Big Tech Comes to Tucker County, WV

Pamela Moe was reading the paper in late March when she spotted a public notice from a company she’d never heard of.

Fundamental Data, a Virginia-based company, had applied for a permit from West Virginia’s Division of Air Quality related to the construction of a standalone natural gas-fired power plant — one that wouldn’t sell electricity to consumers, but rather use it on-site. The proposed facility would be situated on 500 acres of land between the towns of Thomas and Davis in Tucker County, West Virginia, adjacent to the county landfill and approximately one mile from a public school.

Moe, a retired schoolteacher in the county, noticed that the company’s permit application was heavily redacted. 

“I was concerned there was so little information available,” she said. 

As Moe reached out to an environmental group, local officials scrambled to learn more about Fundamental Data and its plan, which they said came as a shock.

“None of us were brought to the table,” said Al Tomson, mayor of the city of Davis.

Since then, Tomson and others have started to piece together the motivations for the Tucker County power plant and the legislative moves that are making it possible. 

The same day the Division of Air Quality received the company’s permit application — March 18 — lawmakers introduced a bill to fast-track the construction of these standalone power plants, specifically to operate energy-hungry data centers. Also on that day, Gov. Patrick Morrisey held a press conference in Charleston to tout the economic benefits he said HB 2014 would bring. 

“Right now, we have a lot of data centers that have been knocking on our doors and they’re anxious to come to West Virginia and start using our natural resources as a main source of power,” Morrisey said. “Under our proposal, we are going to make it easier for these data centers to do that.”

Across the country, these data centers are in high demand to support the enormous computing power required by the artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency industries. Currently, there are approximately 5,400 data centers in the U.S., a figure that is expected to double by 2030 to keep pace with the rapid growth of AI.

While neither the company nor state government officials have confirmed the Fundamental Data power plant in Tucker County will fuel new data centers, local officials are convinced that’s the purpose of this new power plant.

As demand for “hyperscale” data centers grows, rural areas like Tucker County are caught in an AI-fueled tech boom that strains energy infrastructure and depletes natural resources. There’s also little evidence that data centers provide stable, good-paying local jobs. Meanwhile, AI has propelled U.S. tech stocks to record highs, now valued at over $16 trillion. And the CEO salaries of the “Magnificent Seven” — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA, Meta and Tesla — are in the tens of millions.

These promises of economic development are all too familiar in a region where extractive industries have fueled economic booms that serve distant financial elites at significant cost to people, democratic processes, community infrastructure and a healthy environment.

A Packed Town Hall

On April 13, a day after lawmakers overwhelmingly passed HB 2014, nearly 300 people gathered in the Davis Volunteer Fire Hall in Tucker County to discuss the implications of the bill and Fundamental Data’s permit application.

For county residents, the two are intimately linked: The bill strips local communities of having any say in where power plants are built and how the facilities will be managed and inspected. 

“There’s two things that I find deeply disturbing about this,” said Tucker County resident Leonard Knife. “One is the secrecy involved. And two, at a state level, their willingness to run roughshod over self-determination and the representative government that this country was founded on — they should be ashamed of themselves.”

Mayor Tomson took issue with that too, reiterating his anger at the way the legislative process was handled. “Your local leaders aren’t happy about that,” he said.  “None of us were brought to the table to consult in any way about this bill or the power plant provision,” he said. 

But he also pitched a pragmatic approach. “I believe it’s not too late. We can still work together on the power plant provisions.” 

Tucker County Commission President Michael Rosenau said he was also completely surprised by both HB 2014 and the company’s plan. But he said, “We have to diversify the economy here. We need jobs that can support a family.”

The job opportunities represented by the proposed power plant were top of mind for many attendees. Tucker County’s ski resorts and outdoor activities bring in plenty of tourists, and people have moved into the region from other states because of its natural beauty. 

But property values have skyrocketed in recent years and tourism jobs don’t pay enough for locals to keep up. And now, in a story that’s familiar to West Virginians, a new extractive industry is promising new opportunities. 

The potential jobs created by the data centers springing up around the country have become a popular political talking point. In January, the Trump administration announced a $500 billion investment over four years from Softbank, OpenAI and Oracle to launch Stargate, a project focused on building data centers in the U.S. 

The president has said that the project will generate 100,000 American jobs. 

But there is evidence that data centers don’t provide many good-paying jobs beyond the initial construction phase. In Abilene, Texas, the Stargate venture’s data center is currently employing about 1,500 people. But once the Texas center is operational, it is only expected to employ approximately 100 people in full-time positions. 

And in rural areas, that number is typically even lower. Historically, data centers in rural communities have employed anywhere from five to 30 local people once the construction phase is completed. Those jobs are primarily security or janitorial staff — jobs which electrical engineer Brian Reed noted don’t pay much. Reed’s family has been in Tucker County since 1896, but he doesn’t live there anymore; he had to move to another part of the state because he couldn’t find an engineering job in the area. 

“$12 an hour isn’t a job, you can’t survive,” he said. The operators in the plant where he works, he added, make $43 an hour. 

“That’s a job that makes a difference,” he said. “So don’t offer jobs that are for security people that are going to starve to death.” 

A Mysterious Company

Fundamental Data’s public website consists of a logo and a 2024 copyright notice. No other information, except for a mailing address in Purcellville, Virginia, is publicly available about the company. 

Casey Chapman is listed on the air quality permit application as the “responsible official/authorized representative” for Fundamental Data. The permit application also includes an email address and phone number. 

Chapman is well-known in the Purcellville area for his mixed-use development projects. He also runs CaseCo, a company “comprised of multiple organizations that build, renovate, and restore properties,” according to its website. It appears that he has never taken on a project of the scale of the proposed power plant in Tucker County. 

Chapman did not respond to interview requests via email or phone for this story. But he did speak with Tomson, the Davis mayor, who shared a summary of that conversation during the April 13 town hall meeting.

 “The first thing he told me was that he is a fourth-generation West Virginian,” Tomson said of Chapman. “And he likes to hunt and fish in the Canaan Valley.” 

He said Chapman also questioned why residents were upset about a power plant being placed next to the county landfill. 

“He figured if they put it by the landfill, we wouldn’t care,” said Tomson. 

The mayor informed Chapman that there were other concerns, specifically regarding noise and sound pollution, as well as the amount of water a data center would require. The permit application only outlines plans for a power plant and specifies that it will not be linked to the community’s power grid. 

The company hasn’t disclosed how many data centers the plant will support, but given the proposed size of the power station — at least as big as the nearby Mount Storm plant, which is least 1660 megawatts — in theory it could fuel 100 data centers, depending on the size. And even a single center guzzles water. 

In 2022, a mid-sized data center used approximately 300,000 gallons of water per day, equivalent to the amount used by around 1,000 homes. That figure rose by 550,000 gallons per day in 2024, with some facilities guzzling millions of gallons of water daily to stay cool. 

The enormous amount of water usage worries Tomson. Tucker County suffered through a severe drought in 2024. “We had to use emergency pumps to pump water out of Blackwater [river] so people in Davis would have uninterrupted water,” he said.  

In neighboring Thomas, the reservoir reached its lowest level in 60 years last summer, rendering the water unusable due to high iron concentrations. The West Virginia Department of Transportation dispatched a 5,000-gallon tanker truck to the town to provide water for flushing toilets and watering gardens, thereby easing the crisis. The memory of the drought remains fresh in residents’ minds.

“Water,” Tomson said, “is a big concern.”

And there are other impacts related to the water supply. Aquatic life, for example, is affected when the water used in data center operations is reintroduced to the ecosystem at warmer temperatures or with added chemicals. 

Tucker County is home to the popular Blackwater Falls State Park and features a dozen rivers. They include the Blackwater River watershed, home to diverse microhabitats and recreational opportunities. 

“I’ve been reading about other data centers in other places, [where] it’s impacted the aquifers,” said Moe. She’s worried, she added, about how data centers could affect the water in the county. 

The mayor also inquired about the types of jobs the plant would bring to the area.

“He was very non-committal about that,” Tomson said, adding that Chapman told him “they’re hoping to use West Virginia labor during the construction phase.” 

Lessons From Virginia

Northern Virginia, or “Data Center Alley,” is the world’s “densest data center hub,” because of its proximity to the U.S. government. A repo commissioned by the Virginia Legislature showed that meeting the demand for new data centers would double the state’s electricity consumption by 2033.

Data centers require vast amounts of energy to operate. Take Digital Gateway, a massive data center in Manassas, Virginia, built on more than 2,000 acres of former farmland adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park: the electricity needed to operate that facility could power up to 750,000 homes, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

Manassas residents have also complained about the constant low-level hum generated by an Amazon Web Services Data Center. 

“Our brains never get a chance to rest, never get a chance to get away from it,” one resident told WUSA-TV.

The noise generated by a data center may not be loud enough to cause hearing loss. Still, researchers have found exposure to continuous low-level sounds, such as those generated by data centers, can induce stress, cause anxiety and increase the risk of heart disease. 

In response, a bipartisan group of Virginia lawmakers tightened regulations on data centers during this year’s legislative session. One bill, HB1601, permits localities to assess the potential effects of a data center on ground and surface water resources, agricultural resources, historic sites and parks. It’s currently awaiting Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s signature. 

Who Stands to Gain: Big Tech

As communities grapple with the implications of the AI boom and the impact of the data centers driving that technology, a new class of tech billionaires is amassing tremendous wealth. 

Elon Musk recently sold his social media platform X to XAi, his artificial intelligence company, in an all-stock deal valued at $33 billion. Musk’s 10-year salary package with Tesla was inked last year to the tune of more than $44 billion. And Musk is doubling down on AI-powered self-driving cars at Tesla. 

Amazon’s AWS has the largest data center footprint in the country, if not the world, boasting hundreds of data centers in Northern Virginia alone. In 2024, AWS revenue alone reached $1 billion. This year, AWS, Google and Meta are expected to invest more than $300 billion in AI. 

Those investments are why Wall Street is bullish on big tech, as the demand for data centers and the electricity they require is expected to remain resilient, even in the event of a recession.

In Tucker County, Wariness and Anger

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, Gov. Morrisey has yet to sign HB 2014 into law, but has not indicated that he will veto it or allow it to become law without his signature. 

In Tucker County, former schoolteacher Pam Moe is concerned about what the new law will allow to happen. 

“There’s so much to be worried about,” she said. “Sound pollution, the water, the air … and the secrecy isn’t good.” 

Fundamental Data’s power plant, along with the data center(s) it could support, brings a host of environmental challenges. The company’s air quality permit application lists carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter among the substances the plant is expected to emit. 

But no one knows how much pollution will come: sections of the application, including the amount of toxic substances to be emitted, are extensively redacted. 

“I have a daughter who is 14 and she has environmentally induced asthma,” said Corey Chase, a lifelong resident of Tucker County. He doesn’t want his daughter or any child to go to school near the facility.  

“It’s too close for comfort,” he said. 

For Brian Reed, the engineer who grew up in Tucker County, the power plant proposal is the latest scene from a play he’s seen over and over. 

“Too many people from out of the area come here,” he said, “they use us, and they toss us aside, and they make their money, and they go back to the crap hole they came from.”