Rick Tabish addresses the Williams Co. Commission on June 6.
WILLISTON, N.D. (KFGO) – The Williams County Commission on Tuesday voted unanimously to instruct the Mountrail-Williams Electric Co-Operative to cut the power to Phase II of Atlas Power’s crypto mining datacenter outside Williston.
Atlas Power had been given previous extensions to complete work on roads, facility security and coverings, and other basic construction and noise mitigation it promised to complete months ago in order to receive a certificate of occupancy.
Based on discussions with Atlas, the commission had set June 16 as the date when a list of stipulations had to be met, but commission chair Cory Hanson said a number of those were still not completed by Tuesday morning and they had received no explanation for the continued delays, leaving the commission without much choice.
“There are seven stipulations that need to be taken care of and until those are done, I don’t really know what else we can do but leave the power off,” Hanson said.
The commission has heard numerous citizen noise complaints and documented multiple zoning violations during the project’s construction.
At previous meetings, the county employees reported that the crypto mining servers in the Phase II section were already running without a certificate of occupancy having been issued.
In early June, Rick Tabish, who is the president of FX Solutions which is partnered with Atlas Power on the project, told commissioners that the companies were ahead of schedule complete the required work within the 45 days set by the commission on May 2.
The commission also voted to place a six-month moratorium on any new crypto datacenters at the Tuesday morning meeting, in order to give their planning and zoning department time to update ordinances in light of the troubles that have arisen with the Atlas project.
The $1.9 billion Atlas datacenter project was announced in January of 2022 by Governor Doug Burgum.
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