Dillingham and Jason Singer spoke about Project Thunderbird to Enid Rotary Club members during their meeting in the Stride Bank Center Grand Ballroom on Monday.

“We ask for your engagement, we ask for your feedback, and we look forward to earning your support,” Dillingham said. “You deserve to have direct answers and a transparent process, and we’re committed to that. We ask again for civility in that process. Enid is a fantastic community. Let’s show the world how fantastic you are.”

Other members of Plainsmen Holdings are Troy Phillips and Aaron Singer.

“Their vision includes a proposed data center and power corridor designed to support Vance Air Force Base, generate new revenue for our schools, city and county, and bring lasting private investment to our region,” Marcie Mack, executive director of Enid Regional Development Alliance, said while introducing Dillingham and Jason Singer. “The proposal is structured to move forward without raising taxes, electric rates or water bills for Enid residents.”

The proposed Project Thunderbird development would encompass approximately 1,735 acres across four campuses in Enid and includes plans for an on-site power generation facility of up to 3.3 gigawatts enabled through a partnership with a major natural gas midstream energy provider.

The four campuses would be the power plant at 42nd and Phillips, the industrial park on North 66th, 30th and Rupe, and on South 30th south of Rupe, according to the website for the project, https://projectthunderbird.com/.

“The more I learned, the more urgent it became for me to … get back together with Chad and my brother and Troy to make a run at trying to build something in the community that raised me, that I believe with every fiber of my being has the potential to be transformative and to be additive and raise the city up,” Jason Singer said.

No contracts have been signed yet, both men said, for the data center or the power generation plant.

“There are five steps to this process,” Singer said. “We are only in step one.”

They will present a plan to the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission on Sept. 28 to rezone property in two of the locations. The rezoning also will go to the Enid City Commission at its Oct. 6 meeting.

“What I want to stress here is what we’re asking the city is to designate this land as with the possibility of being industrial and intensive use, but that only gives us the chance to prove that we can do it right,” Singer said. “It’s after that point that we can run all the surveys and studies and come back to the city and make a very detailed and comprehensive plan that proves that we can do this right and that it can be as additive to Enid.”

The project would tap into the new Kaw Lake water pipeline the city has constructed to provide more water to the city.

The data centers and power plant would use about 1.54 million gallons of water each day, Singer said. The city has the current capacity to pump 10.5 million gallons a day from Kaw.

The data center would use a closed-loop water cooling system, he said, which cuts down on the amount of water used.

“t’s a very, very, very efficient use. But there’s really two pieces that are using water in this corridor. There’s the data centers, and then there’s the power plant,” Singer said. “On average, we will use 1.54 gallons a day. We want to get to an agreement with the city for 2 million gallons a day, so that on-campus water storage of around 31.5 million gallons … could be set up, so that on the hottest days of the year, when it would require more more water to cool the inside to the turbines on the power plant that would be able to withdraw that from reserve, as opposed to really putting a stress on the Kaw Lake pipeline.”

Between the data centers and the power plant, he said organizers are projecting a conservative 600 full-time jobs once the project is completed.

Vance Air Force Base support

The project would benefit Vance Air Force Base, Dillingham said previously, achieving a mandate from the Department of Defense that Vance needs an off-grid, backup, redundant power supply by 2030.

The power generating plant would be that solution, he said.

Opposition

Many people have voiced their opposition to the project on social media for a variety of reasons, ranging from water usage, damage to the environment and the noise.

Some are organizing petition drives against the plan.

Written by Kevin Hassler and published in the Enid News & Eagle