First of three town halls Monday in FM

FORT MADISON – The Lee County Board of Supervisors will be holding its first of three town-hall style meetings Monday evening at the Newberry Center in Fort Madison.
The meetings are being held as a proactive approach to get and share information with the public on future high impact projects including nuclear power, data centers, and other economic development projects.
All meetings begin at 5 p.m. with the second scheduled for Sept. 22 at the Pilot Grove Savings Bank Community Room in Donnellson. The third meeting will be at Keokuk Heritage Center located at 508 Main Street in Keokuk.
Supervisor Chair Ginger Knisley scheduled the meetings as conversation and emotions ramped up around a proposed data center facility on Fort Madison’s east side.
The project, shepherded by developer Dustin Wolgemuth, was planned as a data center, but met with heavy resistance from city residents. Residents attended a Fort Madison Planning & Zoning Commission meeting en masse and were full throated about the project not being welcomed.
However, the property in question is predominantly outside city limits and jurisdiction. That would leave the project squarely in the hands of the county, but the county has no permitting requirements to this point for the project, nor does it have any zoning regulations in place. 
Residents, in smaller numbers, also attended a supervisors' meeting last month at the Meller Family Health Center, in a subdued, but pointed, discussion on the impacts of data centers on communities across the country.
Knisley said she has been pushing to move the discussions and changes to county ordinances along because developers are eyeing Lee County specifically due to lack of zoning restrictions.
The county did pass an ordinance last year around battery energy storage, and solar and wind projects. Nuclear was not included in the ordinance, nor was language specific to data center creation.
Supervisors have been non-committal on what they want to see, but they have been firm in wanting to have solid information on the impacts on the county of these types of projects before codifying any language.
Supervisor Garry Seyb has been vocal about wanting information about the impacts of these types of projects, but doesn’t want to pigeon-hole the county on what types of projects can and can’t be developed within its jurisdiction.
Supervisors are planning for the town halls to be handled much like they did with town halls before they passed the solar, wind, and battery storage ordinance.