The impact study Lima never received
The environmental and economic study that should precede any abatement or rezoning — assembled from the public record. Where the record is silent, the silence is the finding.
Under construction Project BOSC · Google (developer of record)
14 of 15 chapters on the record · 0 partial · 1 gap named
A data-center campus is under construction at 4110 N. Cole St., in American and Sugar Creek Townships, just outside Lima. The parcel covers 335 acres. The developer of record is Google. Two of the figures this study turns on are not disclosed anywhere, and are read off the air permit instead: the campus is screened at 250 to 300 megawatts (MW) of computing load, and its cooling is screened as evaporative because the permit authorizes 36 cooling towers. Chapter 2 shows the working, and every figure derived from those two carries an inference tag.
Before a project of that size receives a tax abatement or a rezoning, a community would normally read an impact study. It would say how much water the project takes, what its discharge does to the river, what it does to the power grid, and what the tax trade costs. Allen County approved the trade. No such study was produced.
This document is that study, rebuilt from the public record. Fourteen of its fifteen chapters now stand on committed, cited data. The thirteenth is the fiscal chapter, and it is empty for one reason: the county’s own cost-benefit analysis is a public record, and the county withheld it.
Read the verdict strip below as a map of the record itself. “On the record” means every ingredient is cited and checkable. “Gap” means a specific document does not exist in public hands — and each gap names the office that holds it.
Evidence tags
- [verified]
- Read from a cited record or a live source — confirmed and reproducible.
- [inference]
- A labelled reading or derivation from cited inputs — reasoning, not a record.
- [reference]
- An outside published specification or dataset — authoritative, but not a record about this site.
- [open]
- Withheld, unresolved, or not yet checked — a question, not a verdict.
Every figure in this study wears one of these tags. A chapter's verdict — On the record · Partial · Gap · Watch — measures the record, never the project's press.
The project
What this study is, how it reads evidence, and the project on the record.
- 01 Scope & method What a real impact study is, who normally commissions one, and how this one reads evidence. On the record
- 02 The project on the record Operator, lifecycle, load, cooling, and footprint — every undisclosed field a named blank. On the record
- 03 Land assembly & the deal How the land was put together, by whom, and what the paper trail says about when. On the record
The environment
Water, heat, groundwater, runoff, and air — each screened where the record allows.
- 04 Water supply & consumptive use How much water the project consumes, against the receiving water's own cited low flows. On the record
- 05 The discharge & the receiving water Dilution at the design low flows, and the burden the receiving water already carries. On the record
- 06 Heat The discharge's heat against the reach's temperature criterion at design low flow. On the record
- 07 Groundwater & dewatering The wells within reach of the site's pumping, and where the pumped water went. On the record
- 08 Stormwater & the built surface The runoff a campus-scale impervious surface adds to the design storm. On the record
- 09 Air The dispersion footprint of the campus's permitted generator fleet. On the record
The economy
The labor baseline, the grid and its ratepayers, the fiscal trade, and the balance.
- 10 Labor & the local baseline What this economy is before the project — the denominator every jobs claim divides by. On the record
- 11 Power & ratepayers Whose grid this load lands on, and what it does to the households on the same wires. On the record
- 12 The fiscal trade What tax revenue is being traded away, for how long, and what the paper trail says. no fiscal accounting and no incentive instrument is on the record Gap
- 13 Governance & the local record The ordinances, resolutions, votes, and minutes that approved — or refused — the project. On the record
- 14 The public balance What the community gives against what it is documented to get — a verdict over the chapters. On the record
What's missing
Every gap this study names, as one inventory — each with the record that would close it.