Straight Answers for Our Host Communities
The nine questions we hear most often about a behind-the-meter power and cloud-computing campus, answered in plain language, with real examples you can verify yourself.
When a power and cloud-computing campus is proposed near your town, you should have questions. Hard ones. We've heard them in every community we work in, at planning commission meetings, at kitchen tables, at the county fair. This page is our answer to the nine concerns we hear most often, in plain language, with real examples you can verify yourself.
We don't ask anyone to take our word for it. Keep reading and you'll see why.
“Don't Take Our Word for It”
When civic and school leaders in another Ohio community had these exact concerns about one of our projects, they didn't accept our assurances. In January 2026, their own elected officials and school leaders traveled to an operating plant of the same type (a reciprocating-engine generating station that has run for years next to a Michigan community) to see it, hear it, and judge for themselves.
They walked the fence line. They stood outside while the engines ran. They asked the plant's operators, not us, what living next to it is actually like. They came back reassured.
Come see one for yourself.
We extend that same invitation to every host community. We will help arrange visits for local officials and residents to an operating facility so you can form your own judgment.
The Nine Questions Every Community Asks (And Our Answers)
Will this hurt my property value?
The data from communities that already host these facilities says values hold, and in many cases keep rising. In Negaunee Township, Michigan, home values continued climbing after the F.D. Kuester Generating Station began operating. In Saline, Michigan, where one of the largest cloud-computing campuses in the country is under construction, area home values have kept rising. These are verifiable public records (the Zillow Home Value Index), not our projections.
What does the town actually get?
Start with the contrast: as farmland, a typical project site generates only a few thousand dollars a year in property tax. A built campus changes that by orders of magnitude, millions of dollars annually in new tax revenue that funds schools, roads, police, and fire for a generation, plus construction jobs, permanent skilled jobs, and local contracting.
And we go further. Our Community Generations Fundcommits a share of the project's profits to a permanent endowment for the host city's children, a seed set aside at birth for every child born to resident families, released at 18 for education, trade training, a first home, or starting a local business. The plant powers the community's future in the most literal sense.
Will it be loud?
Modern reciprocating-engine plants are engineered for sound from the start: enclosed engine halls, acoustic treatment, and siting setbacks. The proof point is the Michigan plant our visiting delegation toured: it operates next to a community today, and the visitors stood outside the building while it ran. Sound studies are part of every project's engineering and permitting, and we share the results publicly.
What about air quality and my family's health?
Our plants run on clean-burning natural gas (the same fuel as your furnace and stove) with modern emissions controls, and they are permitted under federal Clean Air Act standards enforced by the state EPA. Permit limits are public documents, emissions are monitored, and the permitting process includes public comment. Where our sites are located, counties are typically in federal attainment on all six criteria air pollutants, meaning the air already meets federal health standards, and our permits are designed to keep it that way.
Will it drain our water?
No, and this is one of the biggest misconceptions about these projects. Our generation equipment uses sealed, closed-loop cooling, antifreeze and radiators, like your car, scaled up. It is not the older evaporative-cooling-tower design that consumes millions of gallons. The computing side uses closed-loop air cooling and draws roughly what an office building uses. We are not tapping rivers, drawing down aquifers, or competing with farms and homes for water.
What will it look like?
Low-profile industrial buildings with landscaped setbacks, closer to a modern distribution facility than a traditional power plant. No smokestacks, no cooling-tower plumes, no tank farms. Site plans and renderings are shared during the public process, and screening and buffering commitments are written into our approvals.
What about construction traffic, and after?
Construction brings temporary truck traffic, and we plan haul routes with the county engineer to keep it off residential streets. Once operating, these are quiet neighbors: a modest permanent staff commuting like any other employer, routine fuel delivery by pipeline (not trucks), and occasional maintenance visits.
What happens if it shuts down someday?
Decommissioning obligations are part of our commitments, the site is restored, not abandoned. The equipment itself holds significant salvage value, which means there is a built-in economic incentive to remove it properly. We put this in writing during the approval process.
Is this experimental technology?
No. Reciprocating-engine power generation is proven, field-tested technology operating today across the Midwest and worldwide, the same engine families run in hundreds of installations globally. You can visit operating plants right now:
- F.D. Kuester Generating Station: Negaunee Township, Michigan (operating for years beside a community)
- A.J. Mihm Generating Station: Baraga Township, Michigan (Kuester's sister plant)
- Apollo Power Generation Facility / Wood County, Ohio: 350 MW behind-the-meter gas serving a major data center, approved by the Ohio Power Siting Board in February 2026
- New Albany, Ohio: 520 MW of behind-the-meter gas generation powering a major campus in the New Albany International Business Park
The Ohio examples are especially important: the same model, approved by the same Ohio regulators, on industrial and economic-development land.
The Concern Behind the Concerns: “Will This Raise My Electric Bill or Strain the Grid?”
This is where our model is fundamentally different from the data center stories making national news. Our projects are behind-the-meter: we build the power plant on-site, and it serves the campus directly.
- We don't draw from the grid. The computing campus is powered by its own dedicated generation.
- We don't raise your rates.No grid demand means no ratepayer impact. The cost concerns driving opposition elsewhere simply don't apply here.
- We add resilience.On-site generation means the campus isn't competing with homes and businesses for electricity during peak demand.
Communities elsewhere have fought data centers because those projects pull hundreds of megawatts from the same grid that powers their homes. Ours don't. That's not a talking point. It's the architecture of the project.
How We Do Business With Communities
We show up.
Our team attends public meetings in person and answers hard questions on the record.
We welcome the public process.
Open hearings, public comment, published permits. We treat scrutiny as a feature, not an obstacle.
We put commitments in writing.
Noise, screening, traffic routing, decommissioning. In the approval documents, not in press releases.
We invite verification.
Site visits to operating plants for officials and residents. Third-party data over our own claims.
We invest in the community's future.
The Community Generations Fund ties the project's success directly to the town's children.
We respond to every good-faith question.
Reach our team at (877) 313-5777 or admin@smartland.com, or send us a note.
Figures on referenced facilities are drawn from plant operators, engineering firms, industry publications, and the Zillow Home Value Index. Final design, emissions, and site details for any project are subject to engineering and the applicable state permitting process.