Bipartisan Opposition Emerges to Arkansas Datacenter Projects

I would say it’s kind of the far left and the far right ran into each other and had a hug, said Frank Scott Jr, mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. But they come at it from different perspectives. In nearly every city in the US right now, similar tensions are playing out.

Two hyperscale datacenter proposals emerged in January in and near Little Rock. Google plans to develop a 1.43m-sq-ft, $1bn datacenter at the Port of Little Rock, on a 384-acre site. The other, by Avaio, is a $6bn project 10 miles south, in a rural patch of marshy forest in unincorporated Pulaski county.

In most places, if enough people show up to city council meetings or county commission hearings, public pressure can kill a project. But Arkansas is uniquely restrained. Three years ago, lawmakers in Arkansas’ Republican-dominated legislature passed legislation that blocked local ordinances from banning datacenters.

The language in the law is almost an accident, according to state representative David Whitaker, a Democrat from Washington county, Arkansas. It had nothing to do with datacenters, per se, he said.