Above: Sharp County Judge Mark Counts speaks at last night’s public meeting with developers of a new bitcoin data mining center.
By Andrea Bruner, White River Now
CAVE CITY – While dirt work has already begun at the site for a new bitcoin data mining center in Cave City, the high school cafeteria was filled Tuesday night with residents opposed to the project.
Approximately 150 people turned out for a meeting with representatives of the project. State Rep. Bart Schulz, R-Cave City, helped facilitate the meeting and answer questions, with Watt Stephens, chief commercial officer for Artemis Technologies in Fort Worth, who also brought pictures of the proposed data center project, which is located at 1022 W. Center St., which is just outside the Cave City city limits.
Stephens opened by saying he wanted to address “concerns of noise pollution, water usage, electricity consumption, and property values, while outlining our commitment to being a responsible neighbor and steward of the community that we’re operating in.”
This is the third Artemis location in Arkansas – but the sites in Monticello and Newark are different, Stephens said, although there are models like this Cave City site in west Texas and Washington state, he said.
Stephens said the land was purchased a little over a year ago.
“The facility we’re going to build here is a 10,000-square-foot, high-quality structure designed to enhance Cave City’s aesthetic and economic landscape,” he said.
There will be approximately six “high-paying” jobs, and they will be paying property taxes, as well as taxes on utilities. However, he said this is an air-cooled facility and water usage would equal that of someone’s home, noting that its only water usage would be for the employees’ bathroom breaks, handwashing, etc.
But when residents questioned how many megawatts of electricity the digital asset mining operation (also called a data center) will use, he declined to answer, stating it was “internal company information.”
“Per regulatory demands, we shut down during peak hours to prioritize community electricity needs,” Stephens said.
Also in attendance at the meeting was Troy Castleberry, manager of commercial and industrial accounts for Entergy Arkansas. He was asked if the demand for electricity jumps up when the center goes live, will the price follow?
“It does use a lot of power, no doubt about it, but we have a special tariff that all these customers are on,” he said. “In those times when capacity gets short, whether it is due to unforeseen weather, super cold temperatures, or super hot temperatures, those will be the first customers that are interrupted because they are larger blocks of power, so they will come offline.”
Castleberry said the substation was upgraded in 2023, but declined to share how much power the center is expected to utilize. The crowd asked if he knew the figure, and Castleberry responded, “I do know, but I don’t share your billing data.”
Stephens said Artemis, in its design of this facility, has addressed noise as one of the residents’ chief concerns with design features such as sound cones on the interior, an insulated roof, and pressure-relief exhaust to minimize fan noise. Outside, there will be a 12-foot acoustic fence blocking up to 30 decibels of sound, much like a highway-grade sound-dampening barrier, and acoustic louvers to block up to an additional 20 decibels.
“The server rooms will be put in soundproof pods to contain noise,” he went on to say.
David Mathewson said he lives five driveways down from the site and has been there more than 40 years.
“You go home and drink your coffee; we’re sitting here listening to the damn thing and it running 24/7. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you at 4 o’clock in the morning when it wakes me up,” Mathewson said.
One resident said he’d read that people who live close to these centers cannot sleep due to the noise and vibrations of the ground, but Stephens said that was not one of Artemis’ facilities.
The decibel level, Stephens said, would be 65 decibels at the road and 75 decibels inside the fence.
OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) describes 60 decibels as “normal conversation” and 90 decibels as a “power lawn mower at the operator’s ear”.
To the citizens in attendance, Stephens commented, “I don’t think you’re going to hear anything.”
One resident asked about radiation, and Stephens said there would be none.
Another area of concern is property values, and Stephens said the data center will be visually appealing and could possibly drive further economic growth in the community. “There’s other projects that could come to Cave City. Once you have a data center, you’re on the map and maybe more to come.”
He said during construction, Artemis is using local supplies and builders for the project.
In 2024, the state Legislature passed laws that not only prohibit foreign interests from owning data centers in Arkansas, but also outline how far centers must be from residential structures. Stephens said Artemis – who he said helped write the regulations – is following the regulations for enclosed structures.
The Legislature in 2024 also gave the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission oversight over the operations while allowing city and county governments to have some oversight of the operations.
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What is bitcoin?
Basically, bitcoin is a medium of exchange to facilitate the purchase of goods and services. Before coins and money, people traded gold, copper, tools, horses, and other items of value. While traditional currency is printed/issued and regulated by governments, bitcoin is not controlled by the government. It is a digital currency, although it is not widely accepted in the United States, and yes, it can be lost, stolen, or hacked.
Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency, and it is finite. There will be a limit or hard cap of 21 million BTC, which is estimated to be hit in 2147, Stephens said. When that supply limit is reached, there will be no more bitcoin mined or created. Right now, one bitcoin equals $95,084.52.
The bitcoin mining servers are used to process transactions on the network. For instance, a person makes a purchase at a retailer with a credit card, thus creating a transaction. Those credit card transactions will generate fees for the companies (sometimes passed onto the consumer, and sometimes not); that revenue is ultimately taxed by the IRS.
Stephens called on Ben Smith, who serves as president of the Arkansas Blockchain Council, to also speak. Smith, who lives in Jonesboro, owns his own bitcoin mining facility and builds the facilities, saying he was self-taught from YouTube. Blockchain is a database that records transactions and tracks assets within a network.
He said most people use dollars, but bitcoin is like “digital gold.” Inflation affects the value of paper currency, but not bitcoin, which ultimately has a limit, or cap. While bitcoin is not popular for American transactions, the United States is the third-largest bitcoin holder in the world, according to Smith.
Smith said there is no outside money put into their investments, but as someone in the audience said, “It’s our land, it’s our community. You come in here and do all this high-faluting talk, but this is where we live, not you. When you stand up there and say it won’t have any effect on cattle and livestock, that is the biggest lie I’ve heard tonight.”
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Some other topics covered Tuesday night:
–Why Cave City?
“It’s a great place to do business,” Stephens said, and one man accused Artemis of thinking Arkansas is “a bunch of dumb hicks.”
Smith also addressed the question of “why here?”
“There’s excess capacity in areas where there is no industrial infrastructure,” he told the audience. “There’s excess power here.”
Utilities are governed by the Arkansas Public Services Commission, which determines utility rates. Smith said rates are not raised overnight, but rather go through years of study and hearings, etc.
–Effect on livestock
With a large number of cattle and chicken farmers as well as watermelon growers in Cave City, many wanted to know about the potentially harmful effects on livestock, wildlife, and crops.
Stephens said the Monticello Economic Development Commission could talk about this as well, “but we had this exact meeting with them 2 ½ years ago, and there’s not been one complaint.”
One resident asked about the effects on birds and endangered bat species in the area, noting, “Bats are incredibly sensitive to sound.”
“We don’t want to affect any of that negatively,” Stephens said, but noted that he had no specific studies done on potential impacts to the local wildlife.
–County Judge Mark Counts speaks
Sharp County Judge Mark Counts said he was “aggravated” and wanted the chance to share his thoughts.
He said in 2023, the Arkansas Legislature left it up to cities and counties to govern crypto mining. An attorney for the Arkansas Association of Counties wrote an ordinance regulating noise levels at such facilities that was eventually passed in Sharp County in July 2023, and it was after that point, Counts said, that this group contacted him about a data center site in Sharp County.
At the time, the only nearby facility was in Jackson County near Riceland Foods. Counts said he did not know where the center was, but it didn’t take him long to find it once he rolled his vehicle’s windows down – he could hear it.
“You didn’t hear the grain elevators going, you didn’t hear them taking rice off of this truck and running it into a granary,” he said.
Counts said he spent 26 years in law enforcement and posed a question regarding what noise does to people with mental illness or dementia, or people with developmental disorders, such as autism.
“I could just imagine somebody living in this community where this noise is and have to listen to that every day,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a good thing. The other day, I went over to the property to see if I could catch anyone. They were already pushing dirt over there.”
He said he did some research, and the few jobs coming to Sharp County will be security guards.
“This young lady asked where the county commissioner stood on this, and I told (Artemis) on the phone I was against it. I didn’t want it in Sharp County; I never wanted it in Sharp County. …
“In my opinion, if that air cooling doesn’t work and they have to do the water cooling, that’s going to affect us big. I don’t care what anybody says. We got farmers in here, chicken farmers, watermelon growers, and during the summer, they use a lot of water. I know Entergy stood up here and said this, but before coming here tonight, I talked to subcontractors that work for Entergy. … They said they’ll use so much energy that they’ll give them a discount. Where is that discount going? It’s going back on your bill.”
Counts said he appreciated Artemis sending someone to speak to the community, but again stated that he is not in favor of this project in this community.
Counts said at this point, the only action he can take against Artemis or its parent company, Fusion Energy Grid, is if the noise is too loud. Then, he can write a citation, but that is not a criminal offense.
The limit is 60 decibels at the property limit during the day and 55 decibels at night, Smith said.
One resident asked if the community had any recourse whatsoever – a petition or any other action – to stop this data center from happening, and Schulz said he was told by Attorney General Tim Griffin that as long as this company follows the rules, the community cannot circumvent this center. “I’m not saying all the people that live on West Center Street can’t file a lawsuit – I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”
He said the attorney general told him that if he wanted to build a fast-food place, and half the people in Cave City think the food is unhealthy, it’s still his property, and he could build what he wanted as long as he followed the rules.
Stephens said computer processing is only growing, and these data centers, while they may have a bad rap in Arkansas, will keep expanding as well, both here in the United States and internationally. “I think of it as a big opportunity for the state of Arkansas,” he said, although some commented it was more of an opportunity for a “big check” for Artemis.
Images: Andrea Bruner, White River Now
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