We begin this Tuesday edition of Ozarks at Large with our friend who is not sitting in a data center in Little Rock right now, Andrew DeMillo. He is the editor in chief of the Arkansas Advocate.
Moore: Andrew, hello. Good to see you again.
DeMillo: Good to see you. And I am not AI.
Moore: Well, let's start our conversation there. If anyone has been keeping up with the back and forth, the tick tock of what's going on with data centers there, whether or not they are going to be allowed to be built in Pulaski County. Andrew, let's start at the very beginning of this conversation, if we can. Where did this even come from?
DeMillo: This is something that's playing out across the country right now. There's just been a massive expansion in the number of data centers that are being planned or under construction around the country right now. It's basically fueled by the expansion of artificial computing. And these are basically needed to house the servers for very, very advanced computing right now.
And this is a fight that's playing out in communities across the country and in just about every single state right now. The debate has basically been boiling down to the impact that this is having on communities, especially when it comes to the amount of water, the amount of energy that these centers need, and just a concern about quality of life impact.
We're kind of in ground zero of the debate over it in Arkansas right now because Pulaski County has two data centers that are planned. And this is really playing out in two local governments right now — the Pulaski County Quorum Court, as well as the Little Rock Board of Directors. There's been increasing pushback and really a call for either halting more data centers and also looking at increased regulation, increased restrictions on the data centers, especially when it comes to the impact that it has on these utilities right now.
Moore: We've seen a micro version of this when we think about the crypto mines that have been set up in central Arkansas. These are much smaller in scale compared to what is being proposed with these data centers. We're looking at acres of land here with these data centers. We talk about the two main concerns here that I'm hearing about — the use of water and the use of electricity and how the huge consumption that these data centers use of both of those utilities could mean a rise in costs and a lack of either of those for these communities.
DeMillo: This isn't being talked about in the abstract. We're seeing the impact that data centers are having in other parts of the country, especially data centers that are being built in areas that are drought prone, that are already dealing with concerns about water consumption right now. And that's really what's fueling a lot of the concerns here.
The supporters of these data centers say that this is not going to have the same type of impact that you're going to see in some of these other states. But opponents of this are really wary about this, especially when you see what's happening with much higher profile projects. I think Utah is a good example of it, and also states where you're seeing just multiple projects coming in at the same time, like Virginia.
And Arkansas is still pretty early on with the data center boom. We have about five projects that are in various stages of planning or construction right now. And Pulaski County, which is where Little Rock is, has two right now. And that's why you're seeing so much of the focus on it here.
Moore: A week ago today, last Tuesday, the Pulaski County Quorum Court got together and voted on putting a yearlong pause on these new data centers. And then news came out that that vote didn't really count. Get us up to speed on what that means. What happened there?
DeMillo: I kind of referred to it as the replay booth moment for Pulaski County Quorum Court. It wasn't until two days after that vote where the county clerk's office announced that they had miscounted on that vote. And it did not reach the 10 votes that were needed to pass this emergency moratorium.
I think there was one member of the Quorum Court who said that in 20 years on the court, they had never seen something like this happen before. And so they're looking at having to do a do-over on the moratorium, at the same time that there's still a push for increased regulations on data centers.
And this is something that's been a major issue for Wendell Griffen, who is the Democratic nominee for county judge there. He's really been a very outspoken critic of the way the data centers are being handled right now and has really been pushing for extra restrictions. So I think we're going to see the moratorium come back up in Pulaski County sometime in the next couple of weeks, at the same time that they're looking at these increased restrictions as well.
At the same time in Little Rock, you've got a new set of regulations that are supposed to be going before the Little Rock city board. And the interesting thing with that is Frank Scott, who's the mayor of Little Rock, had been kind of embracing these projects and is now pushing for these additional regulations.
And I think this kind of shows where things are happening right now. This is a very interesting dynamic that you see with this issue — this is not a party line issue. You're seeing Democrats and Republicans and different types of communities that really are registering concerns about this. You see this in the polling around the country right now.
Moore: In your column on Sunday, you talk about how the debates are really only a preview of the state's challenges around AI. And you kind of get at this idea of the challenges of — we need some guardrails here, whether that's around how we interact with AI content, whether it's how we regulate them. Do we have any sort of sense from the legislature of where they are leaning, what they're thinking about as far as guardrails or regulation of this industry goes?
DeMillo: Not at this point, but you have seen the legislature has taken some steps in terms of starting to address this issue. One of the pieces of legislation that passed last year required entities to come up with a policy dealing with AI. You saw an expansion of the definition of child sexual abuse materials to include AI-generated images.
But there's going to have to be much more expansive talk about this, in terms of the guardrails that have to be there and also the impact that it has on citizens day to day. And one of the most immediate ones is going to be the impact that it has on the job market.
Arkansas is not Silicon Valley. We're a very different environment, but you still have multiple sectors of the economy, multiple businesses that are looking at AI, trying to find ways to save costs. And saving costs a lot of times means people losing jobs. Is Arkansas going to be prepared for those types of job losses? What's going to happen with those employees? Is our social safety net really prepared for that right now?
And I think there's going to have to be much deeper conversations about it, where this is really going to have to be the dominant discussion. And I think the dynamics that you see with the data centers really shows where this is headed right now — where it's not going to be an easily definable Democrat versus Republican issue. It's going to have to be a very nuanced issue.
People who are raising concerns about data centers, about AI — these aren't Luddites. These aren't people who don't like technology. These are people who probably use AI every day in some way, but still have concerns about it going too far.
Moore: Finally here, real quick, we want to talk about an early election. Early voting has started for an election today on June 2 to represent House District 44. This is a special election due to Republican Representative Stan Berry passing away back in March. What can you tell us about the candidates for this specific election?
DeMillo: You've got four Republicans running right now. There are no Democrats running for the seat. It's very much a traditional primary in terms of the talking points you're hearing right now. All four of them are talking about their support of tax cuts in some form or fashion, either support of income tax cuts or going further with other types of tax cuts as well.
It's very much driven by that. You hear the affordability discussion factoring into this and they see the solution being easing the tax burden. I think we're going to be paying close attention to this right now. This does not really change much in terms of the makeup of the legislature. Republicans have a predominantly Republican legislature. It's a 79-to-20 margin in the state House right now. And this is a solidly conservative, solidly Republican district.
You can always keep up with Andrew DeMillo and his team at ArkansasAdvocate.com. Andrew, thank you as always for your time and your conversation.
DeMillo: Thank you.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
