Petitions against the proposed data center in Waterford were available to sign outside a polling place at the Washington County Fairgrounds during the May 5 Ohio primary election. (Photo by Amber Phipps)

Washington County Commissioner Charlie Schilling responded Thursday to public comments that had circulated regarding a tax abatement for a proposed data center in Waterford.

“It was put out there that there would be no tax benefit for the community, no tax benefit whatsoever for the community,” he said during the commission’s weekly meeting on Thursday. “If you want to talk about there being false information out there, that’s as close to false as anything.”

Schilling said if people did the research and understood how property taxes worked, they would find out that millions of dollars would be generated from the property.

“Those properties (sold in Waterford), before the sale, generated $50,000 a year for the county. The county general fund received $17 million in property tax each year,” said Schilling. “Around 6 million of that comes to the county general account for the commissioners’ budget and the other 11 million goes to levies.”

He said the money from the property tax where the data center would be built would generate money that goes towards local entities like the Washington County Board of Developmental Disabilities, children’s services and emergency response centers. He said a $1 billion project would generate $16.87 million and a $2 billion project would generate around $33.74 million that would go directly back into the county.

“No tax benefit whatsoever? That’s false information from someone that doesn’t want to do the research it takes in order to come to an opinion and a conclusion,” he said.

During public comment, Marietta resident George Banziger asked Schilling to what he would attribute Stephanie Lang’s win over Commissioner Eddie Place in the May 5 Republican primary.

“I feel like there are issues that are being discussed within the community, whether that has to do with the data center or injection wells … I believe there’s a lot of discussion over that,” said Schilling. “I believe from the research I’ve done it’s not 100% false information, but there’s a lot of false information out there.”

Schilling said people should do their research before coming to any conclusions.

“I think what you might be saying is that the election outcome is due to misinformation,” Banziger said.

Holly Kellums, with MASH Focus Press, which describes itself as performing investigative journalism and community-driven research, asked where residents should go to find the correct information.

“I would like to make a request for a list of the misinformation and the correct information, so we can do our due diligence as a community, as a network, and as neighbors to verify any misinformation that you guys believe that we have,” said Kellums.

“I think with respect to injection wells, there’s a lot of scientifically based information and information from oil and gas experts who demonstrate massive amounts of production waste injected into our grounds does migrate,” said Banziger. “And in Oklahoma they’ve seen it migrate to water aquifers.”

Schilling said the commissioners have taken those concerns to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the commissioners do not have the power to regulate or permit anything.

Banziger said the commissioners did have opportunities to sign petitions that were delivered to Gov. Mike DeWine and “the nondisclosure agreement the commissioners embarked upon (with regard to the data center) was ill advised.”

Banziger said the voters have addressed their concerns through the ballot box.

“There is a lot of worry and concern that the commissioners are not doing enough,” said Banziger. “I know you’ve communicated a few things to the ODNR, but we don’t think this is sufficient.”

Schilling said there were individuals who made claims that an NDA had been signed four to five years ago. He said that was false information.

“The actual date of the NDA (that) was signed for this agreement in January of this year,” he said. “I challenge anyone to do the research that any commissioner over the last five years signed an NDA on anything.”

The commissioners said there are no updates and no agreements that have been made with the developers and they continue to urge for a public meeting soon.

Amber Phipps can be reached at aphipps@newsandsentinel.com