SPRING MILLS, W.Va. — A town hall-style meeting planned for Friday will give residents in Berkeley County a chance to hear about a proposed data center project and weigh in.
Berkeley County Commissioner John Hardy was a guest on Panhandle Live a few days ahead of the event.
Asked about concerns citizens might have about data centers in general, especially one with as bit a footprint as this one could have, Hardy said they’re not alone. “I have questions, I have concerns,” Hardy said. “I’m a little angry too. You know, the county control is circumvented. There’s not much the county can do. It’s all run from the state level.”
“People get very upset when their power is taken from them, when they feel like their voice and their power has been taken from them,” he said.
“The county commission doesn’t have any oversight of this project, but we are willing to listen to everyone who wants to come out,” Hardy said. “We’re going to set up some parameters for people to come out and ask questions. And we may not be able to answer all those questions.”
“We’re going to talk about the process, how we got here, how the bill (House Bill 2014) was crafted and what the bill does. We’re going to talk about the revenue stream, but also how who will be handling the water and the sewer and the air permitting and the West Virginia Department of Highways role in this.”
“The Berkeley County Commission is committed to being 100% transparent on everything that we do.”
The meeting, set for this Friday from 6 to 8 p.m., was originally set for Bedington Ruritan, but Hardy said they realized they would need a bigger venue. It’s now being held at Spring Mills High School in the auditorium.
“There was more interest from other areas of Berkeley County and maybe even areas outside of the state, so we tried to do the right thing and change the venue to where we could accommodate more people. It’s safer, more parking.”
The meeting will be hosted by Hardy and Berkeley County Commission President Eddie Gochenour, but no other commissioners.
“We can’t bring in the entire Commission because then we would have a quorum. And it really makes things a lot different (because) then it’s an official meeting and so it would change a lot of things,” Hardy explained.
As for why he is taking part, “I have a legislative background. I understand a little bit what the legislature was doing,” adding, “ I lived in that area right where this data center is going to go. I owned a home there for seven years and know the community very well,” Hardy said.
“President Gochenour, being the president of the Commission wanted to be involved, so we just decided that we would go in and try to address everyone.”
“I’m going to go there. I’m going to be as positive as I can be,” Hardy said. “I’m concerned that there’d be people there that are not from our community that are maybe coming in to, you know, maybe poke the hornet’s nest,” Hardy said, adding he has heard there could be people coming to the town hall from places like Loudoun and Fairfax Counties in Virginia and Washington County in Maryland.
“We’re going to try to have a safe, open environment, try to address as many questions and explain the process of how we got here and and just do our jobs as locally elected officials who are answering to our local constituents.”
Unlike a public comment event, there will not be comments entered into an official record. Instead, Hardy said, the commissioners will listen to the speakers’ concerns and consider them.
As to whether the county commission has any tools to alter the data center plans or mitigate impacts citizens are concerned about like noise or water usage, Hardy said, “Our goal is to try to work with the community as best we can. We also want to work with the governor’s office. We we think if we can all try to work together and listen to one another, we’ll have the best outcome.”
“I don’t know if there’s a pathway forward of not having this, and that’s not my decision to make.”
“My job is to try to listen to the citizenry, listen to the government, you know, listen to the state government, listen to the development side from the state and, and just try to work together as a team to try to have the best outcome that we can possibly have for our taxpayers, revenue side, and also for environmental practices and everyone try to work together to try to get the best product that we can get.”
“ We know who the developer is. We have no idea who the end user is going to be,” Hardy said. “It may be multiple end users, it may not be one company. It could be multiple companies that are using these facilities. We we don’t know.”
“There’s going to be a lot of questions that people are going to ask that we can’t answer, but we can at least stimulate the conversation. And I’m hopeful that there will be more town halls coming, maybe not presented by the county commission, but maybe from state level officials,” Hardy said, adding he believes the local legislative delegation will want to hear from their constituents, as well.
“So I think that what we’re trying to do is just trying to stimulate the conversation, trying to understand what the questions and concerns will be,” Hardy said, adding they can take those and move them forward to the state level and our local legislators and say ‘this is what people are questioning. This is people’s concerns.'”
“And then, you know, we’ll kind of see how it moves forward from there,” said Hardy.
Speakers will have a chance to go to the podium and speak for about three minutes.
“This is a very unofficial town hall meeting,” Commissioner Hardy said. “It’s just to be able to speak to constituents. There’s probably going to be 15 or 20 questions that are kind of going to be the same question you know, asked in different directions, but we’ll just try to take those in and then we can take that information and we can try to educate ourselves if we can find that information.”
“If we don’t have the answers, we can take that those questions to the next level and we can reach out to the governor’s office, we can reach out to the State Economic Development Authority. We can reach out to our local legislators and say these are people’s concerns.”
“And we still have questions ourselves on exactly what revenues the counties will receive, what they won’t receive,” Hardy said.
“You know, there’s a lot of ambiguity in the piece of legislation. I think that there’s probably going to have to be some clarification, and I’m not exactly sure if that comes from the legislature or if that comes from the court.”
As for Friday’s town hall, “We’ll take the first part of the meeting and discuss House Bill 2014, how it came about, the parameters that it lays out and how we got here and then, we’ll have a sign up sheet. People can come in, they can sign up and they can speak.
He’s hoping those who come to the podium will be Berkeley County residents. “I am concerned that we may have professional interveners,” Hardy said. “There could be people coming in from areas that doesn’t have skin in the game of this project.”
Hardy said the town hall should wrap up around 8 p.m. “This is very, very early in the process,” he said. “There’s still lots of questions to be answered. I think some of those questions have not even been answered by the people who are proposing this so I think this is really early in the process and I think we’ll continue to work through it,” Hardy said, adding, “This may not be our last town hall meeting. I’m hopeful that other town hall meetings or some outlet for the public to be able to come in and give their comments (will) happen somewhere in the future.
Asked about any positives he could see coming from the data center project, Hardy talked about revenue. “They do generate a lot of revenue for local government and we can use that money to offset taxes to our constituents,” he said, adding, “hopefully we could use that to draw down our real property tax numbers so we could tax our constituents less,”
As for other points to consider, “They don’t generate a lot of jobs. There’s a couple different ways to look at it,” Hardy said. “I mean, there could be 1,000 townhouses on this property. I mean, you know, someone could have bought it and developed it for residential use. There could be, you know, 500 homes or 1,000 townhomes on this property. That impacts the community more by having more people and more impact on the roads and the schools and your emergency services.”
“So you know, there’s always going to be pros and cons and and you know, and the cons could be how does it affect the landscape? You know, how does it affect the neighborhood? Like I said, I lived in this neighborhood. I know the neighborhood very well. You know, I’ve lived in about a 13 mile circle my entire life except for when I was in the military. So, you know, I’ve grown up in the Eastern Panhandle. I’ve been here my entire life. I love this community. I care about this community. I built my business here and raised my children here. So you know, I’m just as concerned as everyone else.”