DUBUQUE, Iowa — November 7, 2026 — The data center fight in Dubuque County has been argued for months. Now there are firmer numbers for what is actually on the table — and a new set of elected officials who will decide what happens to it.

A national data center industry report published in October puts the scale of the Karis Critical proposal near Peosta at about five buildings totaling 3 million square feet, with 500 to 850 megawatts of onsite natural gas generation. The project remains at the concept stage, the report says, because of the active city and county moratoria.

The proposal, advanced by developer Jim Conlan working with Karis Critical, would sit on land the two jointly own south of Highway 20 near Peosta. Conlan has said he welcomes stricter rules for the project and that he is not walking away, telling KCRG in September, “We’re not going away, so if the ordinance takes a year, it takes a year.”

Opposition in Peosta runs strong. A survey of roughly 300 respondents found about 87 percent opposed to any data center development. The Peosta City Council extended the city’s data-center moratorium to June 18, 2027, and has work sessions scheduled for November 18 and December 16, 2026, to keep working on new rules.

The county’s own moratorium, approved in May 2026, runs for 12 months, through May 2027. County supervisors have been holding work sessions on setbacks, water use, health impacts including light pollution, landfill capacity, and other standards for a county data-center ordinance. No formal application for a data center had been made as of the county’s June work session.

Tuesday’s election changed who writes those rules. Democrats Kristin Dietzel and Rick Dickinson won the two open Board of Supervisors seats in a race where data center regulation was described as the dividing issue. And Steve Drahozal defeated incumbent Scott Nelson for county attorney, 22,230 votes to 20,071, after pledging to work with supervisors on a county data-center ordinance built to survive a legal challenge. Nelson had argued the county attorney has nothing to do with policy and warned that an outright ban would likely fail in court as exclusionary zoning.

The county attorney cannot approve or block a data center. That authority sits with the Board of Supervisors and the zoning commission. What the election changed is the team that will write the ordinance — and the legal advice behind it.

What to watch next: the Peosta council work sessions on November 18 and December 16, and the county’s work toward a draft ordinance. The moratoria mean nothing can be built while the rules are being written. How strict those rules are — and whether the project survives them — is the question now in front of the new board.

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