Beth Boehme – ‘Potential Impacts of the Fundamental Data Ridgeline Project’

There’s a lot I think you should know about the power plant and data center proposed near Davis and Thomas, AKA the Fundamental Data Ridgeline Project. I write this out of deep concern about my friends, neighbors, and all residents of Tucker County, including those I’ve never met. My tone is meant to be friendly, thoughtful, and community building, with a gentle reminder that the power plant/ data center issue is not political. Although I don’t think this project matches the character of Tucker County’s landscape, I could support it if it were in a safer location.

Grab your goggles folks, because we need to dive in to see the inconvenient truths about this project. We can all agree we need both more and better paying jobs for our residents. More tax revenue for our county would be a good thing. Money is a powerful motivator for both those who have plenty and those who are in need, sometimes distorting judgement or morals. One could become rich selling drugs or stealing cars, but most would argue that these are dangerous, inappropriate sources of revenue. The dangers of this power plant so close to Davis and Thomas are a different kind of sell-out: selling out our health and well-being without any clear promises of jobs or tax revenue. Let’s talk about these.

JOBS. This power plant is very different from Mount Storm, so it is not a good comparison. Casey Chapman, the spokesperson for Fundamental Data won’t commit to any number of jobs, types of jobs, pay rate; wouldn’t ensure jobs would go to Tucker County residents or even West Virginia residents, nor would he commit to any training programs for our residents to gain employment at the plant or data centers. If he had a good deal for Tucker County, why won’t he go on the record about it with any news source? We know data centers employ very few people (Wall Street Journal) and that most data center jobs are during the construction phase. Typically those jobs are contracted out to outside companies (Business Insider).

REVENUE. According to multiple sources including the Parsons Advocate reporting the Ridgeline Project would fall under HB 2014, which means only 30% of the tax revenue would come to Tucker County, and the rest would go to Charleston. Our public schools would not benefit. Instead of Brian Bennett’s math, we can rely on real analyses of this intricate issue: WV Center on Budget and Policy is one example (see sources below). It’s too much to discuss here, but the 70% of revenue diverted to Charleston is a truly despicable deal.

HEALTH. The new power plant would release harmful chemicals into the air less than 2 miles from Davis and Thomas. This is NOT comparable to a gas cookstove as mentioned by Brian Bennett. Also, Brian states we shouldn’t be concerned about pollution levels because they would be within safety guidelines. I want you to know that the WV DEP has not done any modeling to understand what the concentration of these air pollutants will be here in Tucker County. Read that last sentence again. Are you shocked by this? If you pay close attention, the DEP ONLY says that Fundamental Data claims they will remain within regulated levels. This is very different from saying these levels are safe for us to breathe. They say they only have enough inspectors to check these plants about every 2 years.

I want you to know air pollution from gas and diesel power plants:

• causes “premature mortality, lung cancer, asthma, heart attacks, cardiovascular diseases, strokes, and even cognitive decline, especially for the elderly and vulnerable individuals with pre-existing conditions [20–23].” (See the sources with these numbers at the end of the article)
• “Even short-term (hours to days) PM2.5 exposure is harmful and deadly, accounting for approximately 1 million premature deaths per year from 2000 to 2019 and representing 2% of total global deaths [24].”
• (What’s PM2.5? Tiny stuff released into the air, less than 2.5 microns- so tiny it can’t be seen, and it can go directly through your lungs into your bloodstream).
• We know “Globally, 4.2 million deaths were attributed to ambient (i.e., outdoor) air pollution in 2019” [25] and
• “electricity generation is a major contributor to ambient air pollution with substantial public health impacts [26, 36, 37]”
• “between 1999 and 2020, a total of 460,000 excess deaths were attributed to PM2.5 generated by coal-fired power plants alone in the U.S.” [38]

To add fuel to this fire, Fundamental Data won’t release the stack heights of the power plant to the public, yet they claim the power plant will be hidden by surrounding tree coverage. This suggests they will be emitting pollutants at ground level. Bad news for us.

Summary: although there are regulations on power plants, they don’t make it safe to build one so close to town. This is a very uncomfortable truth: these health impacts will happen here to you, your kids, your grandma. We don’t want Davis and Thomas to be news headlines in 20 years, or to be hitting headlines right away like Memphis due to their similar power plant.

WATER. Both Thomas and Davis have had significant water shortage issues in the last few years. You will notice careful wording in the air quality permit that might be true or might fool us into thinking water quantity (how much water) and quality (whether the water is healthy) won’t be problems. This permit application is only for the power plant, NOT the data centers. Casey Chapman would not guarantee water usage would not affect our aquifer. This means there is no guarantee that we would not be in the same situation as many individuals and municipalities next to data centers who have wells running dry. Who pays for that? Not the companies. It’s real (The New York Times).

OUR EMERGENCY RESPONDERS. The potential scale of emergency response at this power plant with 30 million gallons of diesel is staggering. Spills, fires, explosions are rare, but they happen. Unless this has recently changed, Fundamental Data has not offered any help, plan, or money for our Rescue Squads and Fire Departments. This is shocking in a county that struggles to have adequate ambulance coverage and relies on volunteer firefighters.

WV House Bill 2014. “HB 2014 preempts counties and municipalities from enacting, adopting, implementing, or even enforcing existing ordinances, regulations, or rules that limit the data center; exempts the data center from any zoning, building permitting, or license requirements; and says microgrid districts and data centers are not subject to any “legal jurisdiction” of the county or municipality in which they are located” (WV Center on Budget and Policy). That means no matter how bad this is for Tucker County, we can’t do anything about it…. unless we fight it off now.

To sum this up, we live in a beautiful place with friendly hardworking people, some of which haven’t had a fair chance at good jobs and financial prosperity. We have an opportunity to work out some hard truths in our county: we have needs and someone is dangling a carrot in front of us. Problem is, that carrot is 70% eaten and the 30% left is rotten. We have to do better. For our kids, for our elders, for our land, for our visitors, for you, for us.

Companies with integrity meet with local representatives, plan carefully for sustainable futures, offer communities benefits, money, and engagement. Representative governments don’t take local power away. We need all of our local representatives to stand strong and protect our local rights. Tucker County has already successfully fought off out of state garbage coming into our landfill (literally). Just because Fundamental Data’s potential building site is next to the dump, now isn’t the time to open our arms to out of state garbage.

We deserve better than this. Join the fight.

I hope to dive in again soon to discuss temperature inversion, electricity costs, housing shortages, noise, property value, trucks and infrastructure stress, and minor synthetic vs major source permit differences. Because I think you all, and Tucker County, are worth it.

Beth Boehme is a full-time resident of Tucker County. She wasn’t born in WV but fell in love with the state in 1999 and later married a 6th generation West Virginian. She doesn’t have any conflicts of interest, but is interested in kind, respectful conversation, bringing people together and finding solutions to challenging problems.

Sources: Allen, K. et al. Five Ways HB 2014 Harms Communities, Local Governments, and Schools. WV Center on Budget and Policy. 15 July 2025. https://wvpolicy.org/five-ways-hb-2014-harms-communities-local-governments-and-schools/ Accessed 8/15/25.

Chambers, Dustin and Elitan. Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built A Data Center Next Door. The New York Times. 14 July 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/technology/meta-datacenter-water Accessed 8/15/25.

Chow, Andrew R. We are the Last of the Forgotten: Inside the Memphis Community Battling Elon Musk’s xAI. TIME. 13 Aug 2025. https://time.com/7308925/elon-musk-memphis-ai-data-center/ Accessed 8/17/25.

Han, Y. et al. The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI Dec 09 2024. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.06288

Dotan, Tom. The AI Data-Center Boom is a Job-Creation Bust. The Wall Street Journal. 25 Feb 2025. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai-datacenter-job-creation-48038b67?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAiYj-LEylxvZm5zaZ4YfvVGFJJcBNLmeL0dMAe96BfV9qJUieRcUoqpv9lutqI%3D&gaa_ts=68a1d268&gaa_sig=YN5hccMto1YA4zDvH9dWI-pbhGLL8rNMsA-IQ8HV1n6wsUHzMyllBB5LQuP5guRnWbJ00KW8hwN3tw8XLXChPA%3D%3D Accessed 8/15/25.

Yañez-Barnevueno, Miguel. Data Centers and Water Consumption. EESI Environmental and Energy Studies Institute. 25 June 2025. https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption Accessed 8/17/25

[20] U.S. EPA. Research on health effects from air pollution. https://www.epa.gov/air-research/ research-health-effects-air-pollution.

[21] Giulia Grande, Jing Wu, Petter LS Ljungman, Massimo Stafoggia, Tom Bellander, and Debora Rizzuto. Long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and cognitive decline: A longitudinal population-based study. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 80(2):591–599, 2021.

[22] U.S. EPA. User’s manual for the co-benefits risk assessment (COBRA) screening model. https://www. epa.gov/cobra/users-manual-co-benefits-risk-assessment-cobra-screening-model. [23] Qian Di, Yan Wang, Antonella Zanobetti, Yun Wang, Petros Koutrakis, Christine Choirat, Francesca Dominici, and Joel D. Schwartz. Air pollution and mortality in the medicare population. New England Journal of Medicine, 376(26):2513–2522, 2017.

[24] Wenhua Yu, Rongbin Xu, Tingting Ye, Michael J Abramson, Lidia Morawska, Bin Jalaludin, Fay H Johnston, Sarah B Henderson, Luke D Knibbs, Geoffrey G Morgan, et al. Estimates of global mortality burden associated with short-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5). The Lancet Planetary Health, 8(3):e146–e155, 2024.

[25] World Health Organization. Air pollution is responsible for 6.7 million premature deaths every year. https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-health/ air-quality-and-health/health-impacts/types-of-pollutants.

[26] World Health Organization. Ambient (outdoor) air pollution. https://www.who.int/news-room/ fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health, 2024.

[36] U.S. EPA. Human health and environmental impacts of the electric power sector. https://www.epa. gov/power-sector/human-health-environmental-impacts-electric-power-sector.

[37] U.S. EPA. Power plants and neighboring communities. https://www.epa.gov/power-sector/ power-plants-and-neighboring-communities.

[38] Lucas Henneman, Christine Choirat, Irene Dedoussi, Francesca Dominici, Jessica Roberts, and Corwin Zigler. Mortality risk from united states coal electricity generation. Science, 382(6673):941–946, 2023