Editor’s Note: This is the second in the series about the Senate Hearing.
Senator Bryan King hosted the Senate Children and Youth Meeting at the JPH Center of North Arkansas College on Monday, July 24 to deal with Act 851 which will go into law on Aug. 1.
King asked the men testifying for the crypto, bitcoin industry. “Farmers don’t get special treatment, and they can be run out of business. So why should your business get special protection?”
Harrison City Engineer Wade Phillips was called upon to testify at the Senate Committee
“Harrison had the unique situation of starting the conditional use process with Green Digital right before the bill that created Act 851 was voted on and signed by the governor. We were trying to figure out how a crypto-mining facility fit into our current zoning system and how does it fit into the uses adjacent to this property. Then we have a bill that uses terms like “shall be allowed in an industrial zone.”
We started questioning if we could even require a conditional use permit. In the end we figured out that we could. But for us, there were issues. We had a public hearing, and there were lots of concerns — everything from power consumption to noise and the amount of heat waste generated.
Phillips testified that he was on the trip to Newport and took sound readings in all directions and various distances. The noise wasn’t any more concerning than what you would get from a normal industrial area. But it is constant.
“Some videos started coming out from Faulkner County about the Bono facility and I did go down one day unannounced and took videos and sound readings from various distances. And I’m not talking about a couple hundred feet away. At a half mile away, uphill, it was easily audible. That’s a significant distance. I got close to a mile away, and I could still hear the facility. That changed our perspective on the sound from the facility and how it would fit into our community. This college, that we’re sitting in, is about half a mile away from the proposed facility. There is also a day care that is going to expand through some grant money from the state. That’s well within a half a mile from that facility.”
“To answer your question, Senator Sullivan, between Harrison and Jonesboro, it’s unfortunate, but I think we got one of the bad actors,” Phillips said. “We did have to do our due diligence to figure that out. If the Bono facility videos hadn’t gone online when it did, I can’t tell you where we’d be right now. I do know that the staff was going to recommend against a Conditional Use permit despite our concerns with how Act 851 was going to allow us to do that. Simply because of the noise – until we could get that resolved.”
“We also considered Bono a good comparison because we believe it was the same company and project manager that would run our facility. They told us it would be a good one to tour, but kept being delayed. But once it was online, it was supposed to be the same setup with the same type of AntBoxes, same type of cooling system. I thought it would be a good comparison, and it was pretty eye-opening.”
King asked if the Bono facility wasn’t like a structured data center or a call center. Would you explain the facility as you could tell?
The type of facility used at Bono was the modular containers, similar to a conex box (shipping container) that’s been modified so the sides can be opened up and pull the air through. No, they aren’t something I would consider a building or structure. That’s part of what we are trying to figure out how that would fit into our zoning code. Typically we request for sites to meet the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, which includes the International Building Code. We will have a committee to do a formal review of these types of facilities, data centers, and digital asset mining businesses. Particularly the ones that are more modular or transient. They can be set up quickly and taken down quickly. That’s unusual for us compared to the other industries in our community.
Phillips also told the committee that he had some questions he wanted to get into the record.
1. After Act 851 goes into effect, can a city update their Zoning Code to address the transient nature of a data center that utilizes modular/portable containers to house mining rigs? Or would such a regulation be considered discriminatory toward digital asset mining businesses because traditional data centers do not typically use modular/portable containers?
-
After Act 851 goes into effect, can a city update their Zoning Code to add buffer buffers for sensitive areas such as schools and daycares?
3. 14-01-504 of Act 851 states that a Digital Asset Miner shall operate in a manner that causes no stress on a public electric utility’s generation capabilities or transmission network. Does the term “transmission network” include a public electric utility’s distribution network (from substations to end users)?
King said, “We should have had the opportunity to ask these questions on the front end before it was passed.”
Additional settings for Safari Browser.
