It would be pointless to put Chia mining operation next to a hydro power plant, the entire point is that they use very little electricity.

They haven't even admitted it's crypto.

All that's really known is that it's a 10MW "datacenter", hooked directly into the power plant, in a part of the country without a commercial fibre backbone, and will allegedly be running workloads that can be turned off depending on power demand.

Reading between the lines, that's a crypto mining operation.