Kansas: McLouth locals' concerns about crypto mining facility proposal results in application withdrawal & moratorium

In McLouth, Kansas, residents recently raised their concerns about a proposed data center off of K-92 at a natural gas site. The proposal for this commercial data center went before the Jefferson County Regional Planning Commission last week, and was put forward by Crypto Colo Center Corp. (CCC) on behalf of the property owner, Dei Vitae Enterprises LLC. According to Dustin Parks, Jefferson County’s community development director, the case (CU2023-02), “at least from a zoning perspective,” is about the change in use from agricultural to commercial/industrial and “the structures being proposed for the change in use.” However, due to a wave of dissent from locals, and a number of other factors, McLouth City Council unanimously recommended the county planning commission deny the request for a conditional use permit. This subsequently led to the property owner withdrawing the application. Following that, the council imposed a moratorium of at least one year on applications for construction of cryptocurrency processing centers.

Projected to cost $1.86 million, the data center would have reportedly employed 35 people. In its executive summary, CCC outlined: “We specifically would like to point out that Kansas is an important location for us, as it has large deposits of underused pressurized natural gas, and we plan to scale our business by taking over additional gas production leases around our current 81-acre phase one facility.”

However, residents nearby argued that the development would not only be bad for the local environment, but also create a lot of noise pollution. Although, one engineer working in association with the company has said that the facility would be powered by renewable energy.

Residents also raised issue with the proposal that they said would be used for validating anonymous crypto exchanges and potentially  used for illegal activities, such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, weapon sales or terrorists.