An appeal hearing on the county commission’s denial of a permit for a bitcoin mining operation in the Cason/Rehobeth community has been rescheduled.
The appeal will be heard at 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 8. A public hearing will follow at 5:45 p.m. The county commission will hold its regular monthly meeting at 6 p.m. All three meetings will be held at the Southeast Georgia Regional Agricultural Center, 705 College Avenue, Blackshear. The county commission meeting is delayed a week due to the Independence Day holiday.
An appeal hearing was originally scheduled for Wednesday, March 19, but was abruptly canceled the day before it was scheduled to take place. Jennifer Ellis Carver of Alma, attorney for LN8 Energy and Tony Waters, applicants for the mine, asked for a continuance at that time.
LN8 Energy of Soperton originally applied for the bitcoin mining operation and Waters owns the land the proposed mine will be on.
Commissioners voted unanimously at their meeting Feb. 11 to deny a conditional use permit to LN8 Energy for a proposed bitcoin mining operation located at 1199 Cason Road in the Cason/Rehobeth Community of Pierce County.
Eric Su of LN8 Energy applied for the permit in November, 2024.
The proposed Pierce County operation would have storage facilities to house servers and would include a chiller supplied by a well on the property for cooling purposes.
The property is currently zoned as agriculture/ forestry. The conditional use permit would be required to convert the property to the digital mining operation.
A digital mining operation is part of the cryptocurrency industry. Cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, is a unit of money that is totally electronic and not backed up by government or banks. Digital currency uses a process called mining to secure its network and validate transactions.
Pierce County does not have any digital mining facilities currently.
The Pierce County Planning Commission in January recommended denying the permit and forwarded the item on to the county commission for a final decision, as required by the county’s development code. The county commission’s decision to deny the permit came after a capacity crowd of about 150 residents attended and virtually all were opposed to the mining operation.
Concerns such as the location of the site, noise issues, high energy demand, health concerns, water pollution, hazardous waste, declining property values, no economic benefit to Pierce County, proximity to the Rehobeth Baptist Church and hindering the Lord’s work were all cited as reasons for opposition to the project. Addressing concerns about noise from the facility, Waters said at the January hearing the chiller would be much quieter than fans used to cool other bitcoin facilities. Satilla Rural Electric Membership Corporation (REMC) representatives have said the bitcoin mining operation would use massive amounts of electricity, estimating the power bill for the facility would be approximately $6 million per year. Pierce County would receive sales tax money on the sale of the electricity to the mining operation. Satilla REMC officials have said it has more than enough capacity and capability to serve the community as well as the bit coin mining operation.
