Broadview area data center sees first phase of construction with roads, well work

Data center developer Quantica Infrastructure has begun construction on its massive project in Yellowstone County. Postcards mailed to area residents said that in early September the company began staging equipment on the nearly 8-square-mile property outside the town of Broadview. 

The project, which would be among the largest in the world as currently planned, has generated fiery public opposition, with opponents crowding into county commission meetings to boo the commission and demand action. 

They’ve tried a couple of legal methods to assert some control over the project, but to no avail. The latest effort to persuade commissioners to enact interim zoning and pause the project for study is running headlong into a wall of resistance from county officials. 

While Missoula County took this step in July, Yellowstone County Attorney Scott Twito has advised commissioners against doing the same. Twito said any action by the county government to stop the data center project would trigger a lawsuit, and possibly hefty fines for county taxpayers. 

The first on-site work at the Big Sky Campus is the construction of access roads and a well. Workers began earlier this month. Drilling the well could begin “as early as the end of September,” the mailer stated. 

Quantica spokesperson Travis Hall declined to name the company doing the well work but said it is an “experienced environmental and engineering services firm in Billings.” 

Quantica has agreed to use local, unionized labor when possible, under a memorandum of understanding it signed with the Southeastern Montana Building and Construction Trades Council in June. Riley McCauley, vice president of the council, said they won’t have details on job numbers or wages until Quantica has secured an “end user,” or a digital or AI company, to purchase the facility. 

Some project opponents fear the data center will draw down local water supplies, which are needed for both residential and agricultural uses. 

Quantica said that shouldn’t happen. The company plans to tap into an “underutilized” aquifer, the Madison Aquifer, that is 1,300 feet deeper beneath ground than the one used for Broadview area homes and businesses. That one is called the Eagle Aquifer. 

Quantica expects the project will require up to 150,000 gallons of water per day during construction and 20,000 gallons each day once operational. That’s approximately what a 100-room hotel uses each day at full occupancy, according to the California Hotel and Lodging Association. 

Big Sky Digital Infrastructure will use a closed-loop cooling system that continuously circulates liquid near hot computer servers to absorb heat and transfer it to cooling equipment. The system uses less water than other types but more electricity. 

Jon Reiten, a retired Montana Tech professor and expert on Eastern Montana hydrology, said it’s correct that drawing from the Madison Aquifer won’t impact the shallower Eagle Aquifer that Broadview uses. Reiten appeared on a panel discussion about the Broadview data center in January, organized by the Montana Environmental Information Center. 

“And it’s going to be completely cemented and cased off,” Reiten said of the well. “If everything is done properly, there should not be a problem. That should not affect the shallower wells that are in that area.” 

Reiten said the water in the Madison Aquifer is warmer, likely more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He said the company could build a cooling pond for the well water. 

But, he said, it’s also salty, and salty water tends to corrode equipment, as it does at the Signal Peak coal mine in Roundup, he said. The mine has a well drilled into the same Madison Aquifer that Quantica plans to use. 

To make use of that salty well water, Reiten said, it would be necessary to feed it through a reverse osmosis filter, which results in concentrated discharge. 

“So whatever they’re disposing of, and how they do that, again can be done, but it’s very costly, and if they just dump it on the ground up there, it’s not going to be good,” he said. 

Hall said community response to the company breaking ground was largely positive. 

“The vast majority of the Broadview community has welcomed the newest development of the company’s infrastructure project, and the company remains committed to being a good neighbor and working closely with Broadview residents as the project moves forward,” Hall wrote in an email to Montana Free Press. 

A new poll from roughly 3,500 Americans shows that environmental concerns about data centers are becoming more bipartisan. In 2025, 36% of Republicans reported feeling “extremely or very” worried about AI’s environmental impact. This year, 42% did. For Democrats, those numbers rose from 49% last year to 65% this year. The margin of error is 2.2 percentage points. The poll was conducted in August by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

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