The Threat of Data Centers
The best arguments against data centers in West Virginia are a drive through the counties and communities that will be ruined for property owners, elders who can’t move and working families barely able to purchase a modest home in West Virginia’s rural paradise.
Drive through the Bedington community in Berkeley County at the northern end of the iconic Shenandoah with its easy relationship of cultivated farm fields, pastures, meadows and woodlands.
Drive through Tucker County, one of the most important tourist destinations in our state. Skiing in wintertime, Blackwater Falls State Park with hiking and cabins and camping. You sink into a beautiful place on Earth.
There are at least eight other West Virginia communities suffering anxiety about the threat of data center proximity damaging their life.
We have learned as we’ve struggled to keep up with GOP Gov. Morrisey and Republican legislators that data centers draw down ground water — we are in a long-term drought — send electric bills skyrocketing, make dangerously loud noise and create large heat centers, warming the area around them.
No West Virginia Democrats have voted for or supported any data centers. In West Virginia, they are brought to us only by the GOP.
Scientists at the Environmental Health Sciences have laid out the real dangers of data centers to people and communities:
“The industrial machines of data centers spanning multiple frequencies never stop. Research has found that anthropogenic noise can increase stress, disturb sleep, and impact mental health and cognitive performance.”
“Large data centers consume millions of gallons of water for cooling, placing strains on local water supplies while discharging heated wastewater back into rivers and waterways. The wastewater would contain heavy metals, refrigerants and PFAS chemicals. PFAS are persistent environmental pollutants linked to cancer, immune dysfunction, reproductive harms and other serious health effects.”
“Data center campuses and transmission corridors are transforming residential, agricultural and rural landscapes into industrialized utility zones.”
But West Virginians are fighting back. There is a sophisticated legal strategy. And we must make a strong push against the Governor’s GOP politicians who are forcing these damn things down our throats.
Elizabeth Ferris is running for the state senate seat in District 15. She’s been vocal and active against the proposed data center in Bedington. “Every West Virginian should be concerned about the way our governor and his allies in the legislature have rolled out the red carpet for AI datacenters,” she said. Ms. Ferris pointed out the disastrous multiple floods all around a data center development.
She pointed to our solution: “This November we must vote in elected officials who promise to protect us.”
There are outspoken conservatives who oppose these data centers, but cannot bring themselves to hold accountable Governor Morrissey and Republican legislators.
But it is dishonest to say these data disasters can be stopped without getting to the source of the problem.
Local political leader Troy Miller, President of the Jefferson County Democratic Association, goes below the surface to see who gets the benefit of our misery.
“The governor and the WVGOP in the legislature are pushing data centers,” he said. “They are just the latest way for out-of-state interests to exploit West Virginia — this time for the exclusive benefit of Silicon Valley billionaires and Wall Street hedge fund managers. West Virginians will pay the costs in higher utility rates and strained water resources.”
Hard to understand a state government that has no concern for its own people and disregards and disrespects our people’s quality of life.
