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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
A Tennessee cryptocurrency mining facility is facing blowback as residents worry about its impacts.What's happening?Memphis Light, Gas, and Water entered an agreement with Merkle Standard to provide 45 megawatts of electricity every 30 minutes during off-peak hours for the data center, the Institute for Public Service Reporting said. Despite Merkle's marketing itself as community-oriented and low-carbon, the institute reported, its "business practices are not consistent with the Memphis area's Climate Action Plan.""Every municipality in our country needs to be thinking about how they want to deal with data centers," Memphis City Council member Jeff Warren said.It's the second supercomputer project in South Memphis after Elon Musk's xAI venture. Both have been criticized for contributing pollution to an already industrialized area. NPR reported that city officials were unaware xAI was coming to the city and that the company violated environmental regulations during construction. It will use 150 megawatts as well as 1 million gallons of water per day.Locals worry that a second data center makes for a growing trend, and the institute noted that the crypto industry is growing in the South, where regulations are favorable."Our concerns are regarding how this facility will be powered," Memphis Community Against Pollution President KeShaun Pearson told Fox13 Memphis about the mining operation. "We're also concerned with how these computers will be cooled. Will they use our years-old and aged-to-perfection aquifer water that should be used for our families? What is the solution there, and how much will it accelerate the ecological devastation?"Watch now: These
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