Tucker County Residents Push Back Against Big Tech In Their Backyard

Energy microgrids have been touted as an economic boon for West Virginia. But a grassroots organization in Tucker County is coalescing in opposition to one of the first such developments in the state.

On a recent Sunday evening in St. John’s Lutheran Church in Davis, more than 100 community members were invited to break bread together.

“We really want this meeting to have everyone feel welcome, like they can share their thoughts, concerns, questions, and just have a safe space to do that,” Nikki Forrester, spokesperson for Tucker United, said. “And so we thought breaking bread would be a great way to kick start it.”

 Tucker United is a grassroots organization at the center of opposition to a microgrid power plant slated to be built right between Davis and the town of Thomas at the head of Canaan Valley. 

“We believe local communities should be able to have a say in these huge development projects that will influence their homes,” Forrester said. “For us here in Tucker County, this power plant and data center will have immense consequences for our health and safety here, and that is why we are so concerned about it, is because from the air pollution to the noise pollution to the light pollution to water availability to our jobs, our livelihoods, like our quality of life here, all of that is threatened right now.”

Much of the information that is publicly available regarding the Ridgeline Facility project has been gleaned from a West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection air quality permit application submitted by a firm called Fundamental Data. Even less is known about the company than the construction project they hope to undertake in West Virginia, with a website that boasts nothing more than a corporate logo and an automated chatbot.

The application describes natural gas-fired turbines, fed from a pipeline to the site. But, citing confidential business information, all information about the turbines and specifics about their emissions have been redacted from the application. 

The application makes no mention of what the turbines will power, but community members were quick to assume a data center, something Fundamental Data only confirmed in response to reporting from the Wall Street Journal last month. Forrester said the area simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to support such a project.

“People are really concerned and worried about how it’s going to impact them. We have one road that connects all our towns,” she said. “Where’s all the construction traffic going to go? Where is all that traffic going to go? What if one spills? How are we going to be able to go pick our kids up from school or get to work or go grocery shopping or get to the health care we need, you know, at our local clinic?”

The details that are publicly available do not inspire confidence, either. The application outlines plans to house 30 million gallons of diesel in three, 10-million gallon storage tanks on site as backup fuel. The tanks, just one of which would require hundreds if not thousands of visits from fuel trucks to be filled, only hint at the scope and scale of the entire Ridgeline project. 

“We don’t really know what to expect, because the information has been so heavily redacted in the air quality permit application from this company so we don’t even know really basic information about the air pollutants that are going to be emitted, how big this complex is going to be, what it’s even going to run,” Forrester said. “The company for a really long time refused to acknowledge that it was going to be for data centers at all. So the lack of transparency has really been scary, because we don’t know what to prepare for here.”

Beyond the secrecy involved, one of the biggest hurdles to the community has come from the state legislature in the form of House Bill 2014. 

The bill allows data centers to establish microgrids, self-contained sites that generate their own power. Proponents say that a rapidly expanding tech industry, fueled by growth in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, will attract more data centers – and new jobs – to the state. And due to the large amounts of energy that data centers use, microgrids ensure a site can meet its energy demands without straining the public grid residents, schools and businesses depend on.

But Forrester and Tucker United are more concerned with sections of the bill that exempt certified microgrid districts and certified high impact data centers from local control including county or municipal zoning, noise, or lighting ordinances or approvals. And the diversion of property tax revenue.

“We have no control over what’s going to happen with this facility. The county can’t submit any ordinances against noise or light or other things in order to help kind of influence the development of something like this, but we all pay the consequences of it, because we live here,” Forrester said. “And on top of that, 70% of the (property tax) revenue goes to Charleston, so we only get 30% here in the county with this project and with any, you know, equivalent micro grid and data center projects like this, none of that money will go to our public schools, to our roads, to our emergency services, so these essential resources and services that we need.”

Zina Raye is a member of Tucker United, with a professional background in technology as a network engineer. She said that she is not against technological advancement, but Tucker County is simply not the place for this type of infrastructure.

“The scale of this project is humongous. And this rural community, this is a jewel of eco-tourism in West Virginia,” Raye said. “If you look at any tourist guide nationwide, I have friends in California who told me, ‘Wow, Blackwater Falls, we want to come visit you.’ So this is the location that should be preserved for generations. And seeing that permit and just doing math on the back of the envelope told me, this is humongous. It’s not the right place for this type of project to be implemented in this location.”

Raye and others are also concerned about a data center’s impact on local water resources. The most conservative estimates put daily water usage by a data center at hundreds of thousands of gallons to help cool large computer server arrays that make up the heart of the data industry. More recent estimates put daily water usage by an average data center in the millions of gallons.

Water has become a sticking point for Davis and the surrounding region in recent years. Nearby Blackwater Falls State Park is a keystone in the region’s tourism industry. But the area suffered through a highly publicized drought last summer that required the towns to pump water from the Blackwater River and even have water trucked in from other parts of the state.

Davis Mayor Al Tomson said many in the area are taking a wait and see approach, but he fears that by the time all the information is known it will be too late.

“What I’m saying is, because I don’t know information, I’m going to protest and say no to this process because I don’t know what resources they’re going to take, or where the water is coming from, or how much they need,” he said. “I’m going to say no until you convince me that it’s safe. I don’t know where all the emissions are going to occur and to what extreme, and until I know that, I’m going to say no, so I’m taking the position. I’m saying no, until you can convince me otherwise.”

Tomson said he wants to meet with Gov. Patrick Morrisey to discuss the project.

“I’m inviting Governor Morrissey to come to Davis, to man up, to have a meeting one on one, and talk about these issues, and let me take him around a tour of the area that we love so much, so he will understand a little bit better the decisions and the adverse impact that he’s trying to cause on this particular location,” he said.

The group is not letting up. At a special meeting May 31, the city of Davis adopted a resolution presented by Tucker United formally opposing the Ridgeline project as it is currently proposed.  

Recently, Tucker United came out in numbers to a Thomas city council meeting to ask they sign onto the resolution, an action the council declined to take at this time. 

That same day, Tucker United, Friends of Blackwater and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy filed a joint appeal to the state Department of Environmental Protection to require that Fundamental Data submit an unredacted copy of its air quality permit application.

Forrester said they plan to be at upcoming public meetings across the county and are reaching out to communities in neighboring counties as well.