By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Morgan King felt she had to acknowledge something during a meeting her advocacy organization, West Virginia Citizen Action Group, held Wednesday evening that focused chiefly on anticipated data center growth in West Virginia.
“If you asked me a year ago what I would be working on this year primarily, or what … Citizen Action Group or communities would be concerned about, I would not have guessed data centers,” said King, the group’s climate and energy program manager, during the group’s virtual Climate Committee meeting.
But a fight against momentum toward buildout of data centers in West Virginia has intensified in recent days, with division growing between residents and community advocacy organizations like West Virginia Citizen Action Group who fear environmental health impact from planned data centers and West Virginia political leaders wanting to boost the state’s power capacity profile through them
That power play, led by Gov. Patrick Morrisey, comes despite evidence data centers — warehouses that can store thousands of servers and other digital infrastructure to support large-scale data processing — are poised to further increase electricity bills already rising at an uncommonly sharp rate in West Virginia.
Image: By Laura Bilson, Charleston Gazette-Mail