“Our precious Heavenly Father . . . we thank you for this opportunity to gather together,” prayed Roger Dahmer, Pendleton County commissioner, in the customary opening invocation. After the Pledge of Allegiance, Carl Hevener, commission president, called the meeting to order and the business of the day commenced.
“I’d like to welcome everybody to this session of the Pendleton County Commission,” he started.
He requested that the commission “change the agenda a little bit” and allow those who had come before the commission with resolutions to go first.
First, they heard from 4-H members Ross Pownell, Hannah Heavner, and Bella Hoover who attended the meeting along with Brooke Alt, Pendleton County’s West Virginia University extension agent. With the 2026 motto “Beyond Ready” in mind, Pownell read “whereas 4-H youth development programs have integrated hands-on learning experiences for over a century, empowering young people with the skills, confidence and resilience needed to lead in a changing world . . . the . . . theme ‘Beyond Ready’ highlights how the program equips incoming and existing members with critical life skills” and “the local 4-H community . . . dedicates significant time and resources to nurturing the potential of youth.” The commissioners unanimously approved recognition of Pendleton County 4-H and National 4-H Week.
Pownell and Heavner will soon travel to Kalamazoo, Michigan to compete along with Marion Williams in the National Junior Horticulture Contest. This, unless something changes, will be the last such event as the association behind the event is disbanding. Competitors have the opportunity to participate in different horticulture contests while also receiving educational and networking experiences. Such competitions help to promote learning, communication, and leadership skills in youth, reflecting the goal of youth agriculture organizations like 4-H.
October 4 through 10 is National 4-H Week.
Charlotte Hoover and Lois Carr represented the Potomac Valley Conservation District. They updated the commission on the implementation of an act of the West Virginia Legislature removing local conservation district responsibility for maintaining small watershed flood control dams and other needs. Bob Buchanan of the Little Kanawha Conservation District in an open letter to the state earlier this year cited that the original Soil Conservation Service, which became the Natural Resources Conservation Service, was structured originally to be led by counties and regional districts with the state and federal government serving in supportive roles only.
Hoover and Carr shared concerns that concentrating authority at the West Virginia Conservation Agency could leave some rural areas behind. Hoover said, “We feel that if it is handled out of Charleston, it will not be handled on the ground.” All that said, they came to the commission to ask that monies given by Pendleton County for dam maintenance and rehabilitation be reallocated for use in developing youth agriculture programs. Unable to fulfill their original mission, local conservation districts will work to fill new roles to support their areas.
The move at the state level came after a coal company’s negligence damaged two critical flood control dams in the Northern Panhandle and they required immediate work. Dahmer agreed. He stated that his experience working with the Farm Service Agency informed him that the move was “not a good thing . . . We’ve seen what the conservation districts can do.”
Carr and Hoover also shared a Potomac Valley Conservation District resolution calling for the protection of state and regional farmland as West Virginia attracts more investment in both data centers and transmission lines. They suggested that abandoned mine lands, brownfield sites in the Kanawha Valley, or other locations might serve the purpose better being “broken lands.”
Hevener responded that he had conducted his own research on the potential impact of data centers. He referred first to the data center operating in Petersburg, built in 2015 and currently operated by Continent 8. “It doesn’t use that much water,” he observed. He also referred to the closed loop process that advanced data center designs use to reduce reliance on local water. These designs have been proposed for developments at Mount Storm.
According to Data Centre Magazine, a trade publication in the field, modern data centers have moved away from “evaporative cooling” that uses significant amounts of water to prevent overheating. “Closed loop architecture recirculates fluid continuously, removing dependence on freshwater resources.” In 2025, Edged US broke ground on a major data center project with “waterless cooling at the center of its expansion strategy.” It adds that “The Chicago campus . . . will consume zero water for cooling.”
Additionally, an oft-quoted data center water consumption statistic cited in a book written against them was debunked by the author herself. Journalist Karen Hao admitted that her “Empire of AI” falsely and accidentally stated that the amount of water that a certain data center in Chile would consume was 1,000 times greater than the actual and true rates of use.
Other improvements, described by Dow Industries, include new designs and materials for O-rings and other basic components that improve thermodynamic performance going into the newest facilities.
To address power consumption and rate increase concerns, U.S. Rep. Riley Moore has backed a bipartisan bill in Congress to place the onus of paying for power infrastructure improvements onto companies constructing high impact data centers. The West Virginia State Legislature has also passed bills addressing this. First Energy furthermore advocates this action.
“I’m not for or against them,” stated Hevener, “but I have researched them.”
Under guidelines passed by the West Virginia Legislature, a one GW data center will pay the host county $16 million for local schools and $11 million to the county commission. Should the county pass an excess levy for schools, that data center would have to pay an additional $63 million to the county school system. West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey shared last month that the ultimate goal lies in completely shifting the remainder of the personal income tax burden from citizens onto data centers.
Additionally, each one GW of data center capacity constructed and operated in West Virginia will put $33,000 into every county commission budget every year. With 18.7 GW in both approved and proposed capacity, that would put a combined $617,000 into Pendleton County coffers every year even if the county never hosts a data center. They also represent more than $20 billion potentially to be invested in West Virginia.
Betsy Orndoff-Sayers, mayor of Wardensville, came to represent her constituents in requesting that the Pendleton County Commission join other local government bodies in considering opposition to the Valley Link and other transmission lines proposed for West Virginia. These lines, combined with added power plant production capacity, would reinforce the overburdened capacity of the PJM Interconnection grid and prevent brownouts or blackouts expected to start in 2030 across the PJM coalition of states.
The lines constructed as part of the Valley Link project would connect the John Amos plant in the Kanawha Valley with Maryland and Virginia, exporting power to other states and bringing revenues back to the Mountain State.
Orndoff-Sayers related the growth of opposition to transmission line expansion and data center construction in Virginia and spoke at length on possible environmental impacts. “I’m looking closely and am seeing what is happening,” she stated.
The mayor, who is also running for the House of Delegates in eastern Hardy and Pendleton counties, furthermore shared specific criticism of House Bill 2014, criticizing the state legislature for stripping local government of the ability to effectively oppose such projects in their own areas, then requested that the Pendleton County Commission join others in approving a resolution of opposition. This legislation established the tax structure of data centers, provided a legal basis for such facilities to build their own power sources, but did remove local ability to block such projects.
She also made reference to the potential construction of a wind energy facility on Jack Mountain as another issue where the county government could not block a project that had encountered opposition.
Mike Alt later in the meeting shared that he wanted to speak as a member of the public and not as representative of Pendleton County Emergency Rescue. He rhetorically asked of counties registering opposition to data centers, “Will you return that check to the state” when they start being issued. Alt then talked of support in recent years provided by Clearway for Grant County’s EMS and fire services and reiterated his earlier question, asking if organizations opposing these developments receive a check from their philanthropy, “will they give that check back?”
“Someone needs to talk about these data centers as something other than bad things,” remarked Alt.
