MANKATO — A legal fight over a proposed North Mankato industrial development — and the question of who gets to decide how large data centers are approved in Minnesota — drew residents and environmental advocates to a public forum Thursday night in Mankato.
The event, hosted by the Southcentral Minnesota Clean Energy Council at Centenary United Methodist Church, focused on a lawsuit filed by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy challenging the city of North Mankato’s Alternative Urban Areawide Review, AUAR, for a project known as “North Mankato Industrial.”
Attorneys Luke Norquist and Evan Mulholland of MCEA laid out the timeline of the case, beginning with the city’s publication of a scoping document in October 2024, approval of an AUAR in July 2025 and the filing of the lawsuit in August 2025. Briefing in the case is expected to begin in early April 2026, followed by oral arguments and a subsequent court decision.
“Who gets to decide where data centers go?” Mulholland joined the forum virtually and asked this question, noting water, power and renewable energy as other topics of discussion. “Is it going to be a decision from the people, or is this going to be a decision from big tech and developers, and also, who’s going to decide if specific projects should go forward at all?”
While publicly described by city officials as a technology park or office and warehouse development, MCEA argues the 4 million–square-foot project was, behind the scenes, tied to plans for a massive hyperscale data center campus.
The lawsuit alleges the city violated Minnesota environmental law by using the AUAR process in a way that obscured the true nature of the project. Internal communications between city staff, consultants and energy providers referenced the site as a potential 250- to 500-megawatt data center campus — a scale that could consume as much electricity as the city of Minneapolis, Norquist noted — while the public-facing environmental review modeled far lower energy use.
The environmental review’s “vagueness” made it so the public could not tell what was actually being proposed, undermining the purpose of environmental review, which is to study concrete projects before approvals are granted.
“If you say it’s a data center it becomes obvious what needs to be studied. If you say it’s going to be “anything,”, then the resulting analysis on water, on energy, on air quality, affordability, mitigation commitments end up being pretty nebulous, generic and weak,” Norquist said.
Much of the forum centered on what data centers are and why their impacts have become a growing concern. Norquist described modern data centers as enormous facilities filled with thousands of computer servers, for cloud-computing and artificial intelligence. Such facilities can require vast amounts of electricity and water and may operate around the clock.
The city’s AUAR estimated potential water consumption ranging from hundreds of thousands of gallons per day up to 30 million gallons per day, depending on cooling technology. MCEA argues the review failed to adequately analyze what such withdrawals could mean for the Mount Simon–Hinckley Aquifer, a deep and slow-recharging groundwater source that supplies drinking water to about a million Minnesotans and is protected under state law.
Energy demand and air pollution were also highlighted. The lawsuit contends the AUAR understated potential electricity use by orders of magnitude and did not meaningfully analyze scenarios which could significantly increase local air emissions, noise and light pollution.
The MCEA is currently involved in four other lawsuits challenging the use of AUARs for large-scale data centers in cities including Lakeville, Faribault, Pine Island and Hermantown. The organization says it is tracking at least 22 known or potential data center developments across Minnesota at various stages of planning, which can be found on their website.{p dir=”ltr”}“Environmental impacts are often interconnected rather than isolated,” he said, noting that each project is part of a shared broader stress on environmental resources. “Data centers are actually one area where I think cumulative impacts analysis is more important than ever because they’re all happening at the same time, and because it’s the same project, they’re using the same resources.”
Minnesota’s Environmental Policy Act requires environmental review of projects with the potential for significant impacts and MCEA argues that environmental review is intended to be a comprehensive and public process, allowing communities to understand proposed projects, raise concerns and shape mitigation measures before permits are issued.
Trenton Ide, a sustainability coordinator at Minnesota State University asked whether North Mankato officials are continuing to lobby state lawmakers for changes to water-use restrictions affecting the Mount Simon–Hinckley Aquifer, which has been denied as of now.
Resident Lucy Lowry asked about the role of consultants in drafting the AUAR and how much information was supplied by city staff versus developers. Norquist explained developers often work with consultants to refine a project and strategy before presenting it to the city, where the level of staff or council involvement can vary widely and is not always deep early in the process.
He said that even though a specific developer, Oppidan, which was previously linked to the site has reportedly backed away, the lawsuit remains necessary because the approved AUAR could allow future data center proposals to move forward without a new, detailed environmental review.
Southcentral Minnesota Clean Energy Council board member Louis Schwarzkopf asked what people can do locally to advocate and Norquist recommended public engagement by way of reaching out to representatives and showing up to public meetings.
“This is not a one community issue,” Norquist said. “It’s not even one state issue. It’s happening everywhere, all at the same time. That means that having good policy is more important than ever.