A 648-acre data center could be built in Clarksdale, northern Mississippi.

On Monday, the City of Clarksdale held an informational meeting about a potential data center project that could be built on agricultural land located between the Sunflower River and Tallahatchie Street.

The city’s board of commissioners had considered a rezoning proposal for the data center earlier on March 10, but postponed its decision to “allow any negotiated conditions for any potential data center” to be considered.

These conditions require any potential developer to pay a one-time impact fee of $5 million, pay for the cost of utility upgrades, source permits for emissions, take necessary precautions to ensure the safety of the grounds, enforce a minimum 1,000 ft (305m) buffer zone between itself and any residential districts, and more.

Approval for the data center project has not been given yet, and details about its capacity, structure, and end-user are all unknown at this point.

Opinions on the potential data center have been divided, with some arguing that the campus would provide valuable tax revenue to the community. Opponents express concern about the data center’s energy and water footprint, with some even accusing local authorities of corruption.

Clarksdale is a city in and the county seat of Coahoma County, near Mississippi's state border with Arkansas.

Mississippi’s government sees the tax revenue brought in by data centers as crucial to the state’s development.

Governor Tate Reeves went as far as to say that nationwide calls for a data center moratorium were motivated by those “yearning to submit our society to outside forces, mobs, international councils, or communist China.

"I don’t want to go gently. I love this country, and want her to rise. That’s why Mississippi has become the home of the world’s most impressive supercomputers. We are committed to America and American power.

“We know that being the hub of the world’s most awesome technology will inevitably bring prosperity and authority to our state. There is nobody better than Mississippians to wield it,” said Reeves.

The state has been successful in courting some large-scale data center developments.

The most prominent of these is xAI’s controversial Colossus facilities, which are located in neighboring Tennessee but are powered by gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi. The company just received the go-ahead for 41 of these turbines last Wednesday.