Shari Johnson
The fact that Data Centers are going to be built is inevitable. The key to a community dealing with the inevitability is determining where the centers are being built, how they’re being built and governing both.
Data Centers are storage units for massive amounts of information. They certainly generate revenue for the communities for which they’re located but they also generate issues as well. There are different designs of Data Centers and the Devil can be in the details.
Most use a large amount of power and water, especially a hyper scale data center. hyperscale data center is a massive, highly effective computing facility designed to scale capacity rapidly to meet extreme demands. Typically exceeding 10,000 square feet and housing 5,000 to hundreds of thousands of servers, these facilities support cloud computing, AI, and big data operations for major tech companies. If water and electricity in the area where the Data Center is built is insufficient, the data center will require generators or gas turbines to sustain the Center.
The positive side of a Data Center coming to a community is that the revenue created for a county is substantial as well as jobs. In addition a Data Center is an attraction to many other businesses locating in the area.
As technology becomes more and more prevalent to society, Data Centers are necessary. The disruption that comes to a community will depend on the governing bodies that oversee how the Data Center is built. Questions for leaders to answer will be who’s building it, who’s running it and will both be done in a manner that keeps the citizens of our community safe, now and in the future?
For Calhoun citizens we already have issues that we cannot overlook.
In a YouTube interview with Matt Lewis, Cara Keys, County Commissioner for Jefferson County, expert on land usage and a small business owner, stataed that 70% of the Americans oppose building of Data Centers. She believes that percentage is in areas where there is no local control.
Because the constant use of social media, web searches and phones continues to increase, Data Centers are necessary. She too agrees that that the construction and operation methods of data centers make them very controversial.
So what’s the answer for a Community the size of Calhoun County when determining whether or not to support or oppose the issue.
Loudoun County, Virginia has “Data Center Alley” which is the largest Data Center in the United States. It began about 20 years ago and now 3-4% of the land in that area is for Data Centers. Loudoun County has 3-4 billion dollars in tax revenue that goes to the County and of that 3-4 billion dollars, most is directly from the Data Centers real estate taxes. They’ve almost doubled their tax base in that area from allowing the construction of Data Centers.
Loudoun County also has zoning ordinances and regulations in place such as the distance from neighborhoods (500 foot buffer) for which a Data Center can be built. Reported issues such as the noise, “Is not that as great of an issue as some people report,” Keys said. The noise comes from weekly testing of diesel generators when there will be a humming noise for a specific amount of time.
The size of Data Centers varies greatly. Keys likened it to the difference between a home school and a public school. They both teach, but the amount of space and the number of people affected greatly differs. The impact on residents will be determined by the regulations set by our County officials.
What about the jobs?
The construction phase will create the greatest amount of employment opportunities, while the actual operation of the facility and staff requirements will depend upon on the size of the facility. It can range from two to multiple. However the financial benefit to the county will come from the tax revenue created from the Data Center and what is done with that revenue.
Just as the County cannot depend upon a business that moves into a community creating jobs and opportunities that will last forever, the Government is going to have to put multiple eggs in multiple baskets and use the revenue created from a project like a Data Center to create, and promote a healthy business climate that will offer jobs in various fields. The assessment of taxes will be based on the land, building and equipment within the Data Center. Having officials that understand the assessment process and then utilize the results is critical to a community benefiting.
In Lowden county, teachers and officials receive some the highest wages in the country because of the finances created.
Energy problems:
How much electricity is being used?
The issues with electricity use and increase of costs varies with utility companies. When the grid enlarges and a utility requires greater financial resources the citizens private utility costs can increase. However, that can happen regardless of whether or not that data center is in your area. If the Data Center is a few counties over, but the lines go through your area, your cost will increase regardless of your location in conjunction to the Center.
Data Centers are said to be required to pay a huge sum of money to tap into the electric grid to the Electric Company (millions$). Studies say it does, and does not increase electricity costs to the consumer. Depending upon the narrative of who’s talking.
Environmental concerns are always an issue and the community should be safe guarded.
West Virginia has been knowingly exploited for decades. Calhoun County in particular has been exploited not only by outsiders but by our own people. Managing any new venture coming into our area requires our elected officials making themselves aware and educating themselves on whatever it is that’s moving in.
Jefferson county is the only county in West Virginia that has county wide zoning, although most other States and counties outside of West Virginia have countywide zoning. The current WV Code states that Data Centers can go anywhere, at anytime with the determination being between the land owner and the data center. Having governmental control of environmentally effecting construction will depend on our leaders direction.
Property rights of the citizens has got to be balanced with economic progress. In the WV Bill there was nothing entered that required distance setbacks or vegetative screenings as a requirement to protect the community around the area.
In West Virginia we do not have any law that says they have to have a non-eoperative cooling mechanism where they pull less water or any codified requirements of not pulling from the aquifer which is shared water that everyone with wells pulls water from and takes hundreds of years to recharge. If you draw past what your water sources is capable of providing you will eventually run into issues of having a depleted water source.
In Jefferson County, their conversations with the Data Centers has been focused on protecting resources and their agreement not to pull from ground water. Again, local and state leadership is key. Regardless of what the county says, the State can allow any type of Data Centers to move into any county without cooperation for protection of the community and that decision was made by our current State leaders.
The supposed goal of the Republican Party is and should be to keep control locally. Yet, at the State level they made a decision based on the economy without consideration for the local effects of big business on small communities. November is on the horizon and conversations with your State legislators should be happening now.
Data Centers should be placed in an area designated for an industrial site. The wide span of property should not make this an issue. The expansion of water to specific ares should be taken into consideration.
Most data centers do use water in some form, but not all. Industry estimates show that roughly 75–90% of data centers worldwide rely on water-based cooling as a primary method. In other words, only about 10–25% are completely water-free (using only air or refrigerants for cooling). Among the water-cooled facilities, the vast majority of large-scale data centers use open-loop evaporative cooling meaning they evaporate water as part of the cooling process. This has been the standard because it’s effective and energy-saving, but it does consume water.
What about using non-drinking water? Unfortunately, most of that cooling water has historically come from potable (drinking-quality) sources like municipal water or groundwater. One analysis estimated that around 57% of data centers’ direct water use is from potable water supplies. Another industry assessment was even starker: 80–90% of water used by data centers is drawn from “blue” water sources such as lakes, rivers, or aquifers – often the same sources providing community drinking water. In practice, many data centers simply hook up to the local water mains. For example, Loudoun County, Virginia supplied around 1 billion gallons of water to multiple data centers in 2023, mostly relying on treated potable water because reclaimed water capacity was insufficient. This is why local residents get concerned: if a data center is using city water, that could be water that otherwise serves homes, especially in a drought.
However, a growing number of data centers are now shifting to recycled water. Tech giants have begun partnering with utilities to use treated wastewater (effluent) for cooling instead of fresh drinking water. For instance, Google uses reclaimed or non-potable water at over 25% of it’s data center campuses. (one notable example is its Douglas County, Georgia data center, which runs on recycled municipal wastewater). Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced in 2023 that 20 of its data centers are cooling purified wastewater instead of potable water. After cycling through the cooling system, this water is sent back to the treatment plant to be cleaned and reused again. These initiatives leave more drinking-quality water for the community and exemplify the industry’s trend toward “strategic water sourcing.” Still, as of today, reclaimed water use is the exception. Most data centers worldwide are still using fresh water for cooling, although this is slowly changing with new projects and local regulations.
So how much water are we talking about? Water use varies widely by the data center’s size, design, and location:
A medium-sized data center might consume around 100 million gallons of water per year for cooling. (If the average American household uses 300 gallons a day, a mid-size data center would require the equivalent of ~1,000 U.S. households annually).
What about the murky jars of water?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., recently displayed two jars of brown water during a congressional hearing last week. She said the samples were collected in Morgan County during a visit earlier this month.
Jessica Kramer, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a Newsnow.com article “the agency will review the situation.”
Politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasion-Cortez, Democrat, New York, has repeatedly used her platform to progress the Democratic Agenda likely without concern for a factual basis.
I will share with you where I personally stand on the issue of allowing a Data Center to be constructed in Calhoun County.
I hate that political and personal agendas are used to confuse the citizens of a community for the purpose of promoting self regulated ideas without having to qualify it as truth. I have done my best to tap into resources for information, watching multiple videos and reading articles about the good, the bad and the ugly of Data Centers. What I determined on my own, using the sense God gave me, is that by looking at other communities with multiple Data centers, I don’t see the issues reported by people like AOC. The problem is, there may have been “some truth” in some of the stories. But because our Nation as a whole is filled with corrupt, lying politicians that are not held accountable by their constituents we struggle to make the best decisions for our community.
I believe we need what the Data Centers offer. (My opinion, I’m entitled to it.) But I don’t believe we accept their word blindly. If we don’t do something to create income in our County, we are never going to attract opportunity, economic progress, or better educators and leaders for our children and citizens. None of that should come at the expense of safety, health and resources of Calhoun County.
My mind always goes back to the location of FCI Gilmer, that could have just as well been FCI Calhoun. But because of the leaders of that day who lied about the negative impact the prison would have on our community, we threw it away and up the road. There was no negative impact. Can I say that about the Data Centers without a shadow of a doubt? No. But why would I turn it away without knowing the truth?
