Data centers are growing exponentially all around the country. One is being discussed in Washington County, Ohio. There is no data center being planned in Wood County, W.Va., but the state government is doing everything it can to attract data centers to the Mountain State, and four sites are under consideration. At the governor’s urging, the WV state legislature passed HB 2014, which prohibits local jurisdiction over any data centers; the state will be diverting taxes from these sites from local bodies.

In Washington County there is a data center under consideration in the Waterford area. But the county commissioners have signed a non-disclosure agreement with the developer so little is publicly known about this plan. Many people in the Waterford community are concerned about this troubling and secretive arrangement.

There are many reasons for such concern. Data centers use a tremendous amount of electricity. A large data center can use 20-100 megawatts (iaeimagazine.org, 2026). If we assume that the data center planned for Waterford is medium sized, it will use up to five megawatts, and this would be fully one fourth of the total electricity used in Washington County (gridinfo.com). Data centers also use a great amount of water, mainly for cooling purposes (since they generate a lot of heat). A large data center can use 20 million gallons of water per day, and a medium-sized data center can use 310,000 gallons per day (Data Center News, 2025).

Another reason to be skeptical about data centers is the unfulfilled promises of jobs, economic development, and tax benefits to the local tax base promoted by developers who are eager to purchase the large swaths of land required for their purposes. In a study of the economic impacts of data centers conducted by the Ohio River Valley Institute (2025), it was reported that despite the generous tax breaks offered by state and local governments to developers, an average of only 10 employees (after initial construction) are hired per facility. This additional job growth is equivalent to that of one Olive Garden restaurant and, at most, one typical American high school according to the ORVI study. A total of $2.75 billion were added to Pennsylvanians electric bills after the establishment of data centers. This relates to another fear about data centers — i.e., that they will result in higher electric bills for all electric consumers in the state.

There is one approach to data centers that local communities like Waterford can do to mitigate these costly impacts, and that is called community benefit agreements (CBAs). A CBA, for example, may require that at least 40-50% of jobs be filled by local residents at a prevailing wage; that funded apprenticeships be offered leading to permanent jobs; that there be annual disclosure of water and energy use; that there be independent audits and public dashboards; and that long-term studies of public health impacts be conducted. The group, ReImagine Appalachia, often has webinars and resources on the topic of CBAs.

Opposition to data centers is growing in the wake of the astounding growth and attendant risks of this phenomenon. According the website Heatmap 25 data center projects were canceled in 2025, and 60 local governments declared a moratorium on the development of data centers. I have a friend who lives in the Columbus suburb of Hilliard. This is what she told me in a personal message about her experience with the development of a data center in her community: “Any local official in Ohio needs to understand that if they approve a data center in their jurisdiction, that data center will bring with it a gas plant …There will be no public notice, no public information session, no public hearing. It will be on a fast track to be approved by the state in just 45 days… It won’t matter if the data center is next to a residential neighborhood, park, school, shopping center, or animal shelter. The state can and will put it there, and there will be nothing local officials can do to stop it.”

Many of us who are skeptical about data centers have also expressed opposition to injection wells in Washington County. It might appear that we are against everything being proposed related to economic development. Such is not the case. Speaking for myself, I am eager and optimistic to support ideas such as those described in the document, “Appalachian Manufacturing Action Plan,” created by the group ReImagine Appalachia. These ideas involving the full utilization of the hard-working labor force and resources within northern Appalachia rely upon labor-intensive economic development, not the capital -intensive industries such as data centers, injection wells, and high-pressure hydraulic fracturing (i.e., fracking), which primarily direct profits to those outside the region. In my Climate Corner offering of Dec. 27, 2025, in the Parkersburg News and Sentinel (and shortly afterward in the Marietta Times), I presented several details on these ideas.

George Banziger, Ph.D. was a faculty member at Marietta College and an academic dean at three other colleges. He is a member of the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta, group leader of Citizens Climate Lobby, and a contributor to Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action team.