CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Protests against data centers coming to West Virginia continue, with citizen groups joining to rally outside the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in opposition to a project on its way to Tucker County.
Tucker United, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, and the Sierra Club organized the Wednesday morning protests around a hearing before the West Virginia Air Quality Board for the groups’ appeal of an air quality permit issued to Fundamental Data for its Ridgeline facility in Tucker County.
“That air quality permit is heavily redacted, meaning there’s not a lot of information that we can see, so there’s a lot of questions we have that we would like answered. The DEP did approve the air quality permit, and we think that they shouldn’t’ve,” Tucker United member Shaena Crossland said.
Following a hearing on November 5, the board ordered parties to negotiate a protective order allowing attorneys and expert witnesses to review the redacted data.
The Ridgeline facility is a fracked gas and diesel-powered center proposed to be located between Davis and Thomas. Protesters feel the facility is being forced upon them after the passage of the Power Generation and Consumption Act during the last legislative session.
“We have no say on what is built in our county or any other county in West Virginia. We can’t pass any zoning. We can’t do any of our own inspections, so it restricts and completely, 100%, takes away our voice, and personally, I think that’s unconstitutional, and so does a lot of other folks,” Crossland said.
The state Department of Environmental Protection classified Ridgeline as a “synthetic minor source” of pollution, and the groups appearing before the Air Quality Board argue that was not the correct decision. The proposed data center’s proximity to towns, schools, and tourist destinations is a significant concern for some residents.
“This is a beautiful area. We have rivers and lakes, and there’s skiing. There’s fishing. There’s hunting. There’s mountain biking. We are a tourist area, and while tourists don’t pay the bills, it pays a lot of them for a lot of people,” Crossland said.
Worries over pollution from data centers are not limited to Tucker County natives, though. Protesters joined the rally from around the state, hoping to shed light on their concerns about data centers coming to their hometowns.
“There are risks to pollution, and we’re already polluted, especially in southern West Virginia where I live. In Mingo County and in Wyoming County, which is all neighboring, they don’t have clean water already, so we’re knowing this is going to affect us environmentally,” Brit Aguirre, a Democratic candidate for Congress in the 1st District who joined the protest from Logan County, said.
Both Crossland and Aguirre pointed to the turnout from around the state as an example of West Virginians standing up for what they believe in and trying to get the job done themselves.
“West Virginians stick together, and we are going to save us—we, the people, as we come together because there’s nobody coming for us except for us. We joined together in solidarity. We have folks from the coalfields, from Kanawha County, from Tucker County, and beyond that are here,” Aguirre said.
The Air Quality Board indicated that the hearing could continue into Thursday depending on the length of testimony.