West Virginia has been sold out to the data center racket by our carpetbagging failure of a governor, Jersey Pat Morrisey who went all in for them as the center of his “economic” plan for the state. And the state legislature, which features a GOP super majority and which is essentially a wholly-owned Koch brothers subsidiary via “Americans For Prosperity”, codified how data centers will be allowed to damage the state:

The version of the bill that now stands as law is aimed at recruiting the establishment of data centers in West Virginia. It allows any data centers that do locate here to curtail local zoning ordinances and other regulatory processes and establishes a certified microgrid program, which means data centers can produce and use their own power without attaching to already existing utilities.

The law also creates a specialized tax structure for data centers and microgrids, which must be placed in designated districts. Local governments have little say or control over those districts, which are established at the state level.

Taxes collected on any data centers and microgrids operating in West Virginia would be split as so: 50% will go to the personal income tax reduction fund, 30% will go to the county where the data center is located, 10% will go to the remaining 54 counties split on a per capita basis using the most recent U.S. Census, 5% will be placed in the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund administered by the Water Development Authority and the final 5% will be put in the newly created Electric Grid Stabilization and Security Fund.

That fund is meant to help existing utilities develop and maintain infrastructure for continued generation and transmission of coal-fired and natural gas-fueled power.

Yes, you read that correctly—it is a plan that helps fossil fuel companies and their attendant billionaires here in WV. Most of the fund goes to a fake income tax reduction which redirects most of the “tax cut” to, you guessed it, the super rich here in the state. Most of the rest of us will be lucky to get a $100 annual deduction. 10% goes to funds which any county who ends up needing environmental mitigation will never see—the legislature is done for the year and refused to do anything about the counties in WV with undrinkable “drinking” water, so fat chance any funds from the “Water Development Authority” will step in to help. The county where the damage is being done only gets 30%. And then counties which are sacrificing nothing are reaping the benefits. Oh and local authorities don’t get to enforce zoning or other local laws.

This sucks. And it especially sucks because WV Republicans are stupid liars who think we are too stupid to see their lies.

On Wednesday Daniel Linville, a statehouse delegate Cabell County (R–No Data Centers There)  introduced a “tool” touting the economic gain these awful facilities will bring to everyone in the state. The state has approved a large data center in Berkeley County, a $ 4 billion investment to create 600MW of power. The Linville “tool” shows this:

You will see the first lie—that a project of this size would be a $20 billion investment and it’s only 20% of that revenue estimate.

My county gets a whopping $148,000 from this monstrosity. But look at all of the tax cut money it generates:

Linville’s county however receives $241,000, despite not being anywhere near the center. See, Berkeley County and my county share some waterways which makes downstream contamination a problem here. But his county, which will not be affected in any way by this data center and which is not facing possible mitigation needs, gets more. See how the racket works?

Finally let’s look at the alleged benefit to the host county:

Look at that school funding number. Looks good, huh? Well, let’s read the fine print, shall we?

Weird how the total includes taxpayer money that has nothing to do with what the data center will allegedly bring in, huh?

They think we are stupid.  Oh and the WhoIs info for the site is hidden. No kidding, huh?

The good news is that there is already a massive push back to this data center. There will be a town hall on it on Friday, and it’s already been moved to a larger facility because of the incredible opposition to the project.

I’ll leave you with this: