By Paris Rain, FOX23.com News Staff
SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — Months of conversations and meetings about Project Spring, a proposed data center near Sand Springs, ended Tuesday night with the city council voting to pass the rezoning request.
The data center will be used by Google and is one of several proposed data centers across Green Country that have been met with a lot of opposition.
Tuesday night was the last time neighbors said they could have their voices heard before the city made a decision on the proposed data center. The city councilors said they have been receiving written opinions since November.
Some people in Sand Springs are calling the entire journey government overreach without public input.
Sand Springs city councilors held a special meeting at Charles Page High School, and people who live in the area came together to hear what the city would decide.
Project Spring would be located just east of Highway 97 and a mile south of Rock School Road.
The project is proposed by Google and White Rose Developers and could house a total of three data centers.
Those who live in the city and those who work for Sand Springs have met multiple times and said their feelings have not changed.
The majority of them don’t want it near their homes and feel like the process of this was done wrong. Many of their concerns are about water use, rising utility costs, potential environmental impacts, and noise.
Kyle Schmidt, President of Project Sand Springs Alliance, explained the importance of Tuesday’s final meeting.
“At the end of the day, it’s not even so much about the data center as it is the way they went about annexing the land, keeping it a secret, hiding things from the public, possibly hiding things from the council so they would vote a certain way — that’s really what it was about,” said Schmidt. “Government overreach without citizen input and when they were called out for it, they decided their best course of action was to plow ahead and just railroad it over the citizens.”
The developers spoke about economic impacts like tax agreements, negotiations, donations to the school and community, which they said would benefit for years to come.
The Sand Springs mayor said Tuesday’s decision was a tough one for the council to make, and while many neighbors are against it, he thinks this could be a good thing for the City of Sand Springs.
Google and White Rose announced they want to start building in 2027 and plan to be done by 2029.
The people of Sand Springs said despite the decision, they still have a lawsuit due to their argument of illegal annexation.
