Simple Mining data center, Cedar Falls, Iowa

The Cedar Falls City Council voted unanimously on May 18, 2026 against the zoning changes that would have let Simple Mining, a Cedar Falls bitcoin company, build a crypto mining data center in the city's industrial park. The site was more than 38 acres near the West Viking Road Industrial Park, in Black Hawk County, next to where Cedar Falls Utilities plans a natural gas power plant called the Viking Energy Center.

The city mailed letters to neighboring owners on March 19, 2026, and the draft rules would have required buildings to stand at least 200 feet from any residential district. Nathan Nebbe lives on 22 acres directly across from the industrial park, land his family has worked since 1981 to restore for ducks, beavers and other wildlife. "I was flat-out hurt when, a couple days ago, we [got] this letter telling us that [the property in question] is for a crypto mine. I'm sorry, that's what it is," Nebbe told Iowa Public Radio. "We've been here 40 years. That was a gut punch." His father, Dennis Nebbe, said the plant and mine were "something that we didn't sign on for, something that is going to probably destroy the value of our property and undo what we've tried to do over 40 years." Tom Risse, project manager for the Viking Energy Center, said: "It's all closed-loop water systems. We're not digging any onsite wells. We don't have any water discharge." Matt Hein, Simple Mining's director of energy infrastructure, said the site would need at least 50 employees and that larger, slower fans would cut the noise: "Our large consumption of electricity is an economic benefit to the city of Cedar Falls," he said. "We help pay for schools. We help pay for roads by our operations." Karen Howard, the city's planning manager, said crypto is already mined at three places in Cedar Falls even though city code does not allow it: "When they were presented, we didn't really know what we were permitting and what the actual use was."

The planning commission pushed its hearing from April 8 to April 22, 2026 after residents raised noise, environmental and property value worries. Before that meeting, Cedar Falls Utilities withdrew its request to rezone the roughly 48 acres for heavy industry and asked instead for public zoning, which rules out crypto mines. "Under this zoning classification, cryptocurrency mining, data centers, and other private IT infrastructure would not be permitted on this property," utility chief executive Susan Abernathy wrote to the commission. City documents also recorded that the utility did not support large data centers, because the power they need would likely exceed its capacity. The commission then recommended denying the crypto mining rules, and the council followed it.

At the May 18 hearing, Simple Mining founder and chief executive Adam Haynes said the facility would use about as much water in a year as seven homes. Resident Dave Deibler told the council: "What really concerns me is losing control of our city." Mayor Danny Laudick said a council member had also filed a referral asking staff to look at "explicitly disallowing cryptocurrency data centers, especially the hyper scale, larger facilities." Two days after the vote, Simple Mining held an open house to show residents its cooling and the noise levels of its Manchester site. "There's a lot of misconceptions and maybe misunderstanding nationwide about data centers," Haynes said, while resident Axel Hoogland said he was glad the ordinance failed and wanted a better one: "As long as they write the code well, you know, I think, you know, whatever the business is, it can operate within a well-written code."