In Oak Valley, a sleepy village in rural Navarro County, Texas, there’s little or no of something. A potholed street runs via its two sq. miles of sun-beaten grassland, previous a modest prefab neighborhood middle and a “poor excuse for a park,” because the native mayor describes it.
Solely around 400 people dwell in Oak Valley. However regardless of its diminutive measurement and few assets, the Texas hamlet is making ready to fold into its borders, via uncommon means, an industrial-scale bitcoin mine—a transfer that might improve its annual price range by as a lot as fortyfold.
4 miles away from Oak Valley on a 265-acre parcel of land, public crypto mining agency Riot Platforms is busily setting up what is ready to turn out to be the world’s largest bitcoin mining facility, based on the corporate. As soon as full, it’ll consume up to 1 gigawatt of energy, sufficient to energy a whole bunch of 1000’s of houses.
The Riot facility presently sits on a patch of unincorporated land, within the jurisdiction of the Navarro County authorities. However the firm is within the technique of negotiating a deal, as proven by a collection of electronic mail communications seen by WIRED, via which the plot will probably be annexed by Oak Valley.
The annexation plan, which has but to be finalized, will make attainable much-needed improvements to Oak Valley roads and different public infrastructure. Nor will it price Riot something, as a result of the vitality firm serving the realm will foot the invoice. For Riot, it’s a public relations gambit, meant to curry favor with native residents and county officers standing in the way in which of a profitable low cost on its property taxes. Thousands and thousands of {dollars} probably rides on its capability to garner native assist in Navarro County earlier than a closing resolution on its abatement utility is reached.
Riot declined to touch upon the prospect of an annexation by Oak Valley. Brian Morgenstern, head of public coverage at Riot, says solely that “an annexation must be good for all sides.” “We need to ensure we’re being good neighbors and bringing constructive impacts to the neighborhood,” he says.
To fund public works, a township like Oak Valley has to rely predominantly on cash collected from the electrical energy supplier in trade for the usage of native rights-of-way. These so-called franchise charges are calculated as a share of residents’ vitality payments. In regular circumstances, Oak Valley collects roughly $9,000 in franchise charges per yr, which makes up 75 % of a meager complete price range that’s inadequate to cowl easy infrastructure enhancements.
“Oak Valley has no cash,” says David Brewer, a commissioner within the Navarro County Commissioner’s Court docket, the governing physique of the district. “Our county price range is extraordinarily tight, so we are able to’t assist a few of the areas we need to.”
Nevertheless, if Oak Valley succeeds in annexing the energy-hungry Riot facility, says Brewer, it’ll hoover up franchise charges “to the tune of a quarter- to half-a-million {dollars} a yr” as soon as the 1-gigawatt plant is full.
Main the push for the annexation is Max Taylor, the mayor of Oak Valley, who declined to be interviewed for this story. After a change of legislation in 2019, municipalities in Texas can now not annex a parcel of land by pressure, so they have to search permission from the landowner. However Taylor seems to have had little bother convincing Riot: “This mission has my full assist,” wrote David Schatz, senior vice chairman of operations at Riot, in an electronic mail to Taylor on June 25.
