One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"The food is great. The valet service is hit and miss..."}]

One more for 7 5 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Friday, July 5, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The food is great. The valet service is hit and miss....

One More For The Road: Friday, July 5, 2024

 The food is great. The valet service is hit and miss...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

Microsoft, Black Hills Energy, and other local officials said data centers, handled the “Wyoming way,” are already helping hold down power bills and could unlock new land for affordable housing. 

The additional water sales, they added during a panel Saturday, are something Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities said it actually needs to keep rates stable. 

Cheyenne rate payers, panelists further suggested, might one day pay less for electricity than they do now, even as the city chips away at a housing shortfall that’s been estimated at roughly 5,000 units.

The claims came as Cheyenne finds itself on the front lines of a national race to build out digital infrastructure — a race the Trump administration has framed as critical to national security. 

Cheyenne has 10 data centers already operating, five under construction, and nine more announced or in planning stages, according to Cheyenne LEADS Executive Director Betsey Hale. 

Another 36 data center companies or site selectors have expressed some level of interest in Cheyenne or Laramie County, and about 30 more “tire kickers” have made at least one exploratory call, she said.

The sheer volume — about 90 potential data centers in all — has unnerved many Cheyenne and Laramie County citizens, prompting a petition drive calling for a moratorium on new data centers. 

At recent public meetings, citizens have raised alarms about scarce water, spiking energy demand, and whether the boom will price ordinary people out of housing and other services like plumbers or electricians. 

On Saturday, city and industrial officials didn’t just push back on those narratives. They argued the opposite. So far, they said Cheyenne’s data center buildout has kept electric rates lower than they otherwise would be and could eventually push them down.

At the same time, they said the projects are helping open new ground for housing and plugging financing gaps in affordable-housing deals — all while giving the Board of Public Utilities more water customers to spread fixed costs around and keep rates low.

[{"type":"text","text":"How Server Farms Underwrite Grid"}]

Black Hills Energy Data Center Development Director Austin Allen said Cheyenne residents are already seeing benefits when it comes to electricity.

“In the last decade, Cheyenne Light has had one rate case,” he said. “What we see is that data centers actually stabilize rates. They provide far more benefits into the system from a cost perspective than they take out, and they actually work to lower rates.”

The key to that, Allen added, is the large-load tariff that Cheyenne Light, Fuel & Power (now Black Hills Energy) developed back when Microsoft first came knocking on Cheyenne’s door in 2012. 

“Our tariff requires that any cost that data centers cause, they must pay for,” he said. “And they must pay for it correctly. That tariff is actually codified in state statute as well. So it is a requirement. The tariff that we perform this way as a utility is also a requirement under the service mechanisms that we use to serve large data centers. That’s written into state law as well.”

Because of those rules, Allen said, Cheyenne's wave of data center projects has not only held rates steady, it’s also helped make Cheyenne’s grid one of the most reliable in the country.

“Cheyenne for the last several, several years, is consistently rated as one of the most reliable utilities in the country,” he said. “By and large, that’s significantly due to the partnerships that we have with data centers, because as we’re adding these loads of the system, data centers are paying for significant investments themselves, which therefore also benefit the reliability, the grid reliability of our local system here in Cheyenne.”

Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, said Cheyenne’s experience matches what he’s seen in other markets. 

“What we see throughout the country is that large loads like data centers put downward pressure on the rates for others,” he said. “Indiana Michigan Power is a really strong, growing market. We’re going to lower our rates for residential ratepayers because we have data center revenue coming in.”    

already implemented a 3.6% rate reduction

, which is roughly $6 per month for average users.

Georgia Power, meanwhile, is lowering rates after a three-year rate freeze, due to large loads coming in, the most significant of which are data centers. 

The company has projected annual savings of about $102 for typical residential customers, once the rate freeze ends in 2028.

“DTE Energy, Detroit, Michigan, we don’t need a rate increase because we have two data center projects coming in,” Diorio said. “And that’s our commitment to you is that these projects come in, they’re not raising your rates.”

[{"type":"text","text":"PG & E is another unlikely example, Diorio said. "}]

"PG & E (is) not a place known for cheap energy or commitment to anything,” he said. “We’ve kept rates as much as 11% lower because of data centers.”

Done right, Diorio said, data centers can mean a step-change in affordability for future rates, instead of the out-sized rate hikes so many fear. 

“We have a tremendous opportunity here to help address those affordability questions and keep rates low,” he said. “Data centers are playing a key part of that, and you have the right type of system set up to ensure that data centers pay their own way and pay their full cost of service and no other rate payers are affected. You are affected in one possible way that means your rates go down, because data centers are bearing the burden of this cost.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Turning Server Farms Into Housing Cost Relief"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Housing is another question Hale said she’s heard constantly."}]

“Boyd Wiggam (Planning and Zoning Commissioner) is always worried about affordable housing,” she said. “He’s always asking me, ‘Where are we going to build houses?’”

[{"type":"text","text":"Data center development, she argued, is helping to answer that question. "}]

When Meta agreed to help pay for and complete the High Plains Road from Highway 85, it did more than just build a driveway for its own “Project Cosmo” campus, Hale said. 

“That’s the biggest structure for a traffic signal in the state of Wyoming,” she said. “But they were able to help us pay for that. That has now opened up 2,100 acres.”

The property owner isn’t interested in more data centers, fireworks stands, wind turbines, or solar panels. Instead, Hale said, LEADS is working with them on a mixed-use development that will eventually include future housing, retail stores, restaurants and hotels. 

“That road isn’t open yet,” Hale said. “But it will eventually be open once the Cosmo Meta project is complete.”

Mayor Collins added that the same buildout is bringing 3 miles of water and sewer lines into play — infrastructure that would have cost a million dollars to do, which would not have been feasible but for that project.

Each time a project like that pushes utilities into previously uneconomic areas, it’s creating a new jumping-off point that can make more housing projects pencil out in areas where they never have before.

Housing has benefitted in more direct ways as well, Collins added, pointing to a $3.5 million gift from Related Digital. That was the last piece of funding needed for a 184-unit affordable housing complex that’s expected to break ground in June or July.

Taken together, panelists argued that server farms are not just paying their own freight when it comes to water and power, but they’re creating generational infrastructure that’s making new developments, including affordable housing, feasible again.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cheyenne Needs To Sell More Water"}]

Water use in Cheyenne, meanwhile, has been falling, even as the city grows — a trend that is putting the Board of Public Utilities into a financial squeeze.

When Collins was elected to the city council in November 2000, Cheyenne was using about 14,500 acre-feet of water.

“Today, we use around 12,000,” he said. “That’s 650 million gallons of water that we use less today than we did back then.”

From a conservation standpoint, that’s a success. But economically, it’s tougher. The cost of maintaining hundreds of miles of aging water and sewer lines keeps rising, even as BOPU’s sales base has shrunk. 

“The truth is, the Board of Public Utilities needs to sell more water,” Collins said. “But they’re saying no to people who don’t want to use closed-loop systems because that’s the right thing to do.

Collins estimated Cheyenne needs to sell another 1,000 to 2,000 acre-feet of water to stay on solid footing without a rate hike. 

“Otherwise, they’re going to end up like, and I don’t want to pick on a community like Rawlins, but they had a major disaster where their water system completely failed,” Collins said. “And years later, they’re still struggling to get that thing back on track.”

The key, Collins said, is selling enough water to keep up with system maintenance. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The “Yes, But” From Skeptics"}]

Not everyone is convinced that data centers will underwrite cheaper power and abundant housing, at least not at the scale city officials suggested.

Ward 1 Councilman Larry Wolfe, who attended the forum, told Cowboy State Daily afterward he is skeptical that data centers will meaningfully subsidize residential energy rates any time soon.

“That would require them to start contributing generation to the grid,” he said. “The only facility talking about that is Tallgrass.”

He can see some transmission improvements from data center projects, which might trim some costs at the margin, but he thinks those effects will be limited.

“As to opening land for housing of any type, that could happen to parcels that could get water and sewer access as a result of data centers paying for service expansion,” he said. But, he added, the effect will likely be “dwarfed by the amount of land that the centers are going to consume.”

Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, meanwhile, agreed that some of that upside is real, but said the long-term energy and tax picture is still a bit fuzzy.

Case has spent years scrutinizing Wyoming’s utility law, and agrees that Cheyenne’s large-load tariff does force data centers to shoulder their own capital costs up front, adding that the Public Service Commission has to sign off on those contracts and wouldn’t do that if there were going to be negative impacts to rates from line extensions.

But he’s less certain about the long-run energy side of the ledger once regional capacity tightens to the point they’re “soaking up any electricity they can find.”

“If it comes down to where the entire market gets a little shorter, then utilities have to pay extra to get in the queue,” he said. “That part to me is not clear.”

Case, meanwhile, believes there could be many impacts that data centers have so far skirted. 

“Are they paying for the roads or the sewers? How is that being held?” Case asked. “We’ve had the foresight to talk about large loads with that large load legislation, but we haven’t necessarily had the same foresight with everything else. I know Cheyenne LEADS says they pay a lot of taxes, but they don’t pay as much as everybody else.”

Wyoming, with no income tax, has to make sure the juice coming from data centers is worth the squeeze, Case said, and it’s something that lawmakers will discuss this summer during the interim session.

“We give them that manufacturing sales tax exemption and our overall property taxes are pretty low,” he said. “So I still maintain that they don’t really pay their impacts in terms of infrastructure, in terms of schools in terms of everything.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“Do No Harm” Standard"}]

On the economic development side, Hale said companies looking to locate in Cheyenne go through a thorough vetting process before any shovels hit dirt. 

First, LEADS asks a basic, but crucial question. Is this a real business, and is it durable?

That’s easier to answer for publicly traded companies, with lots of financials on file. For privately held corporations, Hale said LEADS hires a a third-party CPA firm to look behind the curtain and verify that they’re bonafide.

Beyond that, LEADS also runs a detailed cost-benefit analysis on every project, weighing negative financial impacts against positive ones using a tool called the Site Stats Tool. 

County, city and state budgets are loaded into the model annually, along with assumptions about where employees will live.

“We understand what the cost of government service delivery is,” Hale said. “When the company moves to your community they need services. We measure 50% of their employees living in the city, so that we can understand the cost of service delivery to those employees.”

The tool tallies impacts on city and county governments, school districts, and special districts.

“So when we look at a project, we’ll look to see is it a negative financial impact to the city county and the state versus a positive financial impact,” she said. “And our board takes that very seriously and Mayor Collins has participated in those presentations.”

Data centers are required to meet an explicit “do no harm” standard. That means paying 100% of their off-site impacts, including new roads and turn lanes, pump stations and trunk sewer lines, and substation and transmission upgrades for power. 

They must also agree to noise and light mitigation, as well as closed-loop cooling systems. They’re also expected to contribute directly to community needs, which includes everything from tree-planting and stormwater projects to affordable housing projects.

Every two years, Cheyenne LEADS commissions a study with the University of Iowa to ensure that the forecasted positive benefits were in fact realized.

Actual taxes paid by data centers since 2012 is published on Cheyenne LEADS website, Hale added. 

“Once Meta is up and running, those tax revenues will go up exponentially,” she said. 

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<title>Cheyenne Leaders, Industry Officials: Data Centers Could Lower Electricity Costs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

At a panel discussion on Saturday, Cheyenne leaders and industry officials said data centers are already helping stabilize electric rates and are opening new land for housing. But skeptics still aren’t buying it.

Cheyenne Leaders, Industry Officials: Data Centers Could Lower Electricity Costs

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

A Cody river guide said that his raft was nearly sunk by an electric fence wire strung too low across a river in Park County, while he was out on a float with his girlfriend and her young son on Sunday.

“It was sketchy,” Ryan Anue told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “It was definitely a situation that could have gone bad fast.”

As he sees it, the manner in which the wire was strung over the river was hazardous and possibly illegal. He said that he reported it to the Park County Sheriff’s Office.

Park County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Monte McClain confirmed that the incident had been reported, and deputies were looking into it.

“There’s no law violation, so far, that we were able to find,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

McClain and Anue said that the owners of one ranch in the area told them the fence wire wasn’t theirs, but belonged to neighboring ranch.

McClain said that as of Monday, deputies hadn’t been able to make contact with the owners of that ranch. Cowboy State Daily was also unable to contact the ranch owners.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"‘We Yelled At Him To Duck’"}]

Anue owns Wyoming Wings & Waters guide service, but said that he was floating the river, above Buffalo Bill Reservoir, purely for fun on Sunday with his girlfriend and her 9-year-old son.

They were in his 13-foot inflatable fishing raft.

“That water was high and off-color,” and so, not good for fishing, Anue said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But they still had a great time."}]

“The current was ripping. It was just a really fun float, there’s some rapids in there,” Aune said.

About two miles above the take-out point, he spotted some wire strung across the river.

There was no way around it, so he decided to take the raft underneath it.

“The 9-year-old was sitting in the front and we yelled at him to duck,” and then the adults did likewise, he said.

They cleared the wire, which was high enough for the raft’s metal thigh brace bars to pass underneath it, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Second Wire, And Chaos"}]

“We popped our heads back up, and suddenly we see, there’s another wire right there,” Anue said.

“The first wire was head-high. The second wire was neck-level on river right and river left. Down the middle, the wire was bowed, it was probably boat-level, probably two feet off the river,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“We chose river right,” he added."}]

That time, they didn’t clear the wire. It caught on the raft’s rear thigh bar, and chaos ensued, Anue said.

“The boat was literally going under. We were being dragged under,” he said.

 Anue said he started trying to fling the wire off the bar.

“I’m pretty sure the wire was hot (electrically charged). My shirt got fried and cut open but I didn’t get zapped,” he said.

Finally, the wire apparently came loose from one of its shore connections and “in all the chaos and adrenaline,” Anue said he managed to get it off the thigh bar and the raft floated free.

“Nobody’s hurt and the boat is fine,” he said.

Typical of a child that might not realize the gravity of such a situation, “the kid thought it was kind of funny,” Anue added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"What Does The Law Say?"}]

Whether it’s legal to put fences or other barriers across rivers in Wyoming remains somewhat contentious.

Landowners may not block passage on navigable waters. But that leaves open for interpretation what actual blockage and “navigable water” mean.

Tensions over the matter recently flared up over a landowner allegedly 

 connecting Pine Creek and the New Fork River near Pinedale.  

A squabble between a Wyoming landowner and a floater in the late 1950s ended up going all the way to the Wyoming Supreme Court in the 1961 case, 

At the heart of the case was whether landowners have the right to deliberately block passage along floatable waters passing through their property. 

The court ruled that landowners can’t do that — because waterways are essentially a public right-of way. 

However, landowners can claim ownership of the river or streambed underneath the water. 

That means that jumping out of a watercraft to wade, or anchoring a boat to a private streambed amounts to trespassing. 

The exception the court made in its Day v. Armstrong decision is when floaters must exit their craft to go through, over or around shallow spots in streams, or barriers across them.  

Fencing may also be placed across a waterway, so long as it isn’t blocking the passage in such a manner that floaters can’t easily go under or around it.

 with dangling vertical safety strings, could help ease tensions between landowners and floaters.

Cody rafters 1 6 8 26

<title>Cody River Guide Says Electric Wire Across River Nearly Sunk Raft With Child In It | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Cody river guide said his raft was nearly sunk by an electric fence wire strung too low across a river in Park County, while he was out on a float with his girlfriend and her young son on Sunday. "This could have gone bad fast," he said.

Cody River Guide Says Electric Wire Across River Nearly Sunk Raft With Child In It

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

It’s the summer season in Yellowstone National Park, which means it’s open season for brazen bunglers to try their luck with bison.

Les Vandever of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, was in Yellowstone last month when he stopped near Floating Island Lake in northern Yellowstone to see if he could spot any bears. As he sat watching, a herd of bison ambled over and started crossing the road.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s when Vandever saw an incident of “unbelievable stupidity.”"}]

“A kid got out of the back passenger side of a vehicle and took off running towards the bison,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I don’t know if he was trying to spook them off or if he was just doing something stupid.” 

When the individual charged towards the bison, the herd picked up its pace and finished crossing the road. After that, the man got back into the vehicle, and it drove off.

Not before Vandever got clear photographs of the individual’s face and the vehicle’s license plate, which he’s since shared with a Yellowstone ranger.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We were sitting in our car, just dumbfounded,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It’s Stupid Season"}]

Whenever anyone enters Yellowstone, they receive a map and a flyer reminding them to keep at least 25 yards between themselves and the park’s bison, elk, and other animals. That’s never stopped people from trying their luck, at their peril.

A video circulating on social media appears to show a woman in the Upper Geyser Basin, near Old Faithful, 

 on the head. Even after the incredibly patient bison tries to brush the woman off, she continues to press her luck and pet the massive animal.

Another video shows a woman in a flowing, ankle-length dress running across the road after getting much too close to a bothered bison. As she flees, she 

Vandever said the individual he witnessed was lucky. Approaching one adult bison can be fatal, let alone a herd of them.

“They weren’t even blocking or standing in the road,” he said. “Even if they do, you ease up towards them in your car, go slow and steady, and they will move. That's what the rangers want people to do.”

It’s possible that the individual was trying to demonstrate his abilities as a wide receiver, if the Ohio State Buckeyes shirt he was wearing is any indication.

Regardless, Vandever was keen to get whatever information he could to the Yellowstone rangers.

“I believe there were four people in that vehicle,” he said. “I don’t know if there were any more than him being that stupid.”

So far, there haven’t been any reported bison gorings in Yellowstone this year. That’s a bit unusual, as there’s usually at least one before June.

 occurred in early May. A 47-year-old man from Cape Coral, Florida, was gored by a bison near Lake Village after approaching it too closely.

A month later, a 30-year-old New Jersey man was 

, the busiest area in Yellowstone. Park officials said the man was in a group of visitors that got too close to the bison when it suddenly charged at them.

Meanwhile, a 70-year-old woman from Canada was 

 in South Dakota’s Custer State Park last month. It was the park’s first bison fatality in over 20 years.

According to Custer County Sheriff Marty Mechaley, the woman was following a group of bull bison when one of them charged and threw her 6 feet into the air. When her husband tried to approach and save her, the bison charged again and tossed her 20 feet into the air.

There hasn’t been a bison-related fatality in Yellowstone since 1983, but not for lack of trying. Between 1995 and 2012, there was an average of zero to human-bison incidents resulting in serious injury every year, according to Lee Whittlesey’s book “Death in Yellowstone.”

Many people either aren’t aware that a bison’s strength and temperament are enough to kill them, or they simply don’t care. Regardless, they’re putting themselves at serious risk when they get too close.

“We see about two or three (bison attack victims) a year,” Cody Regional Health’s Dr. Kirk Bollinger told Cowboy State Daily 

. “The big thing is the internal bleeding or massive bruising on the lungs when they stomp on you.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Banned And Fined"}]

Vandever gave his photos and an eyewitness account to a Yellowstone ranger as soon as he had the opportunity. It wasn’t as easy to accomplish in early May.

“It took several days before I could actually find a ranger,” he said. “At that time of the year, there aren’t many rangers active in the park.”

The ranger told Vandever that they had the vehicle’s tag number and would “reach out and deal with it.”

[{"type":"text","text":"To Vandever, that sounded educational rather than punitive."}]

“She talked like they would just educate the kid on why you don't do that, which I don't think is nearly enough,” he said. “My opinion is that the kid needs to be banned from national parks and fined.”

There aren’t many prosecutions for people found too close to Yellowstone’s wildlife, and the few that exist are for particularly egregious incidents.

, Clifford Walters of Hawaii attempted to rescue a bison calf in Lamar Valley by pulling it out of a river and onto the roadway. The National Park Service euthanized the calf later that day after its herd abandoned it.

 to one count of feeding, touching, teasing, frightening, or intentionally disturbing wildlife. He was sentenced to pay a $500 fine, a $500 Community Service payment to Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fund, a $30 special assessment, and a $10 processing fee.

If fines and death aren’t enough to deter people from approaching bison, Vandever isn’t sure what else can be done. The May 3 incident was unlike anything he’d ever seen during his annual visits to Yellowstone.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That kid was lacking in any intelligence whatsoever,” he said."}]

Run bison herd 2 6 8 26

<title>'Unbelievably Stupid' Tourist Charges Yellowstone Bison Herd  | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Oklahoma resident Les Vandever said he is still stunned after seeing a man charging into a herd of bison in Yellowstone. "It was a moment of unbelievable stupidity," he said. “We were sitting in our car, just dumbfounded."

'Unbelievably Stupid' Tourist Charges Yellowstone Bison Herd 

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

Residents in the Baggs of Carbon County area were ordered to shelter in place Monday afternoon as law enforcement officers responded to a report of shots fired and searched for what authorities described as an "active assailant."

At about 1:50 p.m., residents received an emergency alert that read: "Active assailant in Baggs area. Please shelter in place."

Details about the incident remained scarce Monday afternoon as multiple law enforcement agencies converged on the small south-central Wyoming community near the Colorado border.

Wyoming Highway Patrol Public Information Officer Aaron Brown said that troopers were responding to a report of shots fired in the area.

"None of the troopers have been injured," Brown said, although it’s not known if any other law enforcement responders have been injured.

Brown declined to provide additional details, saying the incident is under the jurisdiction of the Carbon County Sheriff's Office.

“There is a heavy law enforcement presence, and we are asking the public to please avoid Highway 789 between I-80 and Baggs,” according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'It's Not Good'"}]

Baggs Mayor Matthew Howell also confirmed an active situation was unfolding, but said he was unable to discuss specifics.

"I wish I could say more, but there is an active situation — and it's not good," Howell said.

Multiple agencies are responding to Baggs in Carbon County on reports of shots fired, and an emergency message is advising: “Active assailant in Baggs. Please shelter in place.” “There is an active situation — and it's not good," said the mayor of Baggs.

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