RISON - The Kingsland City Council approved an ordinance last Thursday night that toughens the guidelines for building or placing a data mining center within the Kingsland city limits.
That along with water and wastewater rates as well the state audit results for those two departments were addressed during the city council's regular monthly meeting.
Both the Cleveland County Quorum Court and the Rison City Council approved new ordinances during their respective July meetings to establish special guidelines on development of data mining centers within their jurisdictions due to concerns about noise and the high demand for electricity that the centers require.
Data mining centers are buildings that house a large number of computers that run complex code for cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or process large amounts of digital data for businesses. Many data centers have 10,000 computers or more inside.
With that many computers running simultaneously, a tremendous amount of heat builds up inside the facility. To remove that heat, industrial grade exhaust fans are attached to the building to cool the inside the building to a point where the computers can function properly.
There are have been media accounts from across the U.S. of people living next to the data mining centers complaining about the loud noise coming from the facilities.
The ordinance approved by the Kingsland City Council last Thursday is essentially the same one that was passed by both Cleveland County and Rison.
There was a flurry of local governments passing similar ordinances before the end of July in order to have some guidelines in place before a new state law, Act 851, went into effect on Tuesday, Aug. 1, that during this year's General Assembly, the legislature approved HB1799 "To Create the Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023; and to Clarify the Regulation of the Digital Asset Mining Business." The bill passed both houses of the sta...
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