Op-ed: Time for local residents to stand up
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If you've paid attention to much statewide energy and environmental reporting lately, you know that counties like Tucker, Mason and Putnam have been trying to fend off data center buildout enabled by the 2025 passage of HB 2014 in the West Virginia Legislature. A similar data center fight(s) may be coming to Wood County.
The "Gateway West Virginia Project" involves the potential use of 120 acres of land listed as a "business park opportunity" for "commercial, light industrial or data center use" at #1 Access Road, Williamstown, WV, very near the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge. A company out of California has apparently been buying parcels around this area, as verified by consulting the Wood County Parcel Viewer, which could eventually lead to data center development.
A company named Falls Bridge Energy, LLC, has been acquiring land near the intersection of Interstate 77 and Route 50 on Roth Road for the apparent purpose of data center development as well. To quote from a LinkedIn piece regarding this property purchase, "Because of its strategic location, prepped acreage, and access to all utilities, the site has been tied to local discussions regarding data center buildout and industrial energy infrastructure in Wood County. Falls Bridge Energy specializes in acquiring these types of sites to tie behind-the-meter energy production directly to high-load data centers."
Who's been having these "discussions regarding data center buildout" on Roth Road? When and where were these discussions held? There had been loose talk at one point that this area could potentially serve as a location for a countywide recycling program to serve the county outside of Parkersburg after Parkersburg's government closed its hugely popular recycling facility and contracted out recycling services in city limits to the private Ohio company Rumpke. That idea must have flown out the window when Falls Bridge Energy, LLC, came a' knockin'.
Here's something else you may or may not have been made aware of recently: to quote from the American Public Power Association, "U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued an emergency order directing the PJM Interconnection to dispatch specified units and to order their operation as needed to maintain reliability and authorizes PJM to direct backup generation sources to operate as a last resort before declaring an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) 3 or during an EEA 3. The order aims to mitigate blackout risks in the mid-Atlantic ahead of a period of elevated energy demand, a high rate of planned generator outages during autumn maintenance season, and numerous planned transmission outages."
West Virginia is part of PJM Interconnection. Our grid is strained and it cannot handle more intensely power-hungry data centers. Nor can we or our lived environments stand to have more gas and diesel power buildout to power these behemoths without pulling from the grid or when the grid is undergoing maintenance or development. AI can be a highly beneficial tool in certain ways under certain circumstances (assuming AI is what these data centers would be built to serve), but it is a double-edged sword. Its potential downsides range from making us more intellectually dishonest and lazy to enabling mass repression to literal existential crises. We in Wood County have got to stand with our fellow West Virginians in other counties who have been faced with this nonsense to oppose this potential buildout every step of the way.
On a somewhat related note, I'd like to take a moment to address the red scare fearmongering being led locally by the Wood County Republican Executive Committee and Republican Party in general. I refer to this as somewhat related because a Facebook commenter on a post of mine recently mentioned that data center buildout was important for, to paraphrase his comment, countering China and combatting socialism and communism. That notion is just idiotic, but I want to take this opportunity to speak to the latest red scare tactics as a result.
I want to make three points: 1) The Democratic Party, while very slightly influenced this election cycle by the Democratic Socialists of America and the party's left flank, at least ostensibly, is not in any way, shape or form a socialist or communist party (if it were I might want to be a registered Democrat again).
2) A popular attack line regarding socialism and communism and leftist ideas of political economy more broadly is that "history shows us it never works." Nonsense. All that history has shown us is that when anything resembling socialism or communism starts to gain even a tiny foothold, authoritarian, imperialist, colonialist and capitalist forces (these forces make up a Venn diagram that is nearly a perfect circle) utilize both covert and overt means to destabilize or destroy the nation or region involved.
3) Marx and Engels distinguish in The Communist Manifesto and elsewhere between what they refer to as personal property and private property. They define personal property as items owned by an individual for direct, everyday use and consumption (e.g., a home or a car). They define private property as the ownership and control of the means of production--the assets, resources, and infrastructure used to produce goods and extract profit from other people's labor (e.g., factories, large-scale agricultural land, mines, corporate stocks, apartments rented out to tenants, commercial machinery). Marxists seek to abolish private property in favor of social or collective ownership, but do not wish to abolish personal property.
By the time this is published, early voting will have already begun. If you have not already voted, I encourage you to vote for candidates (Democrats or Mountain Party) who will help protect your interests against the onslaught of data center buildout and who have enough respect for you not to try to revive McCarthyism.