They are online out at Whinstone and it’s just about the best news Rockdale has had since we all had to learn to spell “COVID.”
The power is on at the entrepreneurial data company, which is on track to become the biggest of its kind anywhere. But it’s not “anywhere,” it’s here and it’s just down Charles Martin Hall Road from the former smelter where aluminum was produced during the 56 years of Alcoa’s Rockdale Operations.
Whinstone is a data center. It provides cryptocurrency “mining” and a number of high-tech services for its clients. Just as the brawny aluminum pot was a symbol of our community’s past, so the sleek computer is one of our future.
Does everyone understand exactly what Whinstone does? Did everyone understand the Hall-Heroult Process which was to key to producing aluminum in those potlines up the road?
(By the way, Charles Martin Hall Road was named for the “Hall” in Hall-Heroult.)
Just as it wasn’t necessary for the community to totally understand the chemistry that made it possible to coax aluminum from its ore, so it is not necessary for us to wrap our minds around the math which coaxes a cryptocoin from, uh, somewhere.
And Whinstone can do a lot more than that.
But here’s something we can all understand. One-hundred-and-thirty people now have jobs they did not have about 335 days ago.
That’s when two Whinstone representatives showed up at a Rockdale City Council meeting. They were entrepreneurs looking for a place to build a data center. They didn’t know about Rockdale until they read a not-terribly-flattering story about our community in Wired magazine.
It happened to mention there was an interface for power—lots of power—at the former Alcoa plant. It was music to their ears. And they’ve been music to ours ever since.
We needed something to work. Since the closing of our area’s two big industries, it had appeared several times we were getting some others, of various scales, not so much as replacements for Alcoa and Luminant but as steps toward some kind of a new future. We needed some hope.
All but one of those ventures never came about and that one—for which we are grateful—didn’t turn out to be on the scale we originally thought. (That doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate it, of course.)
But Whinstone is different. It is not only here, and up and running, it is powering on more computers daily, still hiring and is expected to reach operational capacity during the fourth quarter of this year.
What fantastic timing. In the midst of this awful, pandemic-scarred year, something positive, hopeful and optimistic to hang our collective hats on.
And Whinstone has become a full-in community member, supporting Rockdale and Milam County in many ways, ranging from graduation fireworks to this October’s fall fest.
Company officials have noted the feeling is mutual, saying Rockdale residents have almost become “cheerleaders” for Whinstone.
That characterization sure suits us.
Let’s hear it for Whinstone:
Two bits, four bits, six bits, a potline.
You came along exactly at the right time!—M.B.
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