by Ainsley Platt, Arkansas Advocate
May 19, 2026
The national debate over data centers has come to central Arkansas.
The president of the Little Rock Regional Chamber promoted a planned data center’s possible tax revenue as he stood on a sunny rooftop terrace on a recent afternoon in downtown Little Rock, flanked by utility executives and elected officials.
That night, the Democratic nominee for Pulaski County’s top elected administrator argued for regulation in front of a standing-room only audience at a county meeting.
The two men stand on opposite sides of a debate over two data centers planned in Arkansas’s most populous county, and last Tuesday was a showcase of the ongoing, year-long divide over the centers. The debate is part of a national one, as companies race to build ever-larger data center campuses needed to power artificial intelligence, and communities grapple with questions about how the huge facilities will affect them. Wendell Griffen, the Democratic nominee for Pulaski County judge, speaks to the quorum court on proposed data center regulations as the proposals’ sponsor, Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood (right), listens on May 12, 2026. (Photo by Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate)
People have already mobilized in communities across the country to vote out those who have allowed data centers. Meanwhile, Wendell Griffen defeated incumbent Barry Hyde in the March Democratic primary for county judge and has been calling for transparency and regulations on the centers.
The county’s top elected officials and business leaders support the planned centers, one by Google, the other by Connecticut-based AVAIO Digital, as job creators and tax revenue generators. Google is already building a data center more than 120 miles away in West Memphis, and the companies say they will become billion-dollar-plus investments.
“We talk about the positives, but we never really get to the numbers,” said Jay Chesshir, the Little Rock Regional Chamber president, last week during the unveiling of an informational website to tamp down on “misinformation,” he said was circulating in the community. He provided the chamber’s estimates for the tax impact of the Google data center — $4.5 million in property taxes.
Across the country, officials eager to land one have signed non-disclosure agreements that have limited public transparency about discussions between leaders and some of the most valuable companies in the world. West Memphis officials and Little Rock Regional Chamber executives are known to have signed NDAs in relation to data center projects.
But their optimism has run headfirst into national concerns playing out over water and electric use, environmental impact, and lack of public input into projects that could draw hundreds of megawatts and take up hundreds of acres of land.
More than 1,500 data centers are in various stages of planning and development across the country, most in rural areas, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the Data Center Map, a company that has provided publicly available data on data centers since 2007.
Sentiment toward data centers is flagging, too, with 70% of Americans opposed to data centers being built in their community, a Gallup survey released last week found.
Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood, who sponsored the proposed land use regulations, said she was primarily worried about local water supplies.
“We work so hard to get our good water system. And these data centers, they use immense, immense amounts of water and electricity,” Blackwood said during the court’s agenda-setting committee meeting last week.
Utility executives have rejected concerns that the data centers would affect utility reliability or bills.
While Entergy Arkansas Vice President of Customer Service Ventrell Thompson wouldn’t provide a concrete number on how much power the centers could use, Central Arkansas Water CEO Tad Bohannon said that one of the data centers could use four million gallons of water per day on the hottest days of the year. Similar to a regular computer, the computer servers and data storage devices used in data centers generate heat when in use, and water is frequently used for cooling the equipment.
Both Bohannon and Thompson said costs associated with providing service to the centers would not be shifted to residential customers, and that the utilities were capable of serving the demand without affecting reliability.
“We are working with two of the most socially conscious, environmentally conscious and community conscious operators that exist in the marketplace, and in doing so, we have a significant opportunity to enhance city services, county services, as well as our public schools,” said Jack Thomas, the regional chamber’s senior vice president of economic development.
The answers from the press conference and informational websites still didn’t convince skeptics like Kathy Wells, the president of the Little Rock Coalition of Neighborhoods. Wells, who regularly sends out updates about data centers to the coalition’s members, said Friday she still couldn’t answer if the potential drawbacks were outweighed by the potential benefits.
The website created by the regional chamber “lacks a great deal of detail,” Wells said, though she was quick to approve of Google providing a way to contact the company with feedback and possible community initiatives.
“I need to know more before my cost-benefit columns begin to be complete,” she said. Local elected leaders needed to step up and talk to the community instead of allowing the regional chamber to do it in order to start filling those columns.
“They own it. They’re on the election ballot in November, most of them, and they need to step up and make this public, and command enough information that they can speak about this,” Wells said. “They aren’t going out there making speeches. They’re letting the chamber do it all.” Pulaski County Justice of the Peace Phil Stowers as he makes a motion to send proposed data center regulations to the county planning department for more review on May 12, 2026. (Photo by Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate)
After debate marked by occasional interruptions by Justice of the Peace Phil Stowers and muttered disapproval from audience members, as well as audible boos when Stowers interrupted Griffen, the quorum court voted to send the proposed regulations to the county planning department for further study instead of placing it on the May court agenda.
Chesshir told quorum court members that the projects will continue to provide information.
“Where we have been very frustrated is not having the opportunity to step forward and answer a lot of these questions, as were answered this morning and will continue to be answered,” he said.
But the answers they provided didn’t seem to satisfy online Arkansans either. A Facebook post announcing the chamber’s informational website received 604 comments as of Monday, largely skeptical or outright negative. Some questioned how much water and power the centers would use. Others challenged local leaders to put the data centers on the ballot. A few mocked the website as little more than PR.
“We’ve got to do something in order to put a stop to this right now and make them give us an impact study, give us the information, tell us how much they’re going to use, tell us what they’re going to do, how much it’s going to cost the taxpayer,” Blackwood said at one point during the quorum court’s debate last week.
Stowers cut her off before she could continue. “That was all explained in the presser this morning, ma’am.”
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