DeSoto County votes to put temporary moratorium on data centers

Residents in DeSoto County packed the board of commissioners meeting Tuesday afternoon to raise concerns over a proposed artificial intelligence data center in Arcadia.

Dozens of people took to the podium to object to the project, as commissioners voted to put a temporary moratorium — a pause — on data centers in the area.

"This community has the absolute, sacred right to tell big tech, you cannot have our drinking water," one man said. "No water, no data centers. Protect our home, protect our animals, protect our crops."

PROPOSED DATA CENTER IN RURAL ARCADIA: ‘THIS IS NOT THE RODEO’

In historic downtown Arcadia, the data center has become the talk of the town in recent weeks.

The contrast between a high-tech facility and their rural community, which is built upon farming, is not lost on the locals.

"This is not the rodeo," Laura Partridge said of the data center. "It's the farthest thing from the rodeo."

Partridge runs a storefront in Arcadia, a slice of small-town America.

Just a few miles away — off northeast Roan Street — is the site of controversy: the proposed data center.

"It doesn't match here," Partridge said. "It doesn't go with Arcadia."

But it’s more than that, she said. She and other residents have concerns over the facility’s water and energy use, its noise and its potential impacts on the environment.

"Our entire county identity is based on agriculture and eco-tourism," Alison Hilton said. "Popping in a data center right in the middle of that would completely destroy that entire industry. It's concerning."

An online petition to stop the data center just topped 4,000 signatures.

"I have not met one person; I haven't seen anyone online who wants this here," Partridge said. "Not one person."

DATA CENTER CEO INSISTS ‘COMMUNITY-FIRST’ APPROACH

Jon Brown is CEO of the DCIP Group, which is behind the data center.

"(People's) concerns are valid. Is their information correct in a lot of cases? No," Brown said. "We cannot drown out the volume of information that people get that's not specific to our project and may not even be accurate information about the industry in general."

The data center proposal is on the site of a former natural gas power plant, so Brown said the facility will generate most of its own electricity on site — and he insists people won’t see a rate hike.

DCIP plans to use a "closed loop" system for cooling, which Brown said decreases water usage by about 90% compared to old methods.

He also said they are working with the city of Arcadia to use reclaimed wastewater as their primary water source, along with stormwater, and insisted that groundwater will only be used as a last resort.

"We will design the data center to what the sustainable quantity of water that we can bring to the data center is," Brown said.

A formal sound study is also underway for the project.

COMMISSIONER ESTIMATES MILLIONS ANNUALLY IN TAX REVENUE

Gulf Coast News asked Brown why the community should want the project.

"Well, you know, that's difficult to speak to," Brown said. "But I mean it, the project, we believe, is good for DeSoto County for a few reasons."

"This is a high-density tax revenue generator without the huge cultural impact of something that would be that scale," Brown continued.

"From a financial standpoint, for the county, it could be humongous," Elton Langford, a DeSoto County commissioner, told Gulf Coast News.

Langford said the most obvious benefit of the data center is money. He estimates the initial project could generate about $26 million a year in tax revenue, based upon property valuations.

"It could mean a lot to the county," Langford said. "It could mean better roads. It could mean a jail that we've got that's been needing to be rebuilt ever since I've been in service of being a county commissioner for 20 years."

FULL PROJECT TO SPAN 1,300 ACRES: ‘DIFFERENT ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM’

In March, Langford and other commissioners approved a request to rezone 34 acres for a 35,000-square-foot data center.

But that’s just the start of the project. DCIP said the entire campus is planned for more than 1,300 acres — about two square miles — including 825 acres that need additional rezoning approval.

"I know the impression is — we snuck in with 34 (acres), and now we're doing 800, and then we're doing 1,300, but that's never been the case," Brown said. "The campus has always been planned for over a thousand acres."

Brown said only 25 to 30 percent would be developed.

"The rest of it will be green space, and that's important," he said. "We're not putting impervious surfaces and roads and buildings on 1,315 acres. We're not doing that."

Langford said he didn’t realize the full scope of the project when they voted to rezone 34 acres.

"It's kind of like a soap opera. It changes every day," he said. "There are new details, there's new information that comes out every day."

Now, he and the other commissioners will have to decide whether to re-zone more land — hundreds of acres more — for the data center to come to fruition.

"This is a total different elephant in the room now," Langford said. "This bigger ask is a way different deal now. Because it's going to be massive compared to 34 acres."

LOCALS WANT REVITALIZATION, BUT NOT A DATA CENTER

While Partridge admits Arcadia could use a spark — and an influx in tax revenue — she doesn’t want to rely on a data center to make that happen.

"I think we can build ourselves up," she said.

DeSoto County commissioners decided to put a pause on data centers in the area Tuesday evening.

It’s not yet clear how the DCIP Group will move forward if a moratorium is put in place.