West Virginia’s data center chief told a crowd of more than 150 people Monday that his department will stand up a citizen advisory council on data center policy.
Chris Morris, the inaugural director of the West Virginia Data Economy Office, told Tucker County residents the council would recommend standards and policy for data center projects that the state considers “high-impact.” The council, which he said would be up and running within 60 days, would include people from all walks of life and viewpoints, including industry, environmentalist advocates, academia and utilities.
Morris shared his vision at a panel discussion hosted at the Davis Volunteer Fire Department meeting hall by Mountain State Spotlight and Country Roads News, an online news publication covering Tucker County.
Morris appeared alongside Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monogalia, Del. JB Akers, R-Kanawha, and Amy Margolies, a local resident and organizer of Tucker United, a community organization opposing a data center project proposed between Thomas and Davis.
Country Roads News Editor and Publisher Dan Parks moderated the event.
Morris’ proposal comes amid a wave of pushback against proposed high-impact data center projects in counties across the state. Last week, Deputy Commerce Secretary Nick Preservati popped into an anti-data center Facebook group in Berkeley County to answer some of the group’s questions.
Virginia-based Fundamental Data LLC has proposed a project in Tucker County that could meet the threshold for a “high-impact data center” or microgrids designation, which, under a law passed last year, would override any local ordinances regarding zoning, lights, noise or setbacks.
While that project has yet to apply for or receive that designation, it has been the target of significant pushback from local community members. Developers behind the project filed for permits around the time the Legislature passed House Bill 2014.
Despite calls for restoring local control, the Legislature didn’t change the data center law this past session. In January, Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw told the press that changes to HB 2014 were premature since the law hadn’t been in effect for a year.
Lawmakers were in the area early this week for meetings at Canaan Valley Resort State Park. On Sunday, members of Tucker United gathered along the road to the resort with signs demanding they repeal the law.
“If you don’t do anything now, by the time you’re at that point, you’re left with nothing,” said Jacob Muscavage, a local bike mechanic and attendee.
At Monday’s panel discussion, Margolies made it clear that promises and internal policies don’t mean anything unless they’re put into law. For more than a year, her community has been trying to get information surrounding a data center proposed in Tucker County by Fundamental Data, who only showed up in a public forum last month and declined to answer many questions surrounding water usage and who their ultimate user of the facility would be.
“What we need are legally binding promises,” she said. “I don’t want to just take everyone’s word for it.”
Hansen, the minority chair of the House Energy and Infrastructure Committee, largely hammered on the exemptions written into the current law that essentially strip local communities and governments of control and oversight.
Hansen said his party has a number of proposals to restore local control, but the Republican supermajority won’t pick them up.
“Traditionally they’ve been the party that said leave these decisions to local governments, but now that they’re a super majority they’re going to do what they want,” Hansen said.
Akers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said he and his Republican colleagues supported enticing data centers to the state in order to bring more jobs and keep young adults from moving away. Tucker County, faced with rising housing costs and limited employment opportunities outside of the tourism industry, has experienced a population decline over the last several years.
Akers noted data centers could still come to the state, even without the current law.
“People can build data centers without HB 2014,” he said. “Part of what I saw 2014 doing was actually putting rules and some guardrails in place that would not have existed without that law.”
In that case, Hansen pointed out, data centers still have to abide by local ordinances.
The 2025 law also siphoned tax revenues away from local communities. The bulk of tax revenue generated by high-impact data centers will go toward reducing personal income taxes, while 20% will be split across counties and placed in different funds. Counties where data centers are built will receive 30% of the revenue from projects in their communities.
Akers defended sending some of the local money across the state. He likened it to the state’s severance tax system, where revenues from coal mined in the Southern Coalfields land in a statewide pool open to communities across the state.
“There are so many counties in the state that have issues with our foster care system, with our ambulance services, the roads need fixed in all parts of the state,” he said. “If there’s just some apportionment of that, so that the whole state benefits from large projects that we’ve never seen before, I don’t personally have a problem with that.”
Margolies responded, “How did it work out for the Southern Coalfields?”
Lawmakers have in recent years pointed to severance tax revenues, which go to the state’s general revenue fund to be used toward anything, to justify personal income tax cuts.
After the discussion, attendees congregated around the hall, chatting with one another, the panelists and law enforcement officers. Out in the parking lot, Hanna Tierney, a concerned Tucker County mother, said she wants to see action rather than words.
“They’re doing a good job of taking in all of our feedback with a smile, but I don’t hear anybody in that room, telling us that they’re going to actually take that information and do something with it,” she said.
