By Mike Tony
For HDMedia
West Virginia’s decision-makers are further rolling out a welcome mat for data center developers.
But they’re keeping confidential to West Virginians what developers might be knocking on the state’s door — and what environmental baggage they might bring inside.
A panel of West Virginia lawmakers on Wednesday advanced a rule that would keep basic information about proposed “High Impact” data center projects confidential and hidden from public view, casting aside transparency concerns from West Virginians who fear they’ll have adverse financial and environmental impacts.
And on Thursday, a quasi-judicial state review board denied a bid by community advocacy groups to throw out a permit that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection granted to an expected data center operation in Tucker County that has kept the configuration of the proposed facility and information on turbines and pollution control devices it plans for the facility confidential.
“We are up against a system that clearly prioritizes corporations over people and public health at nearly every turn,” Olivia Miller, interim executive director of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, said in a statement responding to the review board’s decision.
It was the West Virginia House of Delegates Energy and Public Works Committee that, on Wednesday, advanced to markup and passage stage House Bill 4983, a measure authorizing the Department of Commerce to issue a legislative rule to set the framework for certifying a high-impact data center or microgrid district under another controversial piece of legislation, last year’s House Bill 2014.
HB 2014 is a 2025 state law that has drawn widespread opposition by stripping communities of local control and requiring most of the property tax revenue the projects would generate from local taxing bodies, a move estimated to cost counties and school districts millions.
The planned rule advanced by and within the Energy and Public Works Committee would deem confidential all petitions seeking certification of a high-impact data center and all letters of intent seeking certification of a microgrid district. A high-impact data center could be any data storage or equipment facility with a critical power demand of at least 90 megawatts. A microgrid district, under HB 2014, would be a zone up to 2,250 acres where electricity generated is used only within or delivered to the wholesale market.
It was the West Virginia Air Quality Board that on Thursday issued an order denying a wide range of the objections that Tucker United, a coalition of Tucker County residents and allies, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club filed in an appeal challenging the DEP’s September approval of an air quality permit application from Purcellville, Virginia-based Fundamental Data LLC for a gas turbine-powered facility near the town of Davis and city of Thomas in Tucker County.
The facility is expected to increase the concentration of air pollution in communities in Tucker and Grant counties as well as surrounding communities. The Air Quality Board rejected the community groups’ arguments that the DEP’s Division of Air Quality unlawfully granted Fundamental Data the right to have information in its permit application redacted as confidential business information.
The board also rejected the groups’ argument that the Division of Air Quality, or DAQ, unlawfully held the facility qualifies as a “synthetic minor source” of air emissions subject to less stringent regulations than major sources.
“We believe in freedom, local control, and one set of rules,” Amy Margolies, a member of Tucker United, said Friday in response to the board’s order.
As a witness for the community groups in a hearing in their case against the DAQ in December, Margolies testified that her children’s school is less than 1½ miles from the proposed site.
The Air Quality Board’s order and advancement of the rule supporting the framework of HB 2014 — which had been requested by Gov. Patrick Morrisey — come as West Virginia legislators consider another bill requested by Morrisey – HB 4013, which would offer a multiform tax break to new data center, telecommunications, “data/information processing,” “technology intensive,” manufacturing, research and warehouse enterprises that invest at least $2.5 million or create at least 10 new full-time jobs in the state.
“Regular West Virginians are expected to follow the law and pay their taxes,” Margolies said, “while wealthy developers and tech companies get carveouts, secrecy and special treatment….”
See the rest of the story at the Charleston Gazette-Mail