Mayor testifies at the Senate committee hearing

Posted Date: 07/27/2023

Crypto mining, bitcoin, and data centers were discussed in the small Senate committee hearing by Senator Bryan King at North Arkansas College in the JPH Center on Monday, July 24. 

“I hope our purpose today is possibly for a special session to repeal these two bills. It was about a year ago when Green Digital came to town. They found a five acres track in the county. Then our chief engineer informed me in March that the land was in the city,” Jackson said.

The Mayor explained that learning about Bitcoin mining included 10 community leaders touring a facility in Newport. “We listened to them, and everybody on that trip thought it was fairly quiet. The noise was the main concern. But the Green Digital proposed location in Harrison had five houses within 300 feet.”

The Mayor explained that a video from the Bono facility encouraged City Engineer Wade Phillips to make an unannounced visit to test the noise levels for himself.
“It was horrible,” Jackson said. “So we knew if we had the chance of ending up with something like that would disrupt the community, my trust level for this company went down. We discovered what they were telling us, and what could happen was not the same thing.”

“Our community stood up against this. When I first read the draft of the two bills, I didn’t think they had a chance of being passed. They were far from being conservative. I was very surprised they got passed and passed unanimously almost.”

The city and the county have passed an ordinance addressing the concerns.

Editor’s note: This is the first of three articles about the meeting. More information is also available at the Harrison Daily Times website.