(TNS) — DAYTON, Wash. — Community members offered their two cents' worth on the topic of bitcoins and data mining Monday.
A discussion organized by
Columbia County commissioners drew about 18 people to commissioners' quarters on
Main Street for the evening meeting. Commission Chairman
Norm Passmore
said the intention was to have a conversation to explore the pros and cons of planning for data centers that can be used for cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin, or for other purposes such as mining data for companies.
One company,
Eastern Mineland LLC of
Bellevue, Wash., is proposing to build a bitcoin mining facility near
Dayton. The project is still in the planning stages, said
Derik Bernhardt
of Shade Tree Tech, a
Dayton company helping Eastern Mineland with the project.
Bernhardt explained that "bitcoin is what is called a 'proof of work' cryptocurrency, meaning that it requires your computer's power to validate the transactions that are happening throughout the ledger. And a blockchain is just like that -- a ledger that an accountant would look at, except it would have one additional field which is the cryptographic tag that validates the transaction that occurs."
The Eastern Mineland facility will use specialized computer servers that "are basically a processor core with a fan on one end and an outlet on the other," Bernhardt said. "So all they are, is, they are crunching numbers."
In response to a question about possible benefits such centers bring to a community, Bernhardt and
Leonard Ruff
, a
Seattle-based data center consultant, said those would include potential local sales tax revenues and jobs generated by contract workers needed for maintenance, service and electrical work.
The proposed center near
Dayton would operate "fairly autonomously," Ruff said, although the company would probably rent office space in
Dayton for management staff. "The project being proposed here wouldn't have an office building on the site," he said.
The data center itself would be a modular building, which is a standard shipping container holding all the equipment, that could be brought in and placed on concrete foundations and then hooked up to the electrical infrastructure needed to power it, Ruff said.
Along with the power, the facility would need water for the evaporative coolers needed to keep the equipment at operating temperatures, which have to be kept at about 75 degrees. The facility would also need sewer service to carry away wastewater, and "the sewer line is one of our big question marks," Ruff said.
Jennie Dickinson
,
Port of Columbia manager, asked what guarantee Columbia REA customers would have that rates would not go up for the utility to provide power to the facility.
Dan Andrews
,
Dayton resident and power supply analyst and energy information coordinator for Columbia REA, said the facility would fall under REA's large consumer rate, "but they contract (for power), which protects the co-op. Between the letter of credits, between purchase of the power before time ... So basically all the infrastructure is going to be paid for 100 percent by the investor to protect the rest of our members."
He continued: "If there is anything gathered from this, it actually diversifies some of the cost for the rest of the membership ... We're basically protecting ourselves 100 percent."
In a moment of levity, Andrews also said that the utility would not accept bitcoins as payment.
In closing remarks,
Kathryn Witherington
, Port economic development coordinator, said "there's still a lot of uncertainty around both the benefits and the negatives," and she commended everyone for coming together to learn more about the issues "and not just attack it."
Witherington said the community needs to be in favor of new things for economic development "and not having a 'justify why to do something' but 'justify why not to do something' attitude. We want to support businesses ... We don't know enough, and we're learning with the rest of you. But I do want
Columbia County to be a pro-business, pro-new idea county. So I'm glad we're all having this discussion ..."
(c)2018 Walla Walla Union-Bulletin (Walla Walla, Wash.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
