How Residents Of A W.Va. Tourist Destination Are Responding To Data Center Development

This conversation originally aired in the Nov. 1, 2026, episode of Inside Appalachia.

While some Appalachian communities are passing moratoriums and restricting data center development, others are blocked from doing so by state laws. That’s the case in West Virginia. 

Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with a journalist who’s been reporting on the data center development in Tucker County, West Virginia. Dan Parks writes Country Roads News, a newsletter and website that covers a rural county that’s home to Dolly Sods, Canaan Valley, Blackwater Falls — and about 6,700 people. 

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Parks: My name is Dan Parks. I’m the editor and publisher of Country Roads News, a small publication in Tucker County, West Virginia, which is about a 3-hour drive straight west from the Washington D.C. metro area. I’m at the end of my journalism career after spending 20 plus years covering Washington D.C. policy, mostly working for Bloomberg and other publications.

I decided to start this publication out in Tucker County, mostly as a philanthropic effort, frankly. Like a lot of communities in rural areas, it had become a news desert. There is a local newspaper, but it suffered pretty severe budget cuts and there’s not a whole lot of news coverage left. Although, I will say since I started my publication, the local newspaper seemed to try to up its game a little bit, which I appreciate. I’m not getting rich on this effort, and the goal is to improve access to news to local residents and communities that really need it. 

Adams: You anticipated my first question, which is how did Country Roads News get started up. What do y’all look like now? Well, I started it a little less than three years ago. And really it was just an experiment. I didn’t know if this thing would fly. I didn’t know if people would be interested.

Parks: I published on Substack because frankly up until now I’ve always worked for large media organizations and I’m not a tech savvy guy and I don’t know how to build attractive websites, and Substack just allowed me to jump right in and start publishing news. without thinking too much about the tech side of it. So, I can spend 90% to 95% of my time gathering and shaping the news as opposed to trying to figure out how to present and distribute it, which has been great. And I just launched the publication just to see if people would pick up on it and I discovered a thirst for local news. I think people really miss something more when it’s gone, whether it’s news or anything else, and people have been extremely appreciative of the publication, beyond what I had expected or hoped for. 

Adams: For people who don’t know Tucker County, West Virginia, can you describe the community that you cover and what the county is like? 

Parks: Tucker County, West Virginia, has a long history of coal and timber extraction, and there were periods in its history when it really thrived on those industries. But as we know, across the nation, those industries have been contracting. It’s caused a lot of unemployment, frankly, among people in the county. But it also has a lot of natural beauty. It’s got three ski areas. So tourism has been on the rise. That has caused some tensions in the community with people who want to go back to the old days, when you could make a living using your hands and your back, and relative newcomers who see more opportunity in attracting people and economic development through tourism. When the data center issue came up, it really did drive a wedge between those two communities.

Adams: So when and how did you first hear about Fundamental Data’s plan to build a data center there? 

Parks: Fundamental Data filed for an air quality permit, which would be necessary to build a rather large power plant very near the small mountain towns of Thomas and Davis, West Virginia. That was first noticed by an environmental group, and then I was alerted to it, and I was the first publication to write a new story off that. It was really a shocking thing to see a project of this magnitude just come out of nowhere, it seemed. And the community very quickly was alarmed by it. I shouldn’t say all of the community, but a large segment of the community was very quickly alarmed by this development. Fundamental Data has not been real forthcoming on the specifics of what they’re planning. 

Adams: What do we know about this data center proposal? What are the specs to the extent you’ve been able to learn about them? 

Parks: The power plant would be larger than the Mount Storm coal-fired power plant just a few miles down the road. Fundamental Data initially talked about just one power plant that would be run primarily on natural gas, through our natural gas lines in the area. They also specified in their air quality permit application three large diesel fuel storage tanks that together could store about 30 million gallons of diesel fuel to serve as a backup fuel source. Data centers need to have uninterrupted power; even a brief interruption of power can cause very significant problems for them. So that’s their backup fuel source: diesel. And, of course, that diesel is one of the main concerns of the opponents of the facility, both in terms of the emissions from a facility burning diesel, which is not as clean as natural gas, and also in terms of the potential for spills from this very large supply of diesel fuel, which is less than two miles from an elementary school, also very close to the Blackwater River.

Since their initial application, Fundamental Data has also talked about other sources of power, including a solar field and potentially nuclear. There have been no regulatory filings to back that up, but they’ve talked about extending the amount of power that would be needed, which also indicates that they’re talking about a very, very large field of data centers. 

Adams: A lot of data center developers use non-disclosure agreements to limit information about the projects. And they can be pretty slow to release information themselves. So, how have you been able to effectively report on Fundamental Data’s plans? 

Parks: It’s been a challenge to report on Fundamental Data’s plans. They are a rather secretive company. They are based in Virginia, and they are incorporated in Delaware. And Delaware is a place where a lot of companies incorporate because it has very tight secret privacy laws. There’s been some speculation that Fundamental Data is an arm of some larger corporation. People speculate it could be Meta, it could be Amazon, it could really be anybody, or it could just be Fundamental Data. We just don’t know. I have pulled the corporate filings in Delaware and sure enough, there’s nothing there. There’s a dead end there. If there’s anybody else behind Fundamental Data, that information is simply not available.

A lot of communities also have dealt with non-disclosure agreements. That does not appear to be the case here in Tucker County. The county commissioners have stated explicitly that they have not signed any NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, nor have they been asked to. So, I’m not sure why that is not the case here, but it is elsewhere, but that’s where we’re at in Tucker County. The absence of the non-disclosure agreements doesn’t change the fact that we simply don’t know very much about Fundamental Data and their plans have seemed to shift over time with various statements.

At times they’ve told me, “What makes you think that this power plant is intended to fund data centers?” Because they hadn’t explicitly stated that. And then in other media interviews, they would acknowledge that it would be used to power a very large field of data centers. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Fundamental Data indicated they were looking at a 10,000-acre facility. So, they have not been very specific nor necessarily very consistent about what they’re saying their plans are.

Adams: 10,000 acres is pretty big, especially for a place like Tucker County. What’s been the response from the community there? 

Parks: The community response has ranged from supportive with some folks seeing the potential for jobs, especially during construction. It’s very unclear how many jobs these facilities would create overall and how many of them might go to local folks who aren’t experts in data center engineering. There could be a lot of jobs, some jobs going to locals for things like janitorial services and security, but other on-site jobs might require a level of expertise that doesn’t widely exist in Tucker County. There are people who are concerned and want more information. They don’t want to say no without knowing a little bit more about it.

And of course, there’s a large contingent, I would say the largest contingent of folks is opposed — that they just don’t think that this is a proper fit for a county that draws a million tourists a year, that it’s simply incompatible with where the economy of Tucker County is heading. 

Adams: The town of Davis passed a resolution opposing this data center, but it’s my understanding local governments have no say or ability to regulate these data centers, nor will they receive any direct revenue. Why not? 

Parks: Well, to understand the regulatory environment in Tucker County and in West Virginia, we have to go back to March 2025, very shortly before we first heard of Fundamental Data. The state legislature, at the behest of the governor, passed a sweeping new law deregulating the data center industry. Projects that are certified by the state as what they call a micro-grid project; they are basically exempt from any local regulation. No zoning, no noise ordinances, no light ordinances. The local governments are really powerless to do anything about these data centers. And the governor and the state legislature, which is dominated by Republicans in West Virginia, they touted this as a big boon potentially, a big economic boon for the state, saying this is the way we can shine a light and say, “Come on out to West Virginia. We’ll make this fast and easy for you. One stop shopping for all the permits you need at the state level and no pesky local governments getting in your way of all this.” The governor has since raised some concerns about what’s happening in Tucker County. 

This has proved to be, I think, the most controversial project in West Virginia because of the proximity of the power plant and the data center field to the towns of Davis and Thomas, two quaint little mountain towns that rely heavily on tourism. And the governor has started making some comments about Fundamental Data not handling the situation very well. So, I’m not sure what’s really going on. There has been some noise at the state legislature about backtracking a little bit on that deregulatory law, but it hasn’t happened yet. So, communities like Davis, they passed an industrial noise ordinance, just in case perhaps the state restores some measure of local control that they’ll have some tools on the books already at their disposal, but at the moment they’re still powerless. Local governments would get some revenue, but that state regulatory law that was passed in 2025 also swept most of the local property tax revenue away from local governments and to the state.

Adams: A lot of the data centers I’ve heard about, there are concerns about water. That’s a big community concern. What’s the situation there? 

Parks: The situation with water in Tucker County is that we just don’t know very much about the situation because of West Virginia’s business-friendly approach to data centers, the application for the air quality permit for the power plant is heavily redacted. So we know very little about how this power plant would operate, how it would be cooled, how much water it might need. And of course, we know nothing about the data centers that might be powered by that power plant in terms of how they would be cooled, how much water they would need. Fundamental Data has said, “Don’t worry about it. We’re using new technology that uses much less water. We’d be using recaptured and recirculated water and it would be abandoned mine water, water sitting in abandoned mine shafts. So, don’t worry about this.” The people who are concerned or or opposed to this project would like to see some details on that. They would like to see specifics on how exactly do you plan to cool an enormous power plant and a field of data centers with minimal impact on groundwater in the area. 

Adams: Where does this go from here? What are you watching for in the months and years to come? 

Parks: We seem to be in a lull here right now. There doesn’t seem to be any movement by Fundamental Data. The air quality permit was approved. They have not, however, applied for microgrid status, which would exempt it from all those local regulations. So we’re kind of waiting to see what the plan is. I’ve heard some speculation by folks who think that Fundamental Data might just be looking to sell these permits. They’ve secured the air quality permit and perhaps they were just speculating that there’d be a gold rush for data centers in West Virginia and that they would be in a prime position to sell a permit to a company that really wanted to move fast. I don’t know, this might be the worst of all possible situations for local folks in terms of just waiting. What’s next, is this going to go away? Has community opposition soured data center developers on this location, or are they gearing up to move forward? We just don’t know. I love this area very dearly. It’s been an important source of comfort and strength to me for a lot of personal reasons that I won’t get into, and this was just like a labor of love that I really saw a need and I wanted to fill it to do something for the community. I feel remiss in not mentioning Tucker United. 

Adams: Yeah, are they one of the groups in opposition here? 

Parks: They are the group in opposition. Very quickly after the data center proposal was first announced, a new organization was created called Tucker United to oppose this specific facility and also to promote other kinds of economic development. And that organization is very effective in their PR work, in their organizational work, they’re very careful and very thorough. They have been behind most of the legal challenges to this facility, if not all of them.

I think it’s a level of opposition that Fundamental Data did not expect to find in a small rural area of West Virginia. Because of the regulatory environment in West Virginia, they’ve had little success in challenging this facility, but they certainly have done a very good job in raising awareness of their concerns about this development.