AI Panel Q & A at Supreme Building Products

[00:00:42] XM Database Center and behind me is a slew of folks coming in to discuss and our goal today is to simply provide information, encourage transparency, and allow the community to hear directly from these involved and ask these questions. This is not intended to be a debate, it's just an opportunity for the Warren County residents to become more informed about a project that could have significant impact in our community. And so with that said, I am going to start with the

[00:01:10] continue to rest my voice and I'm going to let our host, Reese Moore with Supreme Building Products and Ben Powell give a little intro to what they do here and then get the same started. So thank you gentlemen. Thank you. Before we get started with the questions guys, let's just have a quick introduction. I'm Reese Moore with Supreme Building Products. Ben? I'm Benjamin Powell. I'm a 15 year plus professional IT and or IT professional. And I'm

[00:01:40] I was also in the Navy for seven years. O'Royle Chastain, City Mayor of McMinnville. Alex Hickson, Director of Development. Ray Hickson, local businessman. Brian Kale, Public Relations and Marketing Manager for Ben Lemon Connect. John Chisholm, Candy Pork Electric, Director of Member Services and Economic Development. Terry Bell, Warren County Executive. All right guys, we'll jump right in here. Alex, Ray, appreciate you guys coming on, coming on, coming on. I'm going to

[00:02:10] to the podcast this morning. Just kind of give us a quick introduction of you all. You know, we've got a little time here. Just get some quick introduction about you all, what this data series is going to be about. Okay. Well, I'd just like to say good morning everybody and I appreciate the opportunity to come here and talk and share this information that Alex is fixing to give you all. But this is Alex, my son. We live here.

[00:02:37] We just want you to understand this from our family side and that understanding when a big project comes in, we understand people have concerns, especially when you hear a big one like data center, which has been in the news a lot. And we just want you to understand if there's something to do with our community, our land, utilities, roads, air, quality of life in general. We're here to answer those questions and help you understand it. We live here too. We're not going to do anything to hurt this town.

[00:03:06] We love it here. We love the people and we are business minded people and we're going to automatically think toward a business environment. But we've tried to be fair, responsible, safe and respectful in everything we do in any businesses we have. And we just think everybody should be that way. And unfortunately, it's not that way in our time. But we're not asking anybody to ignore any of these concerns. We're not asking for blind trust.

[00:03:35] We're asking for you to take the chance and listen and understand and ask any more questions that you need to to understand it. And if I understand it, if something needs to be addressed, we'll address it and we'll address it responsibly. At the end of the day, we care. And we're going to bring opportunity without damaging the place or the people of it. Okay. So thanks for listening. I'll hand it over to Alex and he can give us some more information.

[00:04:06] Hello, everyone. I'm Alex Dixon. Like I previously stated, I'm the director of development. We've been working on this for a little over a year. You know, it's not something that was a haphazard jump right into it. A lot of data centers, when they start out, they just announce something and they don't have plans for it yet. And it's kind of trying to build up a boom for things. We kind of wanted to do it the right way, in our opinion, which is get some concrete behind us before we start.

[00:04:31] Let me go ahead and say why I think I'm just going to move on to what a data center really is. A data center, a very simple way to explain it, it's like a sorting facility for mail and packages. Except for doing mails and packages, instead of doing those, we're doing data processing of some sort. So there's other data centers that just store information for people. This is where if you go on Google or if you go on the computer, you search anything.

[00:04:56] If your phone doesn't autocorrect, if your emails do an autocorrect or grammar check, anything like that, it all gets processed through an AI center of some sort. And that's what our data center is. All right. So anytime anyone's using any of that stuff, it goes even into cloud software, businesses, research tools, research for colleges, anything like that, it pretty much runs through AI. It is heavily integrated into our society since about 2014. It has been on the uprise with it.

[00:05:25] Apple, I think, was the first one to start with it with their autocorrect on their phones, and it's moved on through there. Our facility is designed as a high-density AI and compute workload one. So it's going to be the one that handles all of that stuff. Like I said before, it's not for local file storage like some of the other data centers that you usually see that are smaller than these. Why the numbers are preliminary.

[00:05:55] This is an important one. When I say preliminary numbers, this is not a scapegoat or a dodge in any way, shape, or form. These numbers are preliminary because they're not finalized. This is not just a small project. This is a very deeply engineered project that we're working with a Fortune 500 company to design out. This is not something that can be just slapped together by anybody. It takes a lot of effort and thought and a lot of numbers being crunched and ran at many points.

[00:06:22] And until things are finalized, things have to be called preliminary. I have no other way to go about that. So on to the little bit more details on our project. It's right now called the Hickson Data Center. It's 25 megawatts of IT load, which means they'll have 25 megawatts worth of processing power to handle all of this stuff. The current location is 191 Industrial Drive in Memorial Ray Parkway.

[00:06:48] And it's not exactly on 191, but there is no actual address for the parcel that it's on. Okay? So it is not going to affect any of the current tenants that are in there. Habitat for Humanity and the other ones are not being evicted, moved out, relocated, or anything of the such. Current project time frame is 2028, and that's subject to final approvals, financing, procurement, construction schedules, tenant requirements, and project schedules.

[00:07:15] Like I said, everything is very much dependent on multiple things. I can't give a definitive January of some date or anything like that. Now, what the project is not. A lot of people are concerned that we are a hyperscaling data center. A hyperscaler data center is absolutely massive. In scale to what we have, it's like a 31st of it. Like it's 31 times larger for the ones that you see on the news that are doing all of different things to it and people get scared about.

[00:07:45] You know, we're very small in it. And in all honesty, we're probably the smallest an AI data center would want to be. All right? So we're not an 800 megawatt one. We're not a 1,000 megawatt, otherwise known as a gigawatt, or a 2,000 megawatt. You know, the 2 gigawatt facilities, the massive ones you see taking up 1,500, 2,000 acres and changing landscapes. Ours is much smaller. I'm not here to attack other data center projects in any way. I just want to be very clear that ours is different. We have a green focused design approach.

[00:08:15] All right? I'm not going to say it has zero impact. Any real project will have impacts, and those will be reviewed, engineered, permitted, and managed. When I say the project is being developed with a green focused design, the current concept uses an off-graded island power, which means we do not connect to TVA's power at all. We are completely behind the meter. We will not pull from them. It is not something that's going to affect anyone's electric pay rates from our end. We should not have any impact on that. All right? We have closed.

[00:08:45] Oh, sorry. All of his questions, Alex, we're going to allow this, and we're going to give you time. We just want to stay on schedule, but a lot of his questions. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I had 10 minutes here. I didn't mean to. Go up. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's a closed-loop cooling. It's got conservative water use, low local emissions technology, and a site-specific industrial layout.

[00:09:08] It's designed to reduce the impacts on our local water, wildlife, nurseries, neighboring residents, and surrounding businesses. Once again, we're not claiming no environmental impact, but we are saying that we're trying to do it the most efficient and safe way possible. All right? Now, the fun part, or the good news, I should say, is what people should be hoping for out of this and why we actually started this. And it's the jobs. You know, we're talking 23 long-term operating jobs in security positions. All right?

[00:09:38] Now, this is preliminary numbers. Like I was saying, these can change, but these are not just small-paying jobs. The payroll annually for this, we're estimating, is around $2.1 million a year. Okay? For 23 jobs, that's a pretty big jump for some people. The public revenue and budget context. You know, preliminary numbers and pre-abatement. But city of McMinnville, we're looking at roughly $2.9 million per year. Warren County, $2.6 million per year.

[00:10:06] State of Tennessee, at least $1 million per year. And like I said, these are before pilot and tax abatements and final incentive structures. For context, that's 50% of the city's current property tax revenue base. For the county, it's 14% to 15%. You know, these are huge numbers, and I know people are really upset with some things. So we really want this to be something good for the county. So I'll wrap this up with, you know, nothing's final.

[00:10:32] We're really trying to work with people on this and let the preliminary numbers be out there so we can dispel some of the fears and understand that, you know, we're here to talk with people. If you have questions, just ask. Thank you, Alex. All right. So the first question for both of you, why an AAN's Gatiss area? Why here? This is actually a very good location for it, for one.

[00:10:58] It's the secondary market between Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. We're pretty much square center of all of those. And we can do a lot of benefit for the county. And the reason why we decided for here is eventually data centers are going to be in a lot more places. So if we can do it, we can kind of force it to be done the right way. No corners being cut, not just going with gas turbines like other ones that, you know, pollute some things like that.

[00:11:28] We wanted to go with the most efficient ways possible to do the best for the ecology around here. And if I might add, with the benefit of Ben Lohman being right here in their hub, it really makes the latency rates, which are how fast the speed processes. And you don't sit and wait on that spinning dial when you ask a question. And, you know, with Ben Lohman's, we'll have great, fast service. Alex, another question for you and or Ray. What do you want residents to know?

[00:11:57] And you may have answered some of those questions in your intro. But what would you like residents to know that may not have been communicated clearly just through the social media and everything going on? The main one, we're not trying to destroy water supplies. That is one of the big, massive concerns. In fact, the water issue is people didn't know all the details on it. Our estimated water usage. And when we give estimations, we're going on more of a conservative end, not the rosy end. All right.

[00:12:26] We're expecting somewhere around three million gallons of water. That's on the high. Yeah. And three million sounds like a lot of water. If you take it compared to what the city of McMinnville processes and can do every day, it can provide five million gallons of water a day. And ours comes out to about the average of 31 McMinnville residents or households. So it's not a matter. And that's over the entire year. It's not like it's a per day thing. We're pulling in massive amounts, three million gallons of water. That's over the year. Okay.

[00:12:56] Very water conscious. Yes. Not draining lakes or rivers. We don't have to cool off our equipment because we use the blooms. There's a lot of benefits to using the bloom system that we chose. Next steps, I believe, are finding a tenant and financing. What type of tenants can we expect? For tenants, it would probably be the bigger tenants. It's not going to be a co-location of the smaller ones.

[00:13:22] We're not going to be hosting files for the city or the county or the police department. It's going to be people like Anthropic, OpenAI, the bigger tenants like that, Meta. Last question for you guys, and we'll jump over to County Executive Terry Bell and Mayor Rob Chastain. If this project moves forward, what commitments are you guys wanting to make to the community? What do you mean?

[00:13:48] Well, I mean, I guess jobs, I guess you've already answered that. 23 jobs. 23 high-paying jobs that, you know, long-term ones, they're not just going away. We have lots of temporary construction jobs when it's being built. And hundreds of construction jobs. And this is not just a, you know, small budget increase for, you know, property tax. This is a big thing. And I know a lot of people from me personally, when I'm in the local offices and stuff like that,

[00:14:14] when I was getting some records on our property, and I was in there three or four different days every day, there was someone mad about their property rates. You know, this is something that could help that. Quick, a quick add-on to that, Alex. You did mention that there are going to be some environmental impacts, and you want to try to have very little. Do you know what kind of environmental impacts may or may not take place on if this project moves forward? Environmental impacts. There's, like I said, the water one. We're not trying to downplay that.

[00:14:44] It is three million gallons of water a year we'll use. It's not being discharged back into the local water system. The glycol loops that people are worried about, it's essentially kind of like an antifreeze. It's not cheap. We wouldn't want to dump it out and lose it by any means. It gets recycled if it can be, and then if it ever does have to be disposed, there has to be proper logs of it. It has to be traced, and it has to be taken through a chemical disposition company. So, like, the contamination to the water grid should be non-existent, really.

[00:15:11] You know, I can't say 100% there will never, ever be a small issue of some sort somewhere, but design-wise, it should not be a contaminated issue. What about noise pollution? Noise pollution? That one's a little bit different because that depends on topography layouts and things like that. Based off of our preliminary ones, it's kind of unfair to go off decibels because decimals, to be completely honest, will downplay low tone effects. But the way it's currently designed, I think it's going to be roughly 50 decibels

[00:15:41] at the closest source to anybody. The nearest neighbor. Yeah, to our nearest neighbors. And then that's only for, like, the first immediate two. After that, it drops again a pretty drastic amount. And for the low hums that people are concerned of, that's also going to be very different because that's based off transformers and other things. And those compound and very large data centers. Ours is a much smaller scale, like I said before. It should be a whole lot lower.

[00:16:07] I don't have exact numbers on the low hum because that depends on octaves. And until we get our exact preliminary or our exact equipment that we're using for transformers, it will affect that. Thank you. All right. This question is for Mayor Riles Chastain and Jerry Bell. For residents who may just be hearing about this project, what has been submitted to the city and county, and what decisions have any type of made?

[00:16:32] As far as the city goes, there has been nothing submitted in an official capacity. I do understand that the Hicksons were invited to City Hall last week by Mr. Noblemain to have a discussion with them as well as Sean Garrett, who is our Community Development Director. And it was just an opportunity for the Hicksons to provide just a very high-level overview of their project proposal.

[00:16:57] At that point in time, there were no decisions or agreements or anything made like that. That's been a worry. It's been on social media and circulated throughout the community. Those two individuals do not have the unilateral authority to make any decisions like that. When a proposed project, anything of this magnitude, needs to come before the city, there's a very extensive process. They have to submit proposals to community development.

[00:17:27] It has to go through codes review, the planning commission. There has to be public hearings and input from the community. And none of that has happened or transpired at this point. So I'll let Mr. Bell expound upon anything that may be going on within the county government. Of course, Mr. Hickson did come in just a couple of weeks ago and informed me on the same thing he's telling the people here today. And I want the public out there to know one thing.

[00:17:54] The county has no jurisdiction over this project inside the city limits. Regardless of what happens out in the county, anything we've done would not affect this project at all because the city has total control. We do not have control over any board. We don't have control over Ben Lomond or the water infrastructure on this project here. And so as far as the county, there's been nothing submitted to the county because they will not be even when this project goes forward. Now, the county commissioners are really concerned.

[00:18:24] And we're having a meeting tomorrow night at 5 o'clock with the administrative building because of the possibility right now the county does not have County Powers Act or zoning, either one, to control any of these large facilities going in the county. So the county wants to be proactive and try to come up with something to do. It's harder for the counties to do than it is the cities. They have a lot more lenience than the county does. So we can, because I work for the taxpayers' warrant county. And so we want to protect our residents here.

[00:18:53] So that's the situation the county's in. One follow-up question for you, Mr. Bell. If the city does enact a moratorium, is the county, do you think the county is prepared to do that as well? The problem with the county and doing a moratorium, it takes a legislative body to actually do the moratorium. And I'm still checking on that ability. We may have some capability actually doing that.

[00:19:16] But I just got to talking on this Friday and we'll know more by tomorrow afternoon at our meeting where we would be able to do anything or not. And that would be up to all 24 county commissioners because I technically do not have that authority myself. Thank you. Mayor Chastain, one question, a follow-up question that I have, sir. So can you kind of explain to the people the process for them to go forward with the proposal? Does it go in front of the auditorium? Does it go in front of you all, the city board?

[00:19:45] Eventually it would. But again, like the previous statement, it all has to go through codes and community development first. That's where everything starts. So Sean Garrett and his team, his staff, get any kind of proposal. There has to be all sorts of requests for zoning codes, environmental and site studies. There's stuff that has to go through the state.

[00:20:12] And sometimes, depending on what the project is, the federal government, our zoning codes have to be reviewed to coincide with whatever any project is asking for. From there, if there's any kind of issues or concerns, it goes to the planning commission for them to decide on the project. If there's issues with zoning, those who are proposing any kind of project can appeal to the board of zoning appeals if there's an issue with that.

[00:20:41] And then after all of that is done through the board of zoning appeals and the planning commissions, then it's passed along to the city board as a whole to vote on. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Clarity. Any more questions for that? That's a tough event. We're already scheduled right now. So we'll have plenty of time for Q&A, which is good. Good right now. All right. Alex and Ray, going back to you guys.

[00:21:06] If this project ultimately comes to Warren County, what are the biggest benefits that you believe our community could see over the next five to ten years? I would say definitely the increased revenue that we have coming in. It could help out a lot of things. I know there are a lot of projects in the city and the county that people want done that we don't have the current funding for. And this is a great way to have that added in with a little impact to what our local economy actually has done with it.

[00:21:33] But the high-paying jobs could also help massively for the community as well. Okay. Do you see any benefits or negative detriments, I guess, to the neighboring people that they could be impacted locally from a residential standpoint? Until the final studies are officially finished, we've done everything we can to mitigate as much as possible of it.

[00:22:01] In fact, the layout and the placement of the equipment, the orientation of it, things like that have been done with the neighbors and community in mind. You know, we are right there on Highway 70. So, you know, most of the sound will be going towards Highway 70 so it doesn't get dispersed backwards towards the neighborhoods or residents or anything like that. Thank you. No problem. You want to get Kenny Falk on the hot seat now, right? That's going for Kenny Falk.

[00:22:29] One of the biggest concerns we've received is electricity usage. We know the facility plans on using Bloom Energy Servers. What are your concerns and how could this project impact global customers? Well, there again, we are the county provider, not the city provider. So, you would need to talk with Mad Menable Electric as far as that concern would go. So, Kenny Falk is a non-profit utility provider.

[00:22:55] So, we take more concern with our membership as a whole. A lot of the concern we hear is this will cause our rates to go up and we'll be paying higher rates. What you see a lot of that on is the data centers that are in for-profit utility companies like in Virginia and Texas. They're taking care of their shareholders. We are more concerned with our members. So, any type of a project like that that would come in, we would probably require them to up-front their costs.

[00:23:24] So, that is an impact on our membership. Thank you. I can speak on behalf of Mad Menable Electric. Thank you, Bob. I've spoken with their CEO who's gotten some information from their chief engineer. And I want to preface by saying this is not me being for or against it. This is just relaying information from Mad Menable Electric and the utilities. And that they don't have 25 megawatts of power to help supply this proposed project.

[00:23:54] Now, they have stated that they would be basically on a power island providing their own with that. But, again, at this point there's been no information exchange between the Hicksons and Mad Menable Electric recently. But, again, we don't have the power, the capacity within Mad Menable Electric to feed a project like this and continue to feed all the other residential and commercial entities that are in town currently on their service.

[00:24:28] Are you guys aware of that? Alex and Ray? Oh, yes. Yes, I've actually talked to Mad Menable Electric. Yeah, we talked to them about a year and two months ago when we first started about everything. And they made it very clear that they will not be providing any power to this project. They will not be able to. And they do not want to. So it is not going to happen. It is not. Any electric rates should not be raised because of us. Okay. Okay. Can you, you mentioned it earlier and then just asked a question as well.

[00:24:56] Can you kind of expound upon, for my ignorance as well as anybody else that might not know, what the Bloom, the Bloom is, the Bloom Energy Service? They are one of the coolest things in technology for a long time. They've actually been around for a very long time. About 70 years now. Yeah. And it's called a solid oxide fuel cell. Oh, for the SOFC. Yeah, that's what SOFC stands. It's a solid oxide fuel cell. And the way it works is it takes natural gas, it heats it up, and the heat that it creates

[00:25:24] turns it into energy and it pulls the heat out of it. And that's what makes everything power. So it's a much cleaner power source than, say, you know, an engine or a turbine with all the combustion and things like that. Ours has no combustion to it. Like vinegar and baking soda, essentially. You know, the fugly reaction type thing. Anything else you want to add, Ben, in that area?

[00:25:51] There's lots of information on the SOFCs on the internet that you can find and it will explain it in great detail about how safe it is and the most effective. It's not like any kind of a regular generator. Like you said, it's a combustion engine or anything like that. So I do like the fact that it's not combustion. But I think some of the concerns are still that it produces heat and the amount of CO2 it still produces. Yes.

[00:26:17] Even though the amount of CO2 is equivalent to the average for our area in energy production, it's still an increase, a massive increase of CO2 in a small town. Yeah, it is definitely an increase to CO2. Like I said, we're not trying to debate that. Like we agree it is. But like you said, it is comparable to what the TVA has. On the best case scenario, we're about 5% less than what the TVA produces on average.

[00:26:43] And on the worst case scenario, we're about, I think, 14% over it. But when that counts into effect that the TVA has a lot of hydroelectric dams and complete green sources, essentially, we're actually really strong in the CO2 department for not generating massive amounts. And then when you also pair that with CO2, disperses higher in the atmosphere. It's not more of a concern to local residents as it is on the whole. Not to mention one other very important fact.

[00:27:12] Because we're the nurseries, they live on CO2. That is what feeds our trees and plants. I'm not saying it's going to be a noticeable impact to it. But a lot of the fears that we're going to kill a lot of the nurseries with all the pollution, smog. The blooms do not produce massive amounts of smog, pollution, acid, rain, things like that. There should be no noticeable difference to the air quality around the area, anything like that.

[00:27:40] And then when you mentioned the heat aspect of it, the heat disperses up high. And it should never really have a heat impact around us that you can feel. We're not dispersing it into the ground. It's not going into the water supply. It's not going to harm the fish population. It's not going to harm anything local from that aspect, according to our designs. And also... That was a question I wanted to follow up with the heat, the impact of the heat. You heard the term heat island around some of these infrastructures. You know, they get so hot around that area.

[00:28:09] Well, this tells you that these are safer. People actually have to go and physically check these tamper. And they're going to be standing and looking right at these machines. If it was that hot and putting off that much heat, that it would affect neighbors or anybody in the community. They wouldn't be able to work right there with it. Okay. So that should help a lot of understanding on how that is. And an example for it is the heat around your AC unit. You know, you feel it up close.

[00:28:40] But it's not something that's going to be... You feel it at your... Inside your house next door or anything like that. It is contained and it disperses around itself in the air. Depending on how far it's traveling and the average wind gusts those days, like three to five feet, you know, things like that. When you look at the heat maps that people show of data centers and they show those massive piles of heat, you see that it's dispersed before it even leaves the area. You know, I highly encourage people to look at the heat map images that people are concerned

[00:29:09] with and you see that it's not bleeding into the ground. It's not spreading into the air. You see it localized right there at that spot. So I believe one of the concerns with the heat... Oh, someone's all up. One of the concerns with the heat is that due to a recent study slash research paper that was produced

[00:29:32] where they used satellites to monitor heat from data centers across the globe and impact they had in local areas. And I think the average they found was that it expected up to 6.2 miles about, I believe, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit was the average. So they did see a study doing that. Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily with all bloom servers or the methods that are doing it,

[00:29:58] but the heat generated in general on average has heat increases. I would love to see the study if you want to email it over to me. And I would also love to see which data centers they're comparing it to. Yeah. Because, like I said, it's a scale thing. You know, if that's a 1,500-acre data center that affects a 6.1-mile radius, that's a whole lot different than a project of our scale. Understood. Right. But I would be glad to look at it with you and address it and figure it out. Good point. Good point, Ben.

[00:30:28] All right. Moving on to our Ben Loman representative, Mr. Brian Kale. Thanks, thank you for joining us. Brian, what role is broadband and fiber infrastructure playing a project like this? And could there be long-term benefits for our local connectivity? Yeah. I think the Hicksons have kind of spoke, you know, to the importance when they were kind of talking in their opening statements. About eight or nine years ago, Ben Loman's board of directors made some very crucial decisions to help build out our fiber network.

[00:30:59] To go from where we were eight or nine years ago to today, we're roughly almost at 98% fiber throughout our entire service area. I'll let folks know, and this may be the first time that they hear this, is that by the end of this year, Warren County will be 100% fiber. And so there's some exciting things when it comes down to connectivity, our multi-gig situations. The biggest thing I think that I can say on behalf of our general manager, Greg Smart, and our board directors,

[00:31:27] is that Ben Loman, whether it's a single mom who's trying to find connectivity for her kids or her grandkids, or large businesses like a data center, Ben Loman wants to be able to offer something for everyone. And that's in homes and businesses. That's why multi-gig is so important to us as far as being able to provide that. And whether it's these large businesses that have a situation where they need a very high connectivity.

[00:31:54] Ben Loman, either on our own or through our statewide Iris network, can be able to provide that to companies both here and throughout our service area. So on the connectivity side, I think they've already stated it's very important. From a local, I guess, benefits from a local community. I think that it's safe to say is that throughout our nation, the more data centers there are,

[00:32:19] no one likes to feel like they're struggling to be able to upload something or to be able to get on a website. So I think you're looking at it more as far as the country as a whole when it comes down to data centers. And so the benefits that can be for all are definitely there. Obviously, it comes down to a lot of these questions that have to be fleshed out from a community standpoint to local elected officials and wrestling with what those things are and working with the companies.

[00:32:50] Thank you, Brian. Do we have the show and keep it here? Oh, she's on. Oh, okay. Can I say she's on? Okay. Yeah, she'll hear you. You've both heard concerns from residents. What are the questions and concerns you're hearing most often from the public? One of the main concerns that I have been hearing has been a lot of the conspiracy and needs understanding

[00:33:18] about the government being involved with these projects. I would like to make sure to clarify, did anyone in the local government know of your plans before May 25th and have you talked to the government in general before that date regarding these plans? I'm sorry. I had a really hard time hearing that. Say that one more time. I apologize. I didn't know about government involvement. Yes, government involvement has been a large concern. I wanted to hear that misconception.

[00:33:48] Trying to know what day that was. Yeah. What was last Monday? When I had the meeting with Nolan Ming and Sean Garrett was the first time the city knew anything about this. When I speak with, I spoke with Ben Lohman about, I want to say, 11 months ago. And made sure that they were going to be able to handle this kind of a capacity for it. MES, I talked with, like I said, it was like 13 months ago, roughly, when we first started it.

[00:34:18] Trying to think of any other. Yeah. We really had not pursued any government authorization. I did talk with Mr. Bell shorthand. Got him a very brief one before that slightly. I don't remember the exact date for it. But I did speak with him very briefly on it one day. And other than that, no. Because this is something that, you know, when you start talking a project this big, like I was saying before,

[00:34:44] the last thing I wanted to do was get people's hopes up for something like this. And I know that seems counterintuitive to what some people believe. But with the amount of money that this is going to be bringing in for the city and county, if it gets finished, it is a massive, massive benefit. And we were really worried that if, you know, for some reason, you know, the engineering wouldn't work out or the plot wouldn't work out or the design didn't work out, that we would have got people's hopes up over nothing.

[00:35:10] So no one had been talked to yet because you kind of need a plan before you just go tell people I'm going to do this for them. Absolutely. So some other concerns that I'm seeing from citizens are things like, of course, the estimated green usage, which would be things like, are you aware of the Bloom Energy Corp lawsuit settlement regarding the ruled neither profitable nor clean technology? Excuse me.

[00:35:40] Saying that these fuel cells are inefficient at what they do and are not enough to provide what they estimate that they provide. And if you end up having issues with this, if Bloom Energy Corp were to shut down or you were to have problems with this, what is your backup plan for providing energy? All right. If I'm remembering correctly, the court case that you're looking at right now is a person who had a massive short on the stock and would,

[00:36:09] he published a hit piece on the company essentially. And that's also going through another court body right now because of it. So, but when you look at the efficiency rates of the Blooms, they are extremely efficient compared to other systems on the market. Bloom is just the first, not the first, they're the most widely commercial and publicly known version of it. There are other versions of SOFCs that we could use. And if I remember right,

[00:36:36] the main concern that they had was that instead of it being roughly a 51% efficiency, if I remember right, it was coming in less than that by a percent or two. That was in the court documents, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. It's been a while since I read on it. Before we considered using them, we looked into the company and most all of the lawsuits were something that were dismissed or something that doesn't have anything to apply to us and our company. All right. Does that answer all your questions or not? Not quite.

[00:37:06] I have about two more. So what are the operations incentives that you have to ensure accountability on the follow through of your statements, such as hiring 25 specifically McMillians for this permanent jobs that are going to be available after it is built? Well, I didn't specify it would be 25. It was 23 is what we're preliminary estimating. Roughly. It's preliminary. So it can't be locked in in stone and that it's McMillians that I can't guarantee.

[00:37:35] You can't guarantee that we have 23 McMillian residents that have the job qualifications for this. And I am also not allowed to guarantee who's going to be hired for this because we're not the ones who actually hire this. It's going to be the tenant. We can't control who they're hiring from, but we have had talks internally about things and that we are trying to push the tenants to hire locally here for it. Especially for the security positions. You know,

[00:38:02] we are security positions are very high paid compared to regular security. And we were hoping that we could convince some of the local law enforcement or anything like that. If they're wanting to retire, they have a nice supplemental income for the future and they could work at a data center for it. Okay. Last question. Do you realize the precedent that this sets for other larger AI data centers to be built here locally, regardless of whether yours is clean energy or not, or as green as possible,

[00:38:30] this does set a precedent for larger unclean facilities to be built. I understand that concern completely. And I would like to state that, like I said before, this is probably the smallest AI data center that anyone would want to build. All right. Especially considering we're a secondary market, questionably a teacher area market. This is not something that's, if somebody wanted to build another one, the precedent is set from a business decision.

[00:38:59] It would be like trying to cram another massive business or even larger. That's already going to be taking up all of the use in this area. Essentially, it would just be a really bad business decision in the current market. You know, maybe 15, 20 years down the line, I'll be completely honest. That might be something because with the way stuff is expanding, but for now this handles any of the immediate and future needs that I could imagine for it. And I can express and add to that just a little bit.

[00:39:29] Middle Tennessee natural gas doesn't have any extra gas in this area. They're making sure they have enough for all customers that need it for households and regular businesses. And there won't be enough for any other data centers. So the only other way they could put another one here is to go through the TVA. And the TVA is estimating eight years minimum to even run them a new transmission line.

[00:39:55] So you're looking at at least eight years if they started today asking for it, which they would already have to have all the information down pat, which takes a year to two years minimum. So there's just the chances of that happening are very slim to none. Plus somebody would have to be willing to give up the land for it. And if they're doing one, it's not safe like ours. You could end up with a whole lot of opposition instead. Also,

[00:40:24] I would like to point out that when you mentioned the natural gas reserves, they also said that this is the most they'd be willing to give away because they know that they have to be able to take care of all of their current residents, future residents, spikes, and all their commercial customers. So this should not affect anyone in any way from our data center. I just want to point that out there. And that, that is a, that is our aspect of it from what we have heard. It's not their official response.

[00:40:53] Hopefully that answers that. Yeah. Is there any other questions about the natural gas? Yes. I think she's good. Oh, okay. Thank you. I appreciate the questions though. That's what I'm wanting to be here for is, you know, thank you guys for your transparency once again. You know what? I think you've already answered this pretty well, Alex, but you know, we're, we're, we're doing good on schedule. So that might, we may have a little Q and A, but what are you going back to water uses out water usage, Alex has been one of the most discussed topics in our community.

[00:41:24] And I think you've already kind of shared a little bit about that, but what can you share about, well, you've already obviously shared the expected water need to this project. If you just want, if you can just kind of resurface that, those numbers one more time, and then maybe we can open it up to Mayor Chastain, because obviously, kind of taking the bail, it's just not going to affect the County at all. to see how the local government is going to be involved, you know, in reviewing those needs. Yeah. The water, like we talked about before, there will be some water for like, you know,

[00:41:52] topping off equipment or cleaning things, you know, the facility bathrooms, things like that. That's all included in our, our preliminary numbers for this. And like I said, our, our conservative number is about 3 million gallons per year. It can go a lot less than that. Then I'm sure has some numbers on that too, if he needs them, but it equals out to about 8,200 gallons per day, which is about 5.7 gallons per minute on the worst end. And like I said before,

[00:42:17] that's the equivalent of 27 average households using EPA's water assumptions and using city of McMinnville's. It's about 31 existing city water customers. We will also have backflow preventers, which is standard code on any building. If the water comes in, it can't, if you know, there's a discharge, it can't blow back into the water system. There should be no concerns of anything, can contaminate and posting from that end. You know, people often imagine data centers as massive water use. Our project, like I stated before, is very different.

[00:42:47] We have really, really put an emphasis on trying to make sure it was good for the county. I mean, this is our home. This is where we live. This is the same water that we're going to be drinking. You know, it's not like we're trying to contaminate or hurt the water table, the locals, anything like that. This is a very thought out thing. And when we were working on our initial design, our feed light design, there were many options where there were suggestions we could, you know, save money here by going with this and having more water consumption.

[00:43:15] But we made it very clear that that's not what we want. We've made a very conscious effort to look out for everybody with this. So, mayor Chastain, do you have any thing you'd like to add on from a water standpoint? Sir? Yeah, the 300, the 300, that's the first I've heard of the consumption that will be used by the data center. So I can't answer that definitively, but that would certainly be part of like the utility feasibility studies that

[00:43:44] could be part of any official proposal. But I can speak with our water and sewer director and find out how that number would impact our local utility. And just to touch base one more time, county executive bill, it's not going to have any effect on the Warren County water system. I mean, no, no. Okay. And if I think I could say one more thing on it, if I remember right, based off of McMinnville's website,

[00:44:13] it talks about the water processing and what it can handle right now. And if I remember right, it's about 0.15% of what it can handle with VR daily usage on average over the year. It's not like we're going to be straining the network in any capacity. It can process up to 5 million gallons a day. And I believe that's before the new plan. I will move this one. So it's a question for y'all. How do y'all plan to ensure the facility and tenant state compliant with any laws and regulations?

[00:44:43] That one's kind of easy because from a business standpoint, they don't want to use more water. I mean, like we're building, you're building an environment facility. That's the idea. How are you going to make sure it stays compliant and agreeing nature? Like they're not dumping chemicals. They're not doing stuff like that. Well, from the compliance, there's a lot of logs. There's actually a full position in here for someone who has to keep logs on equipment, updates, any kind of disposals, anything to do with EPA,

[00:45:13] all the record tracking, all of that stuff has to be logged. And it is very heavily monitored by the government. It's not something that we could just, you know, throw numbers at and they could get away with if they wanted. It's something that's very heavily regulated. All right. Now there are other states and stuff where things are different, but here there's a massive, a massive part to it. But it's also going to boil down to the people who are coming to us here. This is not a cheap data center.

[00:45:41] They are going to have to pay a premium to be here and show that they want to be green for the environment. Would that person on the maintenance or compliance side be employed by the Senate? It is implied by the tenant, but that is because it's still subject to the state and the state has to review everything. I mean, it's the state's not going to pay to do all the tests and stuff. That's not the way typical business works.

[00:46:04] My concern is some corporations such as like Boeing had their own employees that were a part of the client side. And that's why they ran into some of the issues they did because they didn't have government officials doing the clients. They had their own employees. And that's where the government officials should have been paying more attention in those situations. Yeah. You know, I'm not, I can't guarantee anything like that. But what I can say is when it comes down to disposal of chemicals and stuff,

[00:46:33] there should be very few chemicals on the whole site period. The glycol is the main one, the glycol loops. And like I said, they don't want to waste that. They want to recycle it when they can. And if they ever go to dispose of it, if they're buying more, it shows like septic companies, for example, you know, they have to log where their stuff is and if they're going on calls and the things don't match up in the numbers, the state notices things very quickly. No problem. Let's, let's move on. We've got about five more minutes. I think God, maybe eight.

[00:47:02] We could stay longer. By the way, just putting that out there. Once again, county executive, county executive bill is probably not going to affect you. It's not going to affect the county from an economic standpoint. Uh, so I don't really think there's any, there's no, there's no sense in touching on that, is there? About what, what economic opportunities can a project like this create for one county? The only opportunities, of course, it would be, uh, the tax revenue. And I don't think the county court's willing to give any tax incentives for any kind of project like this.

[00:47:32] That's just my opinion. That would be a vote that have to be taken. And, uh, that, that, and the jobs is only to incentives. But, we, we also, as a community, are going to have to decide what we want. I work for the taxpayers in Warren County. So, we're going to have to shape our community and decide what we want for jobs and what we don't want. So, we've got to listen to our residents. But, those are our communities, the most important thing here. And as far as going back to the tax of the county, I mean, is the county going to get any benefit financially from

[00:48:01] the Hitchin data center? Property tax would be the only, only thing that we would, we would benefit from that data center. May I ask if, uh, you oppose the 12 month moratorium that's being proposed? Do, do what? Do you? Do you oppose the 12 month moratorium? I have a harder problem putting the moratorium in because the county, no,

[00:48:31] I don't oppose it. Because we don't have, we need to protect our residents. We, the problem we've got out in the county, if this was located in some areas out in the county, we don't have the road infrastructure. We don't have the water capability. We don't have the electricity. And we, we use volunteer fire departments to serve our rural areas. This, this just, we've got to do something to try to keep this from happening and make sure we've got a controlled environment because we, you know,

[00:48:58] this could pop up in any neighborhood that we've got in Warren County. So I don't have a problem that I just want the public to understand. The county does not have power to place moratoriums like the city does. The city has planning and zoning. We do not have zoning in Warren County. So it makes my job a little more difficult. I'm working on a different area from there. And we might be able to come up with something. I should know something by tomorrow. Let's go to a rapid fire. Then Ben, you want to, you want to start? We'll go back and forth.

[00:49:28] Sure. Uh, this is for, uh, mayor, how can we get this on the ballot for citizens? This, this is a good question. And this is one that has been asked of me several times in the last week. In order for something to go to referendum and there be a special election or for it to be added on to an existing election coming up,

[00:49:51] there has to be a petition signed by community members with official signatures that comprise a certain percentage of the voters of the last presidential election. So I don't know what that percentage is right off the top of my head. I would have to confer with the election commission. But again, in order for something like that to be voted on by the citizens, it has to be petitioned to the election commission with that certain amount of official signatures.

[00:50:23] Uh, one question that stuck out for me, I'm, I think we're just going to jump around here for about five more minutes. Um, Alex Ray, or maybe, uh, mayor Chastain, maybe even, could this have any impact on residential property values around the surrounding of the Hickson data center that we know of? I can't imagine. Negative and positive impact. I can't think of any reason for them, honestly. It's just, you know, more income into the county. That's, you know, I can't speculate on the market.

[00:50:52] I don't know how that would work for that exactly, but I can't imagine any reason why it would. It's going to be a very nice facility. And it's going to have nice, uh, it's got scenery around it. It's got screening around it to help produce sound and noise. Veget, uh, it also has vegetation screening, you know, natural trees, things like that. Stuff that not only help mitigate the noise, but make it a beautiful project. There's no way to officially know, you know, speaking in hypotheticals, definitively, if that's going to be the case for the positive or the negative.

[00:51:23] Right. Is there anywhere, and maybe within a hundred mile radius, it may be concerned citizens to go see like a data center of this size. It's a kind of, a concern for mine. If I was in that area, what would be the noise? In all honesty, I don't know of any in the area that are this size. Like I said, we are a very, we're considered what's mid scale. Now it used to be considered large scale because large scale before would have been for storing people's files. This was before AI started, you know, needing the increased space and size and power.

[00:51:51] So there's none that I know of in the local area that someone could go visit and look at one. So like I said, but when you do watch the videos online, please keep the scale in mind. I have one for y'all as well. Will local, I know you said that the, you've used an unfortunate 500 country or company for the planning and construction. Yes. Will any local contractors be used? Yes. I mean, that's just the way it's going to work with most of it. I've actually gotten bids from people, you know, trying to get in on the bid process over the last couple of days. I think I got like nine or 10, you know,

[00:52:21] we're not even at the bidding stage yet, but it is going to be, you know, locals are going to be people who are involved in the bidding process. And as long as they're a competitive bid, I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be using any of them at all. Can you expound upon a little bit, Alex, about what kind of, what, what kind of bidding are you bidding out as far as, what kind of contractors are you bidding out? Oh, it'll be people to build the building, you know, electrical things, commissioning, HVAC, water. It's a full process for a full facility. Yeah.

[00:52:50] If I remember right, they're roughly estimating 30,000 temporary construction hours for, you know, build out on the initial facility or facility. Yeah. Do we know of any long-term benefits or risks? I guess it might be a air pollution or anything. I know you said it's, it is a very small amount. And the things that people are most often worried about are, you know, you know, a lot of comparisons to the CO2 in ours is going to be compared to cars,

[00:53:19] which is kind of an unfair comparison because cars pollute in other ways with other things that would cause like acid rain and stuff like that. Our pollutants are not like that. We have small amounts of pollutants that can cause things, but it's nothing that should be a massive amount in any way that should be noticeable to any air quality or anything of that sort. All right. Next one. The project includes eight backup diesel generators. How many hours a year are they expected to operate? Do they need to operate for testing?

[00:53:50] Yeah. Every month they have to be ran for one hour. And it's also important to include that, you know, people are worried about the sound and emissions from that. There is the, our air permit that we have to get already knows about that and we'll be planning in for it. But they're also in custom sound enclosures, which drastically reduces the sound. And we've also placed them at the middle of the property to keep us far away from anybody for sound tune purposes. Thank you. Um, Alex, Ray, thank you for your time. Mayor Chastain, Brian, Kale, John Chisholm,

[00:54:19] County Executive, Terry Bell. I want to thank you guys for your transparency. Um, thank you all for coming in here and taking the bullets and taking the questions. And I appreciate, appreciate Ben Lomans, um, inside and Mayor Chastain's inside. Um, is there anything else that you would like to add, Ben? If I could say one last thing before we go. If you have any questions, at all. My email is Alex at Hickson, DC.com.

[00:54:48] I answer every email. I personally put a lot of thought and effort into all of them. And none of this was about hiding things from people. It was about trying to make sure that people had more concrete evidence to go off of before everything got put out there to the public. But we just had to create a website for the possible tenants and for the financers to be able to see the details that they needed to see. And the only way to do that was to create the site. Once the site website was up,

[00:55:18] somebody found it and blew it up into something that wasn't because we hadn't discussed it with anybody. But we do apologize for that. And I wish we could have been more open earlier with people. So, with that said, in 30 seconds or less, each of this is for everybody. We'll start with Terry and just go down the gamut. In 30 seconds or less, what's one thing you hope residents take away from today's discussion? Well, I hope they really look into the data centers because when I was approached with this, I don't even know anything that much about data centers.

[00:55:48] And everybody needs to understand that we are using data. So, but that doesn't mean they have to be in one camp. So, I hope everybody does the research and we do the right thing for one camp. There again, on Kenny Fork's behalf, you know, we're going to take care of our membership. We're going to make sure that anything that needs to be done for, these would be upfront cost by that company and not passed on to our membership. They wouldn't necessarily take the brunt of that.

[00:56:17] We'd also make sure that our infrastructure could handle the situation before we'd even consider something like that. We're here to provide connectivity to all Warren counties and obviously those without our service area, but just like everyone else here, we live in this community. And so, you know, when it comes down to the members of our cooperative, when it comes down to our employees, quality of life and what goes into making that quality, quality of life, the best way possible is so important outside of connectivity.

[00:56:47] So appreciate the time. And also the fact that everybody diving in and asking questions about a very important topic. Right? Yes. Yes. We are just really excited to offer this for our citizens. This is not a bad thing. It's going to come whether we want it or not. Eventually, even if it's slightly outside this area or slightly outside that area, people use this every day and it gets incorporated more and more.

[00:57:15] We just want to be there to make sure that it's done responsibly. I would just like to say that just because we are off the grid does not mean we are unregulated. You know, just because we're not touching the TVA's power does not mean we are unregulated or unsafe. We have all the same kind of checks that have to be done and performed by anybody. And we are going to follow every compliance and we are as safe as possible for everything. I just want to let everyone in the community,

[00:57:44] both the city and the county, know that the city is committed to hearing your questions and concerns and making sure everything is done above board at the right way within the confines of the wall. And Dan and Rex, any final thoughts for you guys? Mine would be that, you know, I appreciate the effort y'all put in this to make this a so-called green facility and reduce a lot of the concerns. Some of my concerns,

[00:58:12] and I think concerns of other people would be necessarily, at the end of the day, the company is supplying the resources and services for this. At the end of the day, they're the sales teams that's pitching these ideas. And are they being 100% truthful? And will there any long-term impacts that are overseeing? Thank you very much. Maurice? Just, I want to thank everyone here for being here one last time. And if you can see, if you, if the people that are not watching, the people that are watching,

[00:58:41] we've got a good crowd here of concerned citizens. Everyone on this panel is born and raised in McMinnville, Warren County. So much like County Executive Bell, do your research on an A, on a data center, what it is, what it's about. Do your research on that. Mayor Chastain's hosting a meeting Wednesday. So we're, Kelly will have the, Kelly will have the meetings post. I believe there's a meeting tomorrow night of some sort.

[00:59:08] And then there's a meeting at the park theater on Wednesday night. So just do your research. If you are concerned, come to the meetings, voice your opinion, you know, hear, hear what the, you know, what they're, what they have to say. And just, you know, voice your opinion as a concerned citizen. And report, it's at, it's at City Hall or is it? So the meeting, um, this week that I called, the summons will be going out to all the other aldermen, as well as the news media here in just a little while.

[00:59:35] It will unfortunately have to be at City Hall this week. They are doing construction at the park theater all week on a new lighting and sound system. And on such short notice, we didn't have anywhere to put anybody. Uh, and then it's also been asked, is this meeting in place of, or in addition to the June 9th meeting? And it just depends on the outcome of the meeting that is, uh, on Wednesday this week.

[01:00:03] If a moratorium passes, there likely is not going to be a need to have to discuss that on next week's regular agenda. So again, it just depends on the outcome of Wednesday's meeting. And then Kai, I know you want to, what's your final thoughts? My final thoughts are that I would just like to emphasize this causes precedent for other larger data centers to be built here.

[01:00:30] If we do not get a 12 month moratorium to start looking at new running laws within the city and looking at any other possible avenues with, uh, uh, the county commissioners for the, um, Warren County area as well. And I would also like to emphasize that as the technology advances, it tends to get smaller and we do not need as many data centers. And we definitely, you know, the citizens don't seem to really want one here.

[01:00:59] And we can still use AI without having one located within Warren County. Thank you. Again, I just want to, as we wrap up today's discussion, I want to thank everyone again for being here, whether it was in person, watched online for submitted questions and participated in this important conversation. Our goal today was to provide information, encourage transparency, and to create an opportunity for respectful dialogue about an issue that could potentially impact the future of Warren County. Now,

[01:01:27] if there were any questions that we're unable to get during today, I will work on forwarding these questions to the appropriate individuals, whether they're on the stage or not. And we're going to get all these compiled Q and A's because there was a lot that was during, during the feed and also on the sheet that we didn't get to. There was a ton guys. And first and foremost, hand clap to that because this is a very concerning topic. Also to, um, Wendy Snead also wrote a thing, which I'm going to say that right quick. Cause I know we're all just got to get going. And if you need to leave to go to your meeting, you can.

[01:01:57] Okay. But I do want to say thanks again for all the panelists, the community leaders, the residents that took part of this discussion today. And so going to the email right quick, and I do apologize because as I'm like going through this and then some, I don't know. I just lost it. I have a, I do apologize. I have someone. Um, there you go. Okay. So, below are a few bullet points from the perspective of the IDB board of McMinnville-Harramore County. She said,

[01:02:25] the IDB has not been involved with discussions nor development of this project. The data center, AI, uh, crypto are not a target sector within the IDB's requirement strategy. The IDB's main mission is to, uh, recruitment of high paying jobs to the community with a focus in manufacturing. When the community is approached by any prospect, whether that's manufacturing, logistic, agricultural technology, or otherwise, the IDB evaluates the same common factors,

[01:02:55] jobs created, wages, of the jobs created, capital, investment, infrastructure, demands, utility usage, and so forth. So, uh, again, if there was any question that was not asked today, I promise you guys, we're going to get them to the best that we can. I'm going to give them to Alex, Ray, the Loman, anybody, anybody, MES and all that. But with that said, I hope everybody has a great day. Remember, there's a meeting going on tomorrow night with the county. What? You want to pitch that one more time, Terry? at the night, no,

[01:03:25] you're up to five o'clock. Five o'clock. And then on Wednesday night, it's going to be, Mayor Al Chastain and the city board of Alderman. at 6 p.m. at the city hall. Uh, so again, come out and I always say, let's be proactive, not reactive. If we can all come together and just have a dull, respectful conversations, we can get things done. I promise you guys. So make sure you come out to both those meetings for any opportunities. And if you want to be a part of our email list of all these Q and A questions,

[01:03:55] go out to messages on Facebook or one person. If you want to be a part of that list, but remember Warren County, you can either be a blessing or a curse. Now. All right, guys, just one finger, just the index. Just hold it out for me. Yeah. John's like, I can't believe it. And remember Warren County, keep it first.