South Dakota

The largest footprint in South Dakota belongs to TierPoint, LLC, behind 2 tracked facilities. Microsoft Corporation round out the most active operators in the state. Many of these sites are filed under shell or project names rather than the parent's — our operator column resolves them back to the real corporate parent wherever the chain is documented.

Geographically, the buildout clusters: Minnehaha County leads South Dakota with 4 facilities and a composite risk score of 25/100. Deuel County and Pennington County follow. Our county risk score weights project exposure (40%), power demand (30%), water draw (15%), and land footprint (15%); the full breakdown is shown on each county page.

South Dakota is not done growing. 3 facilities are in the pipeline — proposed, permitted, or under construction — which is where residents still have a say at zoning hearings and in rate cases. Each pending project is a decision about land, water, electricity prices, and tax revenue that hasn't been finalized.

We also surface the accountability trail: 8 state bills mentioning data centers and 6 recent news items are tracked for South Dakota below, pulled from LegiScan and GDELT and refreshed automatically. Legislation is linked to the counties and operators it names; news is classified by community sentiment.