Press Release: Project Skyway Lies Exposed
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Minnesota has laws and policies designed to protect residents from environmental harm caused by companies who are willing to pollute at the cost of the public’s well-being. Also, Minnesota has laws that require transparency in our government and require public input for decisions impacting the community. Sadly, the public loses these protections when an unscrupulous developer and unethical government officials engage in deceptive practices. Residents of Pine Island are seeing this erosion of protections play out in real time when it comes to Project Skyway as exposed by recent court filings by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA).
Correcting how City officials and Ryan Companies publicly and deceptively talked about their hyperscale data center development, MCEA writes, “...Project Skyway is not a conceptual-level tenantless potential development; it has always been a specific data center with a specific end use being built for a specific tenant—now known to be Google. And the City knew this throughout the [environmental review] process…. In November 2024, the City Administrator and the City’s engineer signed [non-disclosure agreements] with Ryan which explicitly stated that Ryan had a specific ‘Client’ with whom it was working” (Hencheck, Abigail Claire, “Memorandum,” Index #65, March 24, 2026, pp7).
Pine Island Resident, Missy Henry, was aghast at what was revealed in MCEA’s filing. “As kids, we’re taught to be kind, to treat others with respect, and that respect will be returned. But our own city has done the opposite. They’ve lied to us face-to-face and in conversations after city hall meetings. They’ve dismissed us as misinformed, accused us of fear mongering, and said we’re jumping the gun. It makes me sick to think that our lives and our families could be negatively impacted. Now we’re left questioning everything—who we can trust, and whether we need to move just to feel safe.”
Right now, multiple bills are making their way through the state legislature to ban non-disclosure agreements, require full project disclosures to the public, and require separate water permits for large industrial users. As Pine Island residents are discovering, we cannot simply trust people will do the right thing. We need stronger legal protections to stop harmful practices. So, please reach out to your Minnesotan representatives and senators to voice your support of these much needed laws.
