Petitions against the proposed data center in Waterford were available to sign outside a polling place at the Washington County Fairgrounds during the May 5 Ohio primary election. (Photo by Amber Phipps)

Washington County Commissioner Charlie Schilling responded to public comments that had circulated regarding the tax abatement for the data center in Waterford. During the commissioner’s weekly meeting on Thursday, Schilling said there would be economic benefits from the data center.

“It was put out there that there would be no tax benefit for the community, no tax benefit whatsoever for the community,” he said. “If you want to talk about there being false information out there, that’s as close to false as anything.”

Schilling said if people did the research and understood how property taxes worked, they would find out that there would be millions of dollars generated from the property where the data center would be located.

“Those properties (sold in Waterford), before the sale, generated $50,000 a year for the county. The County General Fund received $17 million in property tax each year,” said Schilling. “Around six million of that comes to the county general account for the commissioners budget and the other 11 million goes to levies.”

He said the money from the property tax the data center would reside on would generate money that goes towards local entities like the Washington County Board of Developmental Disabilities, children’s services, and emergency response centers.

He said a $1 billion project would generate $16.87 million and a $2 billion project would generate around $33.74 million that would go directly back into the county.

“No tax benefit whatsoever? That’s false information from someone that doesn’t want to do the research it takes in order to come to an opinion and a conclusion,” he said.

During public comment Marietta resident George Banziger asked Schilling what he thought the reasons for Stephanie Lang’s win in the Ohio primaries was attributed to.

“I feel like there are issues that are being discussed within the community, whether that has to do with the data center or injection wells … I believe there’s a lot of discussion over that,” said Schilling. “I believe from the research I’ve done it’s not 100% false information but there’s a lot of false information out there.”

Schilling said people should do their research first before coming to any conclusions.

Banziger said, “I think what you might be saying is that the election outcome is due to misinformation.”

Marietta resident and MASH Focus Press Holly Kellums asked where the residents should go to find the correct information.

“I would like to make a request for a list of the misinformation and the correct information, so we can do our due diligence as a community, as a network, and as neighbors to verify any misinformation that you guys believe that we have,” said Kellums.

“I think with respect to injection wells, there’s a lot of scientifically based information and information from oil and gas experts who demonstrate massive amounts of production waste injected into our grounds does migrate,” said Banziger. “And in Oklahoma they’ve seen it migrate to water aquifers.”

Schilling said the commissioners have taken those concerns to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the commissioners do not have the power to regulate or permit anything.

Banziger said the commissioners did have opportunities to sign petitions that were delivered to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and “the nondisclosure agreement the commissioners embarked upon was ill advised.”

Banziger concluded his comments and said the voters have addressed their concerns through the ballot box.

“There is a lot of worry and concern that the commissioners are not doing enough,” said Banziger. “I know you’ve communicated a few things to the ODNR, but we don’t think this is sufficient.”

Schilling said there were individuals who made claims that an NDA had been signed four to five years ago. He said that was false information.

“The actual date of the NDA was signed for this agreement in January of this year,” he said. “I challenge anyone to do the research that any commissioner over the last five years signed an NDA on anything.”

The commissioners said there are no updates and no agreements that have been made with the developers and they continue to urge for a public meeting soon.

Amber Phipps can be reached at aphipps@newsandsentinel.com