My name is Brian Bennett. On July 16th I had a “Opinion Piece” published in the Advocate. I never realized that I would make so many new friends on the “I Love Canaan Valley” face book page. For the people who said everyone is entitled to story and who took up for me, I sincerely thank you. For the rest of the crowd, including the face book “bully,” please take a breather and just chill out. I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee of Fundamental Data. I am not now, nor have I ever been, an investor in Fundamental data. I am not now, nor have I ever been an independent contractor, shill, or spy, for Fundamental Data. I just got tired of 10 weeks of negativity, and imagined reasons not to build a power plant. I chose to be positive about this project and present the numbers that everyone was shouting for, but no one would present.
When I was growing up I was fortunate to have access to the 900 acre Caldwell Farm with 2 cabins on it, where we had a lot of fun. I have fished, trapped, and hunted on the Caldwell and Harper Farms before most of the face book users on the “I Love Canaan Valley” page were even born. Frankly, the bully of this page wanted to know why someone from Washington, WV would care about the Davis area. It could be because I love Tucker County. Mr. Bully thought that I must be from Washington DC, or Washington, VA, and just made up the WV address. He could have just googled it, and found out it was a real place. He could have dialed 411 and asked for my phone number and called me. But no, he just got on face book and flapped his gums about why anyone from 2.5 hours away would care about Davis. I have found out over the years that people who call other people names, and demean their work, usually don’t have their facts in order.
Frankly, Mr. Bully said my work was third grade or at best high school writing. This article was evidently not down to the level of some of the respondents on this face book page. I found it interesting that about 3 people said I provided no facts for this article, except for the reference to the Pope and Young buck kills in Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia. I also most certainly did not demean any woman in this article, I just made a comparison between Fundamental Data keeping their proprietary data redacted, and the fact that she would keep her recipes as a proprietary item for her restaurant, and not publish them for the public. I actually went out of my way to say where or whom I got my information from. I will go over this and write slower thistime for the people who missed it the first time. I will also now back up the 3 times that I did not provide this backup info the first go round.
Firstly, according to County Commissioner Mike Rosenau the Mount Storm power plant starts people at $27 per hour. The operators pay there is $46 per hour. These are facts provided from someone local who should know these facts because he retired from there. Secondly, Loudoun County, Virgina has 115 data centers, all built since 2016. Duck-Duck-Go provided this info for the year 2024. Loudoun County collects $663 million dollars per year for real estate property (about 5%) and the other 95% in personal property tax from these data centers. Duck-Duck-Go gave me these numbers for the 2022 public tax records year. These are the facts. Thirdly, my figures for 20 employees for each data center came from County Commissioner Fred Davis when he visited 3 different centers, and was told that thig concern for several peoplee average number of employees per center was 20. This info was published in the Advocate, and is from someone local. These are facts. The pay figures for these jobs came from me, based on what I thought would be competitive pay versus the power plant. The pay for these jobs is a living wage, and is way above the average $30,000 per year that the average TC income per person is now at. This $30,000 number was in an article published in the Advocate about 3 months ago.
Now it is time for some numbers on the taxes that could be coming from the power plant. Casey Chapman told me that the permit that Fundamental Data applied for was not applied for under the microgrid laws, so he believes that any tax dollars generated by this project would all go to the county. I talked with Tucker County assessor Greg Stevens and if a 100 million dollar power plant was built, the tax revenue coming to the county would be $740,000 per year. If you google how much it costs to build a gas fired plant you will find it to be about 1 billion dollars.
I took the conservative approach and said 700 million to build it. $740,000 in tax revenue per 100 mil times 7 is over 5 million per year to the county.
Water seems to be a big concern for several people. Mr. Chapman told me that Fundamental would not drill any wells on the property, use any water from Beaver Creek, or would not build any dams to draw from. He did mention excess water being pumped now out of the Mettiki mine as a source of their water needs, and also mentioned that air cooling would be part of the project.
Noise pollution was also a concern of many people. That question was answered by Commissioner Fred Davis when he visited the 3 data centers. Mr. Davis said that at 100 yards there was some noise, but when you backed up to 200 yards or 300 yards, he could not hear any noise. That was also published in the Advocate, and the info is from someone local. Gotta love facts.
Concerns about diesel fuel usage and possible leaks. Mr. Chapman told me that the 3 tanks that are now planned for the project will have extra thick walls with liners. He described them as being the Mercedes of storage tanks. These tanks could also rest on pads with drainage into a holding tank to catch possible leaks. I would now like to add a new wrinkle to the diesel problem Tucker County will no longer be having the methane from the landfill bought by the company that was going to be doing so. I asked Mr. Chapman if the power plant could use the methane to be the backup fuel. He said it was possible depending on the volume that was there.
Temperature inversion is a concern to some people, but I wonder if they have studies that show that this temperature inversion is actually harmful, or just a “rad” weather phenomenon according to the National Weather Service in a January 24, 2024 article in the Elkins Inter-Mountain. Has there been an inversion since that one?
Another concern was that 90% of the town of Davis would be within 2 miles of the data center. Please google Fairfax County, Virginia, which has 1.1 million people in a county which has a land mass that is 40 square miles smaller than Tucker County. You will find that 70% of the 45 data centers that are in the county are within 500 feet of a residential area. Article by James Jarvis for the December 11. 2024 ARLnow News. Just the facts.
Some people were concerned about “light” pollution from the data centers. I talked with 2 people who live in Loudoun County and have campers in Davis. One man said he liver about 5 miles from a center and that it had 2 lights on each side of the building. He said that he did not see where there was any “light” pollution at all when he drives by those centers. The second man said he goes by some centers, and that they give off about as much light as the Shop N Save parking lot. One Tucker United advocate wanted to make a national park area in the dark area, and I said Tucker County does not need another national park paying “in lieu of taxes.” Tucker needs new businesses that will bring good paying jobs and new people to the county. There are thousands of acres of dark land in Dolly Sods, thousands of acres of land from Glade Run to the Blackwater Dam, and thousands of acres from past the cemetery thru Blackwater Canyon for those people who want the dark.
The data center project could cover up to 10,000 acres. This is being circulated by a few people of an example of a data center project on steroids, all coming a 2 line article in the May 19th Wall Street Journal. I have an email in to the writer of that article asking him who he talked with at Fundamental Data. Casey Chapman told me that he has not talked with anyone at the Wall Street Journal about this project. That is not the only troubling thing about the article. Fundamental’s current permit request is for a 1000 megawatt power plant. That plant will only supply at the most just 12—75 megawatt data centers. These centers would be about 1 acre each, and Fundamental has an option to buy just 542 acres from Western Pocahontas. I never see this project being anywhere close to 10,000 acres because of the topography of that land, and there is also deep mine shafts under the ground there. You can not build any building over top of a deep mine.
The very nature of the WSJ article sounds like the person at Fundamental is bragging about the project. That does not sound like Casey Chapman at all. Dan Parks of Country Roads News and Lydia Crawley of the Parsons Advocate will attest I am sure just how hard it is to get Casey to talk with the news. He just does not like doing it.
With new tax revenue coming in to the county, just imagine the things that could get done. Want 24 EMS coverage at 2 places–no problem. Need to fix the landfill lechate problem–no problem. Increased money for schools and pay raises for all employees–no problem.
Decrease in property values. My oldest daughter has lived in Loudon County for 27 years. I asked her to think back to the value of their house in 2016 when the first data center were built. and compare that value with their house value today. She said their house was up 40%. So much for decreased values of property.
This project of a power plant and data centers would provide about 300 good paying jobs for the county. If just 1/2 of those new job people moved to Tucker County, the county would see growth of about 600 people, or almost a 10% increase in people over what is there today. Who knows, this could encourage other companies to come to the county and set shop.
Another concern was increased traffic. Six commercial trucks per day at the most to haul diesel fuel is what the plant will supposedly burn. The president of the Tucker County Development Authority told me there are about 150 commercial trucks per day coming into Tucker County. If you add 6 more, that is an increase of just 4%. Local source, someone you know with the facts.
With about 300 new travelers for the power plant and 12 data centers per day, but mostly Monday thru Friday, that is way less traffic than comes into the area with tourons on the weekend.
When these 2 projects are completed, hopefully the new four lane highway will also be connected to the present four lane road, so this increase in car traffic should be very slight.
A few people from “I Love Canaan Valley.” somehow think this power plant just seems to have happened randomly. Nothing could be further for the truth. Casey Chapman and his father have been hunting in Tucker and Grant counties for many years. He knows the area fairly well. Tucker County though Western Pocahontas had the available right piece of land for this power plant and whatever they want to build after that to use the power that can come from it. There is a gas line right thru the property that they can tap into for their primary source of fuel. There is a water source available of water from Mettiki Mine that the mine has to pump out every day. The highways are close so that workers can get to their jobs. This could be a very nice win-win situation for Fundamental Data and Tucker County.
One person on the face book page and the person who wrote the “letter to the editor” in this week’s Advocate have suggested that since this is such a good idea, that perhaps I would like to see a similar project here in Wood County. Well, surprise surprise, I found out 2 months ago that a company is looking to build data center here. In another case, 2 weeks ago, I gave one of Wood County Commissioners Casey Chapman’s name, phone number, and email address. There is a 50 acre flat piece of ground with utilities on it, roads to it, and water access to it, just 2 miles above my house. So, I am putting my money where my mouth is.
The only objection that Tucker United has given that has any evidence behind it is the pollution numbers from the air quality permit. But amazingly, these numbers are within the safety guidelines of both the State of West Virginia and the Federal Government. I did have about 3 people that objected to my saying that any restaurant that cooks with natural gas in any piece of equipment, is putting off benzine and nitrogen oxide, which are harmful. Nobody said what I said wasn’t true, but that it was an unfair comparison. I made that comparison and said that I would still eat in restaurants to show that I am not bothered by the fact that these gases are given off, and people should not be afraid of the power plant because it is within the safety guidelines.
Brian Bennett Washington, WV 304-863-9369
