Starkville Crypto Mine data center, Starkville, Mississippi

On August 11, 2026, the Starkville Planning and Zoning Commission denied a zoning exemption that would have let Starkville Energy LLC build a cryptocurrency mining data center on Industrial Park Road in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi. The commission found the application lacked transparency and had not addressed residents' concerns. Mandy Jiang, a representative for the project, told the commission it would use at most 73,000 gallons of water a day in the hotter months. Jiang later told the Commercial Dispatch that Starkville Energy plans to keep pursuing the project, with more transparency, because of the money already invested.

The plant would have drawn up to 30 megawatts of power, making it Starkville Utilities' second-largest customer after Mississippi State University, on about half of a seven-acre plot near a utility substation. In June, Starkville Utilities Director Edward Kemp put water usage at up to 20,000 gallons a day, less than a tenth of one percent of the utility's capacity; by the August hearing Jiang gave a higher hot-weather figure of up to 73,000 gallons a day.

Mayor Lynn Spruill had been open to the project. "The revenue that we get from the business is such that we would not necessarily have to do a rate increase to cover some of our capital costs," she told the Dispatch. About $800,000 was to pay for the transmission line from the substation to the site, under three separate power agreements.

Ward 1 Alderwoman Kim Moreland asked for a safeguard: a clause letting the city "shut power off to that data center" and supply Starkville residents instead if something failed on the Tennessee Valley Authority's end.

Opponents included Ward 3 resident Carys Snyder, Mississippi State professor Jane Moorhead, former resident Lishman Heathcock and members of the Oktibbeha Humane Society. Heathcock dismissed the tax argument: "The crypto mine would've brought in tax money; however, any job would bring tax money." Douglass Carswell, president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, said most arguments against data centers focus more on an anti-free-market ideology than on environmental and economic concerns, while Josh Wotten of the Tennessee Valley Authority said the center would not strain Starkville's grid.