WINFIELD, W.Va. — Members of the Putnam County Commission say Google plans a town hall meeting to discuss its plans for a data center near Buffalo.
The commission recently visited the Google Data Center in New Albany, Ohio to tour the data center and talk with Google officials. Commission President Andy Skidmore said at Tuesday morning’s commission meeting the planning remains in progress for the Buffalo site including discussion about how the closed loop system will operate the data center.
“They plan to have a town hall meeting where they’re going to talk about all of that,” Skidmore said. “They didn’t give us a lot of details about the closed loop system. It’s still under design is my understanding.”
There’s been no date set for the town hall meeting.
The facility planned for Buffalo is being patterned after the one in New Albany. Skidmore said the Buffalo site is more spacious than the Ohio operation.
“That site at New Albany is on less than 900 acres, seven buildings, they look to with 17-hundred acres a bigger buffer between them and the existing community,” Skidmore said.
Skidmore said the Buffalo site could hold nine buildings.
“I believe they plan on starting at four (buildings) with the anticipation of getting to seven at some point in the future. They are building number at New Albany right now,” Skidmore said.
Skidmore and the other commissioners were answering questions Tuesday from resident Mike Mosteller, a candidate for House of Delegates. Mosteller said he also traveled to New Albany and spoke to residents who live near the data center.
“Every single person that I talked to around the neighborhood was not happy about that data center being there. They did not like it and they want it to go away,” he said.
Skidmore said he’s been researching data centers in recent months. He agreed there are some developers of data centers that he would not want to come to Putnam County but Google does not have that reputation.
“Not all data centers are created equal and not all companies have the capital to invest,” Skidmore said. “In my research of Google, I think they do make an investment in properties that they maintain.”
Other information about the project shared Tuesday:
–Skidmore and fellow commissioner Brian Ellis said there were a lot of generators at the New Albany site that are there for backup but they have never been used. Ellis said technology is ever-changing and back-up generators may soon be a thing of the past
–Skidmore said the noise level at New Albany is at 55 decibels or less
–Skidmore said Google chose Buffalo and purchased the property from Appalachian Power because of its size, its closeness (less than two miles) from a high-powered transmission line and its proximity to the Kanawha River