Stories from this compilation are excerpted from weekly newspapers from around the region. This is the second of a two-part Regional News Roundup; the first part was published Saturday.
---
DAYTON - Leonard Ruff, the architect responsible for building data processing centers in Quincy, Wenatchee and in Douglas County, was on hand at a community information meeting last week to discuss a Bitcoin mining center being planned near Dayton.
Columbia REA has signed a contract with Eastern Mineland LLC, of Bellevue, Wash., for its Bitcoin operation to be located next to the CREA substation on Patit Road, which is in a light industrial zone.
The company is attracted to Dayton because of its access to green energy provided by the wind turbines, and is in keeping with their commitment to be "eco-conscious," Ruff said.
Ruff said the company proposes to start operations here with 20 units measuring 20 or 40 feet. Each unit will be equipped with all necessary infrastructure, and the units will be placed on concrete foundations.
Some data mining centers require enormous amounts of power, but this will have no noisy diesel generators, and will run on auxiliary power, Ruff said.
Dan Andrews, CREA energy information and member services supervisor, said his company has the capacity to provide power to the facility, and will initially provide 10 million gigawatts.
"The client will pay a negotiated contract rate for that power," said Andrews. That rate falls under CREAs criteria for their large consumers, but is a special rate, he said.
After October 2019, Eastern Mineland, LLC will be free to go out on the market and purchase power. Their option depends on what the Bonneville Power Administration does with their rate, he said.
Andrews said Eastern Mineland LLC will pay for all of the infrastructure.
"This will be a good thing," Andrews said. "This will help flatten out those rates for the rest of our membership. This will hold those future rates from possibly going up, or to mitigate them."
- Michele Smith, The Times
(Waitsburg), Thursday
Cellphone towers won't meet McCall standards
MCCALL - Two cellphone towers will soon rise off Deinhard Lane and Lick Creek Road in McCall, but the city of McCall will have no control over how they look.
The towers are planned for parcels of state land managed by the Idaho Department of Lands, which is exempt from city planning and zoning laws.
The towers would have been required to be disguised as pine trees with cedar fencing at their bases if they had gone through the city's review process, McCall Community Development Director Michelle Groenevelt said.
But that will not happen because state parcels are exempt from local zoning laws, IDL Public Information Officer Sharia Arledge said.
The land department manages state lands under a mandate in the Idaho Constitution to earn the most money possible from the use of the lands.
One cellphone site is located at 555 Deinhard Lane, near the McCall offices of the land department as well as the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Southern Idaho Timber Protective Association.
The second site is located along Lick Creek Road near Shady Lane.
The Deinhard Lane tower would stand 96 feet tall, and the Lick Creek tower would stand 120 feet tall, according to plans provided by Horvath Communications of South Bend, Ind.
Horvath plans to lease the sites from the state and has submitted applications for building permits, Groenevelt said. The city had not issued the permits as of Wednesday.
Conforming to the city's costly standards would have cost Horvath an additional $120,000 to build both towers plus another $400,000 over the life of the 20-year lease, Arledge said. Horvath would not lease the land under the city's requirements, she said.
Much of the additional costs would have been the need to put new artificial branches on the tower every five to six years at a cost of $50,000 to $60,000 per site, Arledge said.
As a compromise, the towers will be painted a natural brown and have brown vinyl slats in the surrounding chain-link fencing to screen the base equipment.
Both sites will retain as much native vegetation as possible to provide landscape screening for the towers, including a sagebrush buffer at the Deinhard site, Arledge said.
Groenevelt said she was disappointed the cell towers will not conform to city design standards.
"It seems shortsighted to not meet local planning and zoning criteria," she said. "These projects can compromise the aesthetics and safety of the local community."
- Drew Dodson, The Star-News, (McCall), Thursday
