As grassroots groups spring up in opposition to data centers ahead of the midterm elections, city and county governments are looking for ways to exercise their authority and oversight over when, where and if data centers come to their communities.
The Putnam County Commission signed a resolution in September to hold data center developers accountable to a list of rules. The resolution sets the expectation that data centers will take full cost responsibility for utilities, provide water protection and mitigate the light and noise they produce.
The commission signed the resolution after Google announced it planned to build a new data center in Buffalo.
Jordan Charbonneau said the Putnam County Commission’s resolution is “a good sign” that more people are concerned about the effects data centers could have on their community.
But, she said, “because of the state law, it makes you have not a lot of faith that these are going to mean anything.”
Charbonneau and her husband Scott Lanham live on an off-the-grid farm in Putnam County, nowhere near the Buffalo data center. Their land is being upended by a gas pipeline to power the Monarch Compute Campus data center development in neighboring Mason County.
They spent three years building their dream off-the-grid home. They live off the land, shower with collected rainwater and get their electricity from solar panels. In August, they found out that a mile-long, 100 feet wide, natural gas pipeline could go through their land and pass within a minute’s walk of their house.
The couple lives on a parcel of land that Lanham’s father purchased in the 1960s. His sister and brother have their own homes on the land, and his other sister lives nearby.
Land agents with Brown Resource Group surveyed the land and marked where the pipeline would go. The family has not signed the easement agreement that would give away roughly a mile of their land.
Charbonneau said that even looking at the survey markers and imagining where the pipeline would be was upsetting.
“It makes you sad,” she said. “I was crying looking at the blue markers the first day.”
When state lawmakers took away locals’ say
A resolution, like the one the Putnam County Commission passed, is a statement of a governing body’s opinion. Legislation passed by state lawmakers last year stripped local governments of their authority to do more than offer that.
House Bill 2014, signed into law by Gov. Patrick Morrisey in April 2025, created rules for large-scale data centers in West Virginia and gave the authority and oversight of those rules to the state Department of Commerce. Local governments currently have no power in these decisions.
Amid statewide pushback against the bill, Morrisey announced in August, a plan that made collaboration with local communities a pillar of the process. But the state and technology companies have moved ahead with projects as town and county governments are left in the dark.
Locals aren’t waiting to be invited into the process.
Putnam United, a grassroots group seeking greater resident involvement in the data center approval and construction process, presented the Putnam County Commission with the resolution, which all three commissioners signed.
Residents and activists from Mason to Tucker County have formed similar groups across the state.
Jessica Lacy, a member of Putnam United and candidate for Buffalo Town Council, lives three doors down from where Google’s data center construction is to begin next year. She recognizes that state law took the local authority, but believes her county officials should be doing more, like commissioning an independent study into the flooding risks of the data center.
“For us, this is just a starting point, not a finish line.”
Michael Mosteller is running to represent Putnam in the House of Delegates. He was a member of Putnam United before he left to focus on his campaign.
He said that until H.B. 2014 is repealed, attempts by city and county governments to oversee large data centers are unenforceable.
All three commissioners are Republican. Mosteller said he hoped lawmakers in Charleston would see the pushback against the bill by county officials of their own party and follow suit in the statehouse.
C.D. Caldwell is running against Mosteller but was unavailable for comment. In a candidate interview last week, he said he sees both opportunities and challenges from data centers.
Google did not respond to request for comment.
Local governments look for opportunities for oversight
Mosteller has been trying to convince county commissions and town councils to sue the state on the constitutionality of the bill, with no success.
But for the past year, local governments have tried different ways to exercise oversight and authority where they can.
The Davis Town Council voted unanimously last May to oppose a nearby planned data center complex.
In February, Morrisey announced the state’s first certified high-impact data center in Berkeley County.
Almost immediately, the Berkeley County Commission had questions about the impacts on their community. It was five months before Larry Pack, state treasurer, released a tax analysis of the Berkeley County data center.
The commission also asked about stormwater. The Department of Environmental Protection told them that, despite local zoning controls being stripped by state law, the county is responsible for handling stormwater runoff surrounding the data center site.
Other local governments have tried a different approach.
In Charleston, the city council is focusing on the smaller data centers not covered by the state’s data center law.
Council member Emmett Pepper proposed an ordinance earlier this month after hearing talk of smaller-scale data centers coming nearby. The ordinance would require data centers operating in Charleston to get council approval. They must be set back from property lines, prove they won’t use too much water or overload the energy grid, provide an emergency response plan and have a decommission plan ready.
House Bill 2014 gives the state control over high-impact data centers, but Pepper says small data centers are also cause for concern. His ordinance would create a city law.
A data center is considered “high-impact” by the state if it demands 90 megawatts of power or more. Pepper said an 89-megawatt data center would be roughly the size of a Target store and would use the same amount of energy as the entire city of Charleston.
The proposed ordinance, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Joe Solomon and Frank Annie, aims to fill a gap that Pepper saw as an opportunity for local control.
“If we don’t do anything, then they can just come in and operate just like any business can,” he said.
Up in Wheeling, the city council published a drafted ordinance to include regulations on data centers in industrial districts.
The ordinance comes after Silicon Foundation Energy purchased the former historic Centre Foundry near Wheeling and announced a 10-megawatt data center.
Sen. Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, and Del. Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, are running against each other to represent Wheeling in the Senate. Neither candidate responded to requests for comment, but Fluharty voted against House Bill 2014 and has publicly opposed it. Chapman voted for House Bill 2014 and has spoken highly of it.
Construction goes on
Nscale’s Monarch data center in Mason County was one of the first major data center projects announced in West Virginia in 2023.
It’s been subject to multiple controversies and made national news after flooding nearby residential neighborhoods. Charbonneau and Lanham said they haven’t seen much coverage on the natural gas pipeline that will be coming through their land in Putnam to power it.
Lanham said it would “ruin” their land if the gas pipeline goes through.
He said a land agent from Brown Resource Group came to his brother’s door and asked him to sign and allow them to build the pipeline. When his brother asked where the pipeline would be going, the land agent would not answer him.
Charbonneau found out from online research that the gas will be powering Nscale’s Monarch data center campus in Mason County.
Nscale did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
When reached by phone, Adam Ellis, President of Operations at Brown Resource Group, declined to comment.
The family hopes their opposition will delay the pipeline until a change in state leadership but don’t feel optimistic.
Lanham is concerned that, in the past, large companies have never faced opposition by the state.
“They got used to doing almost anything they wanted for years around here, and they’re almost getting away with it now,” he said.
