Emails Show Entergy Arkansas Co-Drafted Pulaski County Moratorium That Exempts Its Own $6B Prospective Customer

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporting published July 15, 2026 revealed that Entergy Arkansas executive John Bethel collaborated directly with Pulaski County Quorum Court Justice of the Peace Dianne Curry in drafting a data-center moratorium ordinance — with the resulting version specifically exempting the $6 billion AVAIO Digital project near Wrightsville, for which Entergy is the likely power provider. An earlier, sweeping moratorium proposal without the carve-out had failed 6-3; the Curry-Entergy version then passed 8-1. The full Quorum Court vote on the weakened ordinance was scheduled for July 31.

This is a documented instance — via obtained emails, not inference — of a utility directly authoring the local regulation meant to govern it, ensuring both the tax/subsidy benefit for its prospective large customer and the ratepayer cost-exposure from the grid buildout proceed with reduced local scrutiny. It stands apart from the broader county-moratorium wave the timeline tracks elsewhere (see 2026-07-22–montgomery-co-md-datacenter-18month-moratorium-vote) precisely because most of those actions represent local governments asserting independent authority against hyperscaler pressure; here, the same nominal resistance mechanism — a moratorium — was captured and repurposed to shield the specific project the utility had a financial stake in protecting.