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Alabama Homeowners Turn Down Free Cash and Internet to Block Bitcoin Mining Data Center
SOMERVILLE, Alabama — Homeowners in a rural Alabama community are fiercely pushing back against corporate plans to construct a Bitcoin mining data center in their neighborhood, flatly rejecting thousands of dollars in cash, free internet service, and other utility incentives. Residents living along Union Road in Somerville state they deliberately left bustling nearby cities like Huntsville to enjoy a peaceful, country setting—an environment they argue will be completely destroyed if the industrial facility is allowed next door.
The tech development firm Voltcore met privately with local homeowners on Friday, June 12, 2026, to pitch the development. Company representatives tried to assure neighbors that the proposed data center would be built on a 15-acre plot, provide 20 to 30 local jobs, and avoid creating noise pollution, raising local power bills, or draining municipal water resources. However, the presentation completely failed to win over residents. Homeowners Will and Lyndsey Hutson voiced intense skepticism, noting that the narrow road is not rated for heavy trucks and expressing severe anxieties over the planned 75-foot high-voltage power lines.
To move forward with the project, Voltcore and Joe Wheeler Electric must secure easement access from four specific property owners to install the massive transmission lines. In an effort to buy community cooperation, developers offered each household direct cash, a full year of free internet service, a natural gas line, and complete land restoration. Residents like Preston Graham and Brock Wilson remain completely unswayed, noting that an absolute consensus of neighbors are extremely against everything the data center brings.
Because the proposed site sits in an unincorporated portion of Morgan County, residents are highly alarmed by the current lack of local regulatory protections or zoning laws governing commercial data facilities. Morgan County Commission Chairman Ray Long indicated that while the county lacks the legal mechanism to outright block the project, he refuses to support it in the face of absolute community opposition. Neighbors are now calling on the county commission to swiftly establish new regulatory protections to shield rural communities from un-zoned industrial expansion.
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By: NBC Palm Springs
June 13, 2026
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