Her suspicion stems from life experience: In October 2000, a huge coal slurry spilled from an upstream mine poisoned the Cold Water Fork Creek, which was behind her home. People at Inez have been unable to drink water from the faucet for months.
“Those of us live downstream for a while and haven’t heard it, but the school system has to be shut down for about a week until they get another source of water,” she said.
To this day, many in Inez still do not trust tap water.
So when McCoy heard about the hype about AI, she heard something else: another promise that brought it. “We allow these people to be called job seekers,” she said. “And I don’t care if it’s AI, Crypto or whatever, we succumb to them and let them tell us what they’re going to do to our community because they’re job creation. They’re not job creation seekers, they’re profitable.”
Profits leave footprints.
Artificial intelligence data centers require a lot of energy (ChatGpt searches are the average Google search, using up to 10 times the energy), and they run hot. To keep them cool, these facilities consume billions of gallons of water each year. Most of the evaporation evaporates, but residents used to be alert because they had problems with facilities and runoff in the past, so they fear that these new facilities could affect fish and damage land. What Kentucky residents want to preserve.
Still, some locals will see potential, even progress.
“AI is everything we do,” said local entrepreneur Wes Hamilton. “Siri, Chatgpt, Robotics – you can imagine everything that you have to have AI,” he said. “Bitcoin is a single-piece pony. You create it. The only person who gets paid is the owner of the machine.”
Hamilton claims that data centers bring ways investors, engineers and even companies are willing to stay. Hamilton said all the AI people in the world will be steamed into Kentucky. Although he admits losing cryptocurrency wealth in the past, he claims it is different.
When Bitcoin first arrived, lawmakers offered generous tax breaks for luring miners. Companies with investments of more than $1 million are exempt from business taxes on hardware and electricity. Then, in March 2025, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear took all of this and took a step forward by signing the Bitcoin Rights Act into law.
The legislation is a defense of individual financial freedoms and aims to enjoy the right to use digital assets in Kentucky. The earlier draft was further developed to prohibit local governments from using zoning laws to restrict crypto mining operations, a provision that has sparked resistance from environmental groups. The language was eventually adjusted, but the purpose remains: In Kentucky, digital extraction can keep buzzing.
That’s why we find ourselves outside this facility in Campton, staring at the semicircle of metal buildings among the trees. The mine runs all night, even on Sundays. The question some people are asking now is that Bitcoin hovers around $100,000, and the big miners talk about the question of spinning with AI is whether Bitcoin mining gets a second wind in Kentucky.
Mohawk’s Bitcoin mining may even make a comeback. Anna Whites said the parties should arbitrate on May 12. “I hope,” she told us. “I really want them to sit down and say, ‘The powerful plants you have there. Let’s keep going.'”
