMA floodplain.” The concept plan legend shows a 100-year flood hazard zone and an “anticipated regulated flood pooling area for Cottonwood Creek Site #16.”
Parking, sidewalks, and the road between the halves. The PUD establishes no minimum and no maximum number of off-street parking spaces. It states that “Sidewalks shall not be required within this PUD.” And the traffic memo notes, without apparent concern: “An internal road connection within the site between the data center campus and power generation site is not provided.”
Traffic between the two halves of the campus will move on public county roads. The same 24-foot roads with no shoulders.
A city that cannot find its own line
Item 8B is the annexation. Attorneys David M. Box and Kaitlyn A. Turner of the Box Law Group in Oklahoma City filed the petition on April 30, 2026, under 11 O.S. § 21-105. City Planner Kelly Deatherage signed the staff report recommending approval, and dated it August 19, 2026, the same day the packet posted.
EXHIBIT 19. Page 181. Prepared by Kelly Deatherage, dated the day the packet went out. Recommendation, in full: “Staff recommends approval.”
Three problems already sit on the record.
Start with the boundary. Piedmont does not currently know where its own corporate limits run. The council took up that question on July 27 as a separate item, looked at a revised map, and took no action. Kelly Work told the council the city was still waiting on information from the University of Oklahoma and others, and that annexing before the boundary is settled puts the cart in front of the horse.
Then the notice. Ramsey walked the council through discrepancies between the recorded deeds and the published legal description: a change from one preposition to another that she says alters the landmass, a scrivener’s error, the misspelled entity, and a transposed middle initial on one of the trustees. The design statement names “Deborah J. Schroeder.” Every deed sits in the packet at pages 195 through 201. Anyone can check her work. Somebody should.
Then Scott Morrow’s objection, which takes one sentence. The parcels proposed for annexation do not appear on the Future Land Use Map as land Piedmont intends to bring in.
Blanchard called the shape of it checkerboard annexation and pointed at Sand Springs, where he says the city reached eight miles past its limits to take in 827 acres, leaving the neighbors with no councilman to petition and no county commissioner with jurisdiction.
Amy Arehart reduced the whole question to one line on July 27: are we being asked to annex this property because it benefits Piedmont, or because Piedmont already has the infrastructure and municipal services this project requires?
The annexation application answers her. The stated purpose is to let the property receive municipal services.
The rest of the agenda
Two other items Monday night belong in this story.
Item 8C asks the council to discuss and possibly act on an Open Records Act request under 51 O.S. § 24A.7, seeking records of internal personnel investigations, “including examination and selection material for employment, hiring, appointment, promotion, demotion, discipline or resignation of Kelly Deatherage.”
Deatherage is the City Planner. She wrote the annexation staff report the council votes on the same night. Residents at the July 27 meeting accused the planner of pushing the Future Land Use Map change since taking the job.
EXHIBIT 20. Item 8C, agenda pages 3 and 4. The council will decide whether to release personnel investigation records for the planner whose annexation recommendation it votes on the same evening.
Item 8D asks the council to advertise a Request for Qualifications for city attorney services. Councilman Jonathan Hisey’s agenda report gives the reason: City Attorney Daniel McClure takes office as District Attorney for District 23 in January 2027.
Items 8E and 8F, also Hisey’s, would build a training program for Planning and Zoning Commission members and set a submission deadline requiring applicants to file at least ten calendar days before a meeting. The council tabled both on June 22 to the July 27 meeting, and then nobody put them on the July agenda.
They exist because of a sentence Shawna Nelson said at the microphone on July 27. The Planning Commission, she said, received 259 pages on a Friday and was expected to decide. “It’s kind of hard to do your research when you’re not getting your information.”
She is on week six of an open records request.
Monday’s packet runs 224 pages. The city certified it posted on Wednesday, August 19, at 5:30 p.m. Five days.
Oklahoma Has Been Here All Summer
Oklahoma has been here all summer
Piedmont is not an outlier. It is one node on a map.
The Frontier reported in June that officials in Coweta, Claremore, Luther, Yukon, and Stillwater signed nondisclosure agreements with data center developers over the past two years. Some of those agreements barred officials from disclosing that any discussion was occurring at all. Some let the companies sue cities in other states to enforce the terms. In Claremore and Coweta, emails the Frontier obtained show developers briefing public boards one or two members at a time, staying under quorum, keeping the Open Meeting Act out of the room.
Rep. Jim Shaw, R-Chandler, filed House Bill 3030 to bar public officials from signing those agreements. It died in committee without a hearing. Shaw told the Frontier that leadership feared it would disrupt businesses coming into the state.
In Coweta, after Beale Infrastructure withdrew Project Atlas, Blanchard’s open records requests turned up something worse than secrecy. The vice mayor’s own text messages, released to Blanchard, describe receiving a couple hundred identical emails supporting the data center. He forwarded one to the resident whose name it carried. The resident wrote back that he had not sent it and was against the project.
Blanchard says nearly 300 Coweta residents were impersonated. He says one of those emails arrived in the name of a dead man, on the second anniversary of his death.
The city redacted the senders’ names. The Attorney General’s office concluded the Open Records Act provision protecting citizens who petition their government leaves the redaction to the city’s discretion. A shield written to protect residents from retaliation now covers whoever wore their names. Coweta police have filed no charges. In a separate probe of city officials’ handling of the project, Police Chief Mike Bell announced in June that investigators found the allegations unsubstantiated.
Oklahoma City, Edmond, Norman, and Broken Arrow have all paused new data center applications. Nationally, more than a hundred local governments have adopted moratoriums, a figure Cloverleaf itself prints on Slide 8, next to a Gallup finding that 71 percent of Americans would oppose a data center near their home.
The Legislature moved twice this session. Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 2992, the Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act of 2026, by Rep. Brad Boles and Sen. Grant Green, on May 11. It took effect July 1. It requires large load customers adding 75 megawatts or more to sign long-term agreements covering their own infrastructure costs, and requires developers to give sixty days’ notice before buying land, to the Corporation Commission, to county commissioners, and to every property owner within five miles, at a penalty of $1,500 a day for failing to do it. Senate Bill 259, the Groundwater Modernization Act, takes effect November 1 and bars data centers from running groundwater through open-air evaporative cooling.
Cloverleaf cites HB 2992 approvingly, on Slide 6, under a heading that begins “The Bar Is Rising.”
The Letter Cloverleaf Wrote About Michigan
The letter Cloverleaf wrote about Michigan
On July 27, Amber Ramsey stood at the microphone and told the council she wanted to talk about the importance of keeping your word. Then she read them an email from Cloverleaf.
The mayor interrupted to ask whether this was on the agenda. Ramsey said she would have a point in a minute. She kept reading.
The email described data center developers buying rural Michigan farmland, drafting their own zoning language, and pushing to rezone agricultural ground to industrial in small farming communities with little or no existing industrial base. It described developers who “identify willing sellers, option land, and then push aggressively, sometimes anonymously, to advance their business objectives in areas where local master plans instead prioritize conserving farmland, preserving rural character, and limiting growth to avoid overburdening infrastructure.”
Then it described what Cloverleaf does differently. CBRE presented a property in Howell Township, Michigan, to Cloverleaf in April. Cloverleaf passed.
The reason, in Cloverleaf’s own words: “We made the decision not to pursue it because Cloverleaf will not work in communities where this type of development is unwelcome or the development does not match the existing use for the land. That is a decision we will make ten times out of ten.”
The email went further. In Salem Township, another developer was suing over a rezoning denial. Cloverleaf’s position: “an approach Cloverleaf does not support and will never take.”
Roy Nelson made the same point in his own words that night. Council members keep saying they are afraid of being sued. Cloverleaf, he said, has stated in writing that it will not sue a city that says no.
Ramsey finished by telling the six men she trusted them and believed them to be men of their word.
Everything the Michigan letter describes as the other guy’s playbook is on Monday’s agenda in Piedmont. Rural land in a farming community with no industrial base. Zoning language the applicant drafted, down to writing its own definition of a power plant. A push to move agricultural ground to industrial in a city whose own comprehensive plan calls it agricultural, and whose council voted 4-0 three weeks ago that the map should not change.
Cloverleaf’s letter says the company will not work in communities where this development is unwelcome.
Between March and July, Piedmont’s Planning Commission recommended denial, the council refused to amend the land use map, and residents filled a rented hall on a Monday night to play a recording of a data center into the room.
Cloverleaf is still here.
What the Petitions Do, and What They Do Not Do
What the petitions do, and what they do not do
The residents who filed Wednesday are using 11 O.S. §§ 15-101 and 15-103, the municipal initiative statute. Every city in Oklahoma has it, and no city council can take it away.
They file the measure with the city clerk before circulating it. Then they have ninety days to gather signatures from registered voters living in the municipality equal to at least twenty-five percent of the total votes cast at the most recent preceding general municipal election.
That is a hard threshold and a short clock. Ninety days from Wednesday lands around November 17.
When the signatures come back, the clerk counts them physically and publishes notice of apparent sufficiency or insufficiency. Any qualified elector then has ten days to file a protest in district court. If the petition holds up, the mayor presents it to the council at its next meeting. If the council does not simply enact the ordinance, and does not do so more than thirty days before the next general municipal election, the question goes to the voters of Piedmont.
Now the hard part.
The petitions do not stop Monday.
An Oklahoma municipal initiative does not suspend a pending zoning application. It does not toll the council’s authority. It creates no moratorium by operation of law. The referendum device, which does suspend an ordinance, runs only against a measure already passed and carries its own sixty-day deadline.
If the council approves the PUD and the annexation on Monday night, the people knocking on doors this fall will be gathering signatures for a law that arrives after the thing it was written to prevent. Whether a later ban would reach a PUD already granted becomes a question for a judge, not an assumption. Vested rights doctrine has never been generous to the people who showed up second.
The organizers know this. It is why they filed on the nineteenth and not the twenty-fifth.
Five days
Six questions the Piedmont City Council should answer out loud on Monday, before anyone makes a motion.
If you voted 4-0 on July 27 that the Future Land Use Map should not change because it needs further study, on what basis does Section 6.0 of this PUD tell you the project is consistent with the comprehensive plan?
Does Section 8.1's supersession clause void the Special Use Permit your own staff recommends adding? If it does, what exactly are you approving?
Who is the End User? Every obligation in this document, including fire protection, runs to a party that has not been named, has not appeared, and has signed nothing.
Is the maximum building height 65 feet or 75 feet?
Will you vacate Frisco Road into a private secured perimeter, and what did the public get for it?
Can you annex land when you cannot yet say where your own boundary runs?
Cloverleaf’s Florida slide says the company looks for a jurisdiction that “shows real conviction to withstand opposition.”
Monday night, at 240 Edmond Road NW, Piedmont finds out whether it is that jurisdiction.
Janice Mills’ family has been on Main Street since 1903. She stood up on July 27 and asked one question, and nobody on the dais answered it.
Where Is the Water Going to Come From
Where is the water going to come from.
Guerrilla News sent written questions to Aaron Bilyeu and to Cloverleaf Infrastructure, to Piedmont City Manager Joshua Williams, and to City Attorney Daniel McClure.
Public comment quoted in this article comes from the approved minutes of the Piedmont City Council’s July 27, 2026 regular meeting, reproduced at pages 11 through 34 of the August 24 agenda packet.
Every exhibit in this article is an unaltered excerpt from a public record. Exhibits 1 through 20 are cropped directly from the City of Piedmont’s 224-page agenda packet for the August 24, 2026 regular meeting, at the page numbers given in each caption. Nothing in them has been retouched, rearranged, or emphasized. The full packet is linked first in the bibliography, and every page shown can be checked against it.
Sources & Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Every factual assertion in this article traces to one of the sources below. Items marked [PRIMARY] are original documents rather than reporting.
The Piedmont record
[PRIMARY] City of Piedmont, August 24, 2026 City Council agenda packet, 224 pages
https://www.piedmont-ok.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_08242026-608
Cited in this article for: the PUD staff report, the Planning Commission’s denial recommendation, and staff’s Special Use Permit and decommissioning recommendations (p. 108); the zoning application, filing dates, fee, and newspaper publication record (p. 109); the first PUD submittal dated May 5, 2026 with city comments, including the “Cimmaron DevCo LLC” cover misspelling (p. 111) and the “Piedmont Technology & Energy Campus” introduction (p. 114); the second submittal dated May 21, 2026 (pp. 124-139), including Section 3.0 owner list and addresses (p. 127), Section 6.0 comprehensive plan consistency and Section 7.8 agricultural land use designation and Section 8.1 permitted uses and supersession clause (p. 130), the power generation definition, height, parking, facade, screening, berm and conservation easement redlines (p. 131), the 60 dBA noise cap, generator testing provision, Special Condition 1 title contingency, and the oil and gas buffer exemption (p. 132), the 75-foot height and closed-loop cooling and sidewalk provisions (p. 134), Section 9.21 job estimates and Section 9.22 tax language (p. 135), and the four to seven year development sequence (p. 136); Exhibit C concept plan site data table showing 65-foot height, 50% impervious, 12-foot berms and 12-foot opaque wall (p. 139); Exhibit E background noise assessment, Olsson, measurements of April 17, 2026 (pp. 144-171); Exhibit F “Project Matthewson” traffic memorandum, Olsson project B25-02654, dated May 14, 2026 (pp. 172-180), including road widths and bridge clear width (p. 174), trip generation and 352,800 sq ft per building and 500 construction employees per building (pp. 175-176), the Frisco Road vacation (p. 176), and the absence of an internal road connection (p. 177); the annexation staff report of City Planner Kelly Deatherage (p. 181); the Box Law Group annexation petition and owner signatures (pp. 182-194); the recorded warranty deeds (pp. 195-201); the city attorney RFQ report (p. 202); the Planning and Zoning training and submission deadline reports (pp. 203-204); Resolutions 08-24-26A, B and C and the MRDAF match figures (pp. 66-95); the July 20, 2026 special meeting minutes (pp. 6-10); and the July 27, 2026 regular meeting minutes containing all public comment quoted here and the 4-0 vote that the Future Land Use Map not be amended (pp. 11-34).
[PRIMARY] City of Piedmont, Petition for Annexation, compiled, filed April 30, 2026
https://piedmont-ok.gov/DocumentCenter/View/948/Petition-for-Annexation---Compiled
[PRIMARY] City of Piedmont, Data Center Transparency Portal
https://www.piedmont-ok.gov/323/Data-Center-Transparency-Portal
[PRIMARY] City of Piedmont FY 2024-25 Budget, transmittal letter of City Manager Joshua A. Williams
https://www.piedmont-ok.gov/311
As filed with the Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector:
https://www.sai.ok.gov/Search%20Reports/database/Canadian%20-%20Town%20of%20Piedmont%20FY25.pdf
Source for: “The estimate of available resources for the budget fiscal year 2024-25 is $15,569,039.”
[PRIMARY] City of Piedmont, Budget page
https://www.piedmont-ok.gov/309/Budget
The Cloverleaf presentation
[PRIMARY] Cloverleaf Infrastructure, “Building the Future of Responsible Digital Infrastructure,” presented by Aaron Bilyeu, Florida League of Cities annual conference, Hollywood, Florida, August 2026
https://www.flcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Data-Centers-_ALL.pdf
Source for: Slide 3 site selection criteria including the “supportive AHJ” language; the 5 GW sold and 12+ GW pipeline and 30+ person team; the 18-month development cycle and the “Ready to Design / Sell” stage; Slide 4 water, ratepayer and home value claims including “75,000 gal/day max”; Slide 6 citing Oklahoma House Bill 2992 and the Michigan pledge; Slide 7 case study economics and the ~$15.5M host city budget footnote; Slide 8 moratorium count and Gallup figure.
Cloverleaf Infrastructure: formation, backers, leadership, business model
Cloverleaf Infrastructure, About Us and leadership
https://www.cloverleafinfra.com/about-us
Cloverleaf Infrastructure, Aaron Bilyeu biography
https://www.cloverleafinfra.com/team/aaron-bilyeu
Cloverleaf Infrastructure, Newsroom
https://www.cloverleafinfra.com/newsroom
“Cloverleaf Infrastructure raises $300 Million from NGP and Sandbrook Capital,” PR Newswire, July 17, 2024
Sandbrook Capital, portfolio page for Cloverleaf Infrastructure
https://www.sandbrook.com/portfolio/cloverleaf-infrastructure
NGP, “How Entrepreneurs Put Energy-Hungry Data Centers on the Map,” David Berry profile
https://ngpenergy.com/news/how-entrepreneurs-put-energy-hungry-data-centers-on-the-map/
Forbes, “Startup Cloverleaf Raises $300 Million, For Shovel-Ready, Gigawatt-Scale A.I. Datacenters,” July 22, 2024
Axios, “Exclusive: AI power broker Cloverleaf Infrastructure draws takeover interest,” February 18, 2026
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/18/ai-energy-cloverleaf-takeover-deal
GeekWire, “Tech Moves,” August 2024, reporting Bilyeu’s move from Meta to Cloverleaf
Equilar ExecAtlas, Aaron Bilyeu executive biography, Meta, Microsoft, Jacobs, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Iowa State
https://people.equilar.com/bio/person/aaron-bilyeu-cloverleaf-infrastructure/62452313
Bisnow Atlanta, “Developer Beefs Up Plans For $1.2B Data Center Project South Of Atlanta,” on the entitle-and-sell model, Monroe County, Georgia
Latitude Media, “Investors embrace Cloverleaf’s energy-first approach to data centers”
Port Washington, Wisconsin, and Red Granite DevCo LLC
[PRIMARY] City of Port Washington, Development Agreement, naming “Developer’s predecessor in interest, Red Granite DevCo LLC ('Cloverleaf’)” and the pre-annexation agreement of January 21, 2025
https://www.portwashingtonwi.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/6088/638913789113430000
Copy hosted by Wisconsin Public Radio:
https://www.wpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/CITY-OF-PORT-WASHINGTON.pdf
Ozaukee Press, “Massive data center complex planned for Port,” January 7-8, 2025. Bilyeu states Cloverleaf created Red Granite DevCo to buy the land; roughly $1 billion per building; a gigawatt or more; five to eight year phase-in; would double the city’s valuation; no buyer in place
https://www.ozaukeepress.com/content/massive-data-center-complex-planned-port
Ozaukee Press, “Firm to pay city’s data center review expenses,” on the predevelopment agreement with Red Granite DevCo, “the real estate arm of Cloverleaf Infrastructure,” and the roughly 1,900 acres sought
https://www.ozaukeepress.com/content/firm-pay-city%E2%80%99s-data-center-review-expenses
TMJ4, “Residents learn more about potential data center project in Port Washington,” Bilyeu on options over 40 to 45 properties and on power supply
TMJ4, “'I don’t trust what’s going to happen’: Port Washington residents worried about possible data center project,” on the closed session with Red Granite DevCo, LLC
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “An unknown company is buying hundreds of acres of farmland in the Town of Port Washington,” Paul Krauska and the semiconductor cover story
https://www.aol.com/unknown-company-buying-hundreds-acres-095912833.html
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Port Washington weighs whether the city should annex 17% of the town for proposed data center”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/port-washington-weighs-whether-city-190616475.html
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Vantage identified as operator for Port Washington’s proposed 3.5 gigawatt data center campus,” Bilyeu declining further comment
https://www.yahoo.com/news/vantage-identified-operator-port-washingtons-143905168.html
Data Center Dynamics, “Cloverleaf reveals plans for 1,000-acre data center campus in Port Washington, Wisconsin”
Vantage Data Centers, OpenAI and Oracle, Stargate Wisconsin announcement, October 22, 2025
Vantage Data Centers, Port Washington “Lighthouse” campus page: 672 acres, four buildings, 902 MW, 2.5 million square feet
https://vantage-dc.com/data-center-locations/north-america/port-washington-wisconsin
Wisconsin Public Radio, “Port Washington data center campus will be $15B hub for OpenAI, Oracle 'Stargate’ program”
https://www.wpr.org/news/port-washington-data-center-campus-openai-oracle-stargate-chatgpt
Shepherd Express, “The Struggle Against Hyperscale Data Centers Across Wisconsin,” Great Lakes Neighbors United and Christine Le Jeune
WISN, “Port Washington community-led panel responding to data center construction,” on the dust, the noise, and the roughly 200 residents who attended
Midwest Environmental Advocates, “Challenging Data Center Secrecy,” records showing Cloverleaf sought one million gallons per day and the city’s treatment plant study
https://midwestadvocates.org/our-work/legal-action/data-center-transparency/
Save Port Washington, “The Project,” residents’ timeline of the pre-annexation and development agreements and the I-3 Technology Campus District
https://www.saveportwashington.com/the-project/
ABC News, “A 600-acre AI data center could cost some Wisconsin residents their land,” on eminent domain and transmission
https://abcnews.com/US/600-acre-ai-data-center-cost-wisconsin-residents/story?id=130153006
Inc., summarizing the Wisconsin Watch analysis of Ozaukee County land records: at least $125 million assembled, $10.2 million for 173 acres valued at $590,000, at least $20 million to one family
The Mathewson substation and the transmission corridor
Oklahoma Watch, “A Transmission Line Built to Fix Grid Congestion Has Become Oklahoma’s Hottest Data Center Address,” June 26, 2026. Source for the Bilyeu quote and for Beltline declining comment
Republished in full:
https://freepressokc.com/data-center-plans-converge-on-single-okc-metro-power-corridor/
[PRIMARY] Southwest Power Pool, “SPP board selects Transource to construct $72 million Oklahoma transmission project,” 38.4 miles, 345 kV, in service 2027
[PRIMARY] Transource Energy, Mathewson-Redbud Project
https://www.transourceenergy.com/projects/Mathewson-Redbud/
[PRIMARY] Transource, Mathewson-Redbud route study segment map and fact sheet
https://transourceenergyprojects.com/mathewson-redbud/docs/TRA_MR_Fact_Sheet_v8.pdf
KOSU and StateImpact Oklahoma, “Data centers complicate attempts to beef up Oklahoma electrical infrastructure,” Linda and Lewis Rainey, the buffalo wallows, and AEP’s response
https://www.kosu.org/oklahoma-data-centers-electricity-demand
Republished:
Kingfisher Times & Free Press, “Transource Oklahoma to host local open houses for electric transmission project,” on the $138 million to $225 million in projected SPP savings
Cimarron Electric Cooperative
[PRIMARY] Cimarron Electric Cooperative, “Your Cooperative”: 22 substations, more than 4,596 miles of line, 18,000 meters, nine counties
https://cimarronelectric.com/home/about-us/
Oklahoma Living, Cimarron Electric Cooperative profile, same figures
https://www.okl.coop/cooperatives/my-cooperative/cimarron/
FindEnergy, Cimarron Electric Cooperative, compiled from federal utility filings: 775,101 megawatt hours sourced on the wholesale market in 2023. The average-load arithmetic in this article is the author’s
https://findenergy.com/providers/cimarron-electric-cooperative/
Piedmont coverage, in order
NonDoc, “'Establish a baseline of impact’: Piedmont residents raise questions about possible data center,” April 22, 2026
KFOR, “Piedmont council votes to send leaders to Atlanta to tour data center amid resident backlash”
News 9, “Piedmont residents raise water, growth concerns over proposed massive data center project,” former Mayor Melissa Ashford
KFOR, “Piedmont leaders discuss city water updates and proposal for an additional data center”
KFOR, “Piedmont planning commission tables data center decisions, calls for deeper study”
KFOR, “Piedmont planning commission encourages city council to deny data center proposal,” June 2, 2026
News 9, “Piedmont residents push back against proposed data center development”
Data Center Dynamics, “Powered land company Cloverleaf proposing 633-acre data center in Canadian County, Oklahoma”
Fox 25 KOKH, “Piedmont City Council to vote on rezoning thousands of acres for data center campus.” Source for the 1.4 gigawatt figure, the $9 million a year figure, the up to 500 permanent jobs figure, and the 75,000 gallons per day figure as presented to the council
Fox 25 KOKH, “Piedmont City Council delays Cloverleaf data center plan, sends land use map back”
News 9, “Piedmont City Council delays vote on rezoning land for proposed data center,” resetting the vote to August 24
Radio Oklahoma News, “Piedmont Data Center Proposal Heads To City Council Vote Tonight”
Oklahoma context
The Frontier, “How data center developers won secrecy pledges from Oklahoma officials,” June 17, 2026. NDAs in Coweta, Claremore, Luther, Yukon and Stillwater; below-quorum briefings; House Bill 3030 and Rep. Jim Shaw
Investigate Midwest, “A loophole leaves Oklahoma data center water consumption largely untracked,” July 14, 2026
https://investigatemidwest.org/2026/07/14/oklahoma-data-centers-water-use-loophole/
Republished:
KTUL, “Data center scandal: Who sent fake emails of support for Project Atlas?” The vice mayor’s text messages and the resident’s denial
https://ktul.com/news/local/data-center-scandal-who-sent-fake-emails-of-support-for-project-atlas
KTUL, “Push for transparency over data center emails hits brick wall,” the Attorney General’s position on the redactions
https://ktul.com/news/local/push-for-transparency-over-data-center-emails-hits-brick-wall
News On 6, “Coweta data center Project Atlas canceled by Beale Infrastructure”
KJRH, “'Unsubstantiated’: Coweta investigation results reveal no criminal findings,” Police Chief Mike Bell
Government Technology, “Coweta, Okla., Police Clear City Officials Over Data Center”
https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/coweta-okla-police-clear-city-officials-over-data-center
Oklahoma Voice, “Ratepayer protections signed into law by Oklahoma governor.” HB 2992, the 75 MW threshold, the 60-day notice and the $1,500 per day penalty
https://oklahomavoice.com/briefs/ratepayer-protections-signed-into-law-by-oklahoma-governor/
[PRIMARY] Oklahoma Senate, “Senate Passes Data Center Ratepayer Protection Act with Added Transparency Requirements,” the five-mile notice radius
[PRIMARY] Oklahoma House of Representatives, “Lawmakers Mark Signing of Landmark Data Center Protections,” August 6, 2026. HB 2992 approved May 11, SB 259 approved May 20
https://www.okhouse.gov/posts/news-20260806_2
News 9, “Gov. Stitt Highlights Oklahoma Data Center Accountability Bills.” SB 259 and the groundwater evaporative cooling prohibition, effective November 1, 2026
KOSU, “Stitt signs bill to prevent higher utility costs from data centers into law”
https://www.kosu.org/data-center-utility-cost-bill-signed
[PRIMARY] City of Oklahoma City, “Oklahoma City Council approves moratorium on new data centers”
https://www.okc.gov/News-articles/Oklahoma-City-Council-approves-moratorium-on-new-data-centers
KFOR, “Edmond City Council passes data center moratorium through end of year”
https://kfor.com/news/local/edmond-city-council-passes-data-center-moratorium-through-end-of-year/
Oklahoma Energy Today, “Data center bans, rules and moratoriums are spreading”
https://okenergytoday.com/2026/06/data-center-bans-rules-and-moratoriums-are-spreading/
The initiative petition process
[PRIMARY] Oklahoma Statutes, Title 11 § 15-103, municipal initiative and referendum: form, twenty-five percent signature threshold, ninety-day circulation period
https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/title-11/section-11-15-103/
[PRIMARY] Oklahoma Statutes, Title 11 § 15-101, initiative and referendum powers reserved to city voters
https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/title-11/section-11-15-101/
[PRIMARY] Oklahoma Statutes, Title 62 § 868, parallel procedure: the clerk’s physical count, publication of sufficiency, the ten-day protest window, and submission to voters at the next general municipal election
https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/title-62/section-62-868/
[PRIMARY] Oklahoma Statutes, Title 11 § 21-105, annexation by petition of three-fourths of registered voters and owners
https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/title-11/section-11-21-105/
Ballotpedia, “Laws governing local ballot measures in Oklahoma”
https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_local_ballot_measures_in_Oklahoma
BatesLine, “Municipal initiative and referendum in Oklahoma: A primer,” with worked signature math for a comparable Oklahoma city
https://www.batesline.com/archives/2026/05/local-initiative-and-referendum.html
City of Oklahoma City, Initiative Petition Information, describing the same ninety-day and twenty-five percent mechanics
https://www.okc.gov/departments/initiative-petition
Guerrilla News. Corrections to ron@guerrillaarmy.com
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