WINFIELD, W.Va. — Putnam County residents got their first opportunity Tuesday morning to voice their concerns about the Google data center planned for property near Buffalo.
The Putnam County Commission held its first meeting since Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced in late March that Google acquired 1,700 acres of land on both sides of Route 62 to construct a data center.
While the announcement several weeks ago was met with much fanfare from elected officials, the consensus was less positive in Winfield Tuesday.
Residents had many questions for the commissioners during the public comments section of the Putnam County Commission meeting. Discussion about Google and the proposed data center ran for over an hour during the commission’s two-and-a-half hour meeting.
Many residents raised concerns about the impacts of a data center.
“There’s a lot of questions before this data center gets started that are not answered,” one resident said. “The question is, how can we stop it? How can we slow it down?”
“[There’s] going to be noise in Buffalo, and it’s going to travel this valley,” the resident continued. “I think you’re going to hear this noise clear up here [in Winfield]. What I’m seeing from people posting about data centers, showing the videos, 1 a.m. in the morning, a half mile from their house, are [as] loud as they are most at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. So what can we do to do about this?”
“Now I’m hearing about brain cancer and all these other things that you’re bringing in here to our children,” Marilyn Fost, of Nitro, said. “But nobody has control? So who can do it? Who can do something about all this stuff?”
Heather Ransom, who said she was raised nearby Buffalo in Pliny, mentioned concerns about water quality.
“We are already afraid to drink the water, we have already been poisoned by C8 from growing up in Pliny,” Ransom said. “This is only going to make it worse. It is because we are afraid of breathing the air, it’s because of the trucks that are going to be going past these data centers, the light pollution, the soundscape, all of that.”
Several residents said they were concerned that multiple data centers would be built on the property, not just one. Hurricane resident Mike Mosteller was one of them.
“Everywhere that data centers have gone in, it’s not just one — it’s clusters of them,” Mosteller said. “You think one data center is going to be bad. A lot of them are going to be a lot worse.”
“When West Virginia dies, the autopsy results will be the data centers,” Mosteller went on. “I can promise you that.”
“Are they just building one building?” one resident asked. “1700 acres tells me they’re building a slew.”
Putnam County Commission President Andy Skidmore replied that he believes four is the number for now.
“I will tell you, just general knowledge of what I’ve found out over the past couple of weeks,” Skidmore said. “With 1700 acres, it could be a four data-center area there, it could be more than that. Probably four buildings to start with, and there could be more past that.”
Another question from Putnam County residents centered around tax revenue distribution. In compliance with West Virginia House Bill 2014, the Putnam County Commission says it will take 30% of the revenue.
Many inquired about how much input the Putnam County Commission would have with Google’s plans. Skidmore said that it wouldn’t be very much.
“We have about as much control of what happens there as we do with roads,” Skidmore said. “And we have a heck of a lot of pot holes. So I think our impact will be about the same as [when] we try to get our roads fixed.”
The acreage where Google plans to put the site is on the west end of Buffalo, the opposite end from the Toyota West Virginia plant. Although not a deal breaker, the site was made much more attractive because of Appalachian Power’s existing 765 KV transmission line which actually runs through the property. The location means power is already available in a sufficient quantity for what they hope to build.