Applied Digital Deuel County (withdrawn) Withdrawn
$5B, 430MW campus near Toronto, SD; withdrawn after 2026 legislature rejected a sales-tax exemption for data centers.
Key facts
- Operator
- Applied Digital
- Size
- 430 MW
- Location
- Toronto (Deuel County), South Dakota
- Stage today
- Withdrawn
What to do next
Next step: Withdrawn — confirm it is dead in the record and watch for the same site resurfacing under a new name or LLC.
What has happened so far (8 events)
- 2025-04-15announcement
Applied Digital proposed a ~$5B, 430MW AI data center campus (two ~907,500 sq ft buildings) on a 150-200 acre site east of Toronto in Deuel County, South Dakota, with total project impact estimated at $10-16 billion. · source - 2026-01-30coverage
South Dakota Searchlight reported the clock was ticking on a data center tax incentive proposal as the legislative session and elections loomed, with Applied Digital's Deuel County project tied to the outcome. · source - 2026-02-05vote
The South Dakota House State Affairs Committee voted 9-3 to kill House Bill 1005, which would have granted a 50-year sales tax exemption on data center equipment and software purchases. · source - 2026-02-18vote
Senate committees advanced competing data center bills: SB 135 (requiring data centers to pay their own costs, 5-4) and SB 239 (a narrower 30-year tax exemption, 6-3); Applied Digital VP said losing the exemption would cost roughly $2B more to build in South Dakota. · source - 2026-03-05vote
A data center regulation bill passed the South Dakota House as the legislature moved toward restrictions rather than incentives. · source - 2026-03-25ruling
Governor Larry Rhoden signed SB 135 and related bills into law, requiring data centers to cover their own electricity rate impacts and water-use costs and protecting local ordinances. · source - 2026-04-02withdrawal
Applied Digital VP Nick Phillips said the $5B Deuel County project 'doesn't make sense at this time' after the legislature's rejection of tax incentives, confirming the company would let its land agreement near Toronto lapse. · source - 2026-07-01report
New state laws took effect including data center regulatory measures (electricity cost pass-through bans, water-use disclosure, local ordinance protection) enacted after the incentive bills failed. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- South Dakota DANR — Air Quality ProgramThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search South Dakota DANR — Air Quality Program for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Toronto (Deuel County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Toronto (Deuel County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Southwest Power Pool (Plains) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- South Dakota Public Utilities Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- South Dakota briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in South Dakota
- Gemini Sioux Falls Technology Park — Sioux Falls (Minnehaha County) Approved
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Applied Digital Deuel County (withdrawn)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/applied-digital-toronto-sd, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).