Mingo County, West Virginia, was once thriving, but the coal industry’s decline left it one of the poorest counties in the US. Now, several data centers could be built in the region. Are data centers a new extractive industry, or will they provide a much-needed economic lifeline?
This story was produced by More Perfect Union in partnership with 100 Days in Appalachia, an independent, non-profit digital news publication.
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Transcript from YouTube
[John Russell] What you’re looking at isn’t just an old golf course.
It’s land that’s seen more than a century of extraction, abuse, and broken promises.
[Ernie Sammons] They’re taking millions, trillions of dollars
out of coal, gas, and timber out of here.
And we’re just left with the aftermath.
[John Russell] Now, a new generation of investors is eyeing the same patch of land.
Only this time, they’re not mining for coal.
[Ernie Sammons] Along came this project of AI.
[Newscaster] Data centers coming to Mingo County.
A big initiative to attract data centers.
So if you’re thinking about a data center, come while the getting is good.
[John Russell] Mingo County, West Virginia, is one of the latest examples
of a playbook we’ve seen roll out across the U.S.
[Pam Surber] Everything’s being kept hush hush on this,
on the data centers
and the electric grid.
They don’t want you to know anything.
They originally had no intention of providing a hearing at all.
We’re essentially inviting in the worst actors,
people who would want to locate in West Virginia because of our entire lack of regulation.
[John Russell] But what does a data center mean for one of the poorest counties in America,
a county that was once the beating heart of coal country?
[Janet Gibson] Just because we’re coal miners and a coal mining neighborhood
don’t mean we don’t want clean water, clean air, clean everything.
How many people in here are opposed?
[John Russell] Are data centers the new coal mines?
Another extractive industry that’ll make a few people rich and leave everyone else with the mess?
[Tyler Cannon] And now they’re asking us to once again
pay the cost of doing business with our health and our livelihoods.
[Janet Gibson] That think we’re stupid down here.
They think they’re just going to push it on us.
[John Russell] Or, are data centers something different?
A lifeline for places like this?
[Ernie Sammons] And I firmly believe that this is going to turn this into a mecca for West Virginia.
[John Russell] We went to Mingo County to find out.
[Tyler Cannon] So we are putting up this air monitor.
So, I can put it in with wood screws,
or I can put it up with zip ties.
You put it up with whichever one’s easier for you to do.
[John Russell] Tyler Cannon grew up in the hills of southern West Virginia,
where news travels fast and nothing stays secret forever.
In March, he came across something unusual:
two brand new permit applications for power plants in Mingo County.
[Tyler Cannon] These power plants would be the second largest
in the state in terms of power generating capacity.
And they would be the third largest in the state in terms of greenhouse
gas emissions.
[John Russell] But those power plants were never meant to power the homes in Mingo.
[Newscaster] We have an update on data centers coming to Mingo County…
It’s ground zero when it comes to two potential data centers…
Residents are raising concerns…
It ain’t what we see that’s gonna kill us.
It’s what we don’t see.
[John Russell] When the news broke about the data centers,
residents started showing up to public meetings with a lot of questions.
[Tyler Cannon] Why are greenhouse gas emissions not accounted for in this permit?
What kind of experience do you have with this kind of equipment
that they’re saying that they’re going to use to control emissions?
What sort of timeframe is this project looking at?
How is the public to understand water impacts
when we have no information about volume of withdrawal?
And what would it take for us to get you to not issue these permits?
[John Russell] And for months they were met with silence,
delays, and half answers.
[Pam Surber] I have no college degree, but I have common sense
and common sense tells me this is not good.
[John Russell] Eventually, many residents started taking matters into their own hands.
Why did you decide to have one of these installed?
[Tommy Powers] I wanted it installed to find out just exactly
what this thing was gonna be, and what it was gonna emit.
[John Russell] Tommy Powers isn’t your typical tree-hugging environmentalist.
For years, he was an underground coal miner.
[Tommy Powers] I’m not doing this because I hate coal mining or are off-grid power plants.
If they can make them safe and do what’s right
I would support them.
But when I go to a meeting that they refuse to answer
questions, it tells me they have something to hide.
[John Russell] For people in Mingo, this story’s got a familiar ring to it.
Another industry, another promise of prosperity
built on the same land that coal once hollowed out.
[Tyler Cannon] We have seen every 5 to 10 years in southern West Virginia
some industrial developer propose what at that time is cutting-edge
technology that requires an incredible amount of resources,
promising jobs in hopes of a lax regulatory landscape
and political conditions that will embrace whatever industry comes our way.
It’s kind of been the history of this area.
It is, it is.
And we’re not far from that today.
[John Russell] Commercial coal mining came to Mingo County in 1890.
Since then, the money has mostly flowed out,
the mountains have been scarred, and the people?
They’ve been paying for it ever since.
[Resident at public hearing] How many people here have got breathing problems?
Put your hands up.
[Tyler Cannon] Yeah, I mean, people are paying the cost of doing business with their health,
with their environmental conditions, just as they always have.
I mean, we’re at the Miners Memorial and the cost of doing business in March
1960 was the death of 18 men.
And now they’re asking us to once again
pay the cost of doing business
with our health and our livelihoods.
[John Russell] The company behind the power plants is TransGas, based in New York.
They claim their power plants won’t be like the polluting industries of the past,
that they’ll be able to capture 99% of their emissions.
But their permit applications, which would explain exactly how they can
promise this, have been heavily redacted.
[Tyler Cannon] Now what’s left redacted is
the specific engine name of these gas turbines,
and the catalytic units.
Without that information, we have no way to verify their claims
that they’re going to capture 99% of their emissions at normal operating.
[John Russell] And it’s not just pollution.
Residents like Pam Surber have been sounding the alarm about something else:
water.
So Mingo County’s already plagued with water problems.
I don’t know if this—where they’ll get the water.
[John Russell] Data centers are thirsty.
A single facility can use millions of gallons of water a day.
But in Mingo County,
a lot of people can’t even count on clean water from their own taps,
another legacy left behind by the coal industry.
[John Russell] Why do you have to come out here for water?
[Mingo County resident] You can’t drink the city water.
It’s too much chlorine.
Or it—it’s just, they overpower it.
And when you do get water, you’re under a boil advisory.
[John Russell] How often are you having to come out here?
[Mingo County resident] Three times a week.
[John Russell] And, how important is it that this stays unpolluted?
Very important.
There’s a lot of people rely on this.
A lot.
[John Russell] How does it make you feel that water problems
have been so present for people down here, yet this thing’s gonna come in and—
I know. It blows my mind that they would even consider it
because of the water issues.
[John Russell] Do we know, for instance, whose data centers these are gonna be?
What companies are behind this?
[Tyler Cannon] No, we—it has not been released publicly
who the the data center customers would be.
[John Russell] At this point, we can only guess about who these data centers are really for.
Maybe it’s Meta who recently pledged to invest $600 billion
in building AI infrastructure by 2028.
Or maybe it’s Amazon, also planning over $100 billion in investments.
Whoever it is, the playbook isn’t new.
Massive projects often shrouded in secrecy.
And locals find out far too late,
once construction is already underway.
But these data centers didn’t just show up out of nowhere.
First, the companies had to be invited in.
[Gov. Patrick Morrisey] This is going to be the single best place in America
for data centers to come.
[John Russell] Data centers are at the heart of
Governor Patrick Morrisey’s vision for West Virginia’s future.
[Gov. Patrick Morrisey] Right now, we have a lot of data centers that have been knocking on our doors,
and they’re anxious to come to West Virginia
and start using our natural resources as a main source of power.
We’re going to make it easier for these data centers to do that.
[John Russell] Data centers are being sold as a lifeline for this region—
jobs, tax revenue,
a way to jumpstart the economy in one of the poorest parts of the state.
[Gov. Patrick Morrisey] This is a once in a generation opportunity.
I think it’s gonna drive economic growth and manufacturing
and bring a lot of high-skilled jobs into the state.
[John Russell] But the reality is a lot more complicated.
[Kelly Allen] One of Governor Patrick Morrisey’s top legislative priorities
that he muscled through during the 2025 legislation was House Bill 2014.
And it does a few things.
It completely preempts local control so that local counties and municipalities
no longer have any say in the development or operation of data centers.
And then it sets up a new, property tax scheme.
[John Russell] Property taxes are supposed to be reserved for local needs,
with the vast majority of funding going to things like schools,
fire departments, and roads.
But Governor Morrisey’s data center legislation
flipped that equation on its head.
Under the new law, 70% of property taxes
from the data centers will be diverted to the state.
[Kelly Allen] The biggest chunk of it is set to go into what’s called
the Personal Income Tax Reduction Fund.
So it’s supposed to trigger cuts in the personal income tax,
two-thirds of which will go to the wealthiest 20% of households.
[John Russell] That tax revenue could have gone a long way in Mingo County,
where 30% of people live below the poverty line.
You got this
AI super computer thing that might be going in.
It’s said that we are the richest country on Earth.
Does it feel like that?
Not here in my little community.
Because I’m seeing the need more and more and more.
And I’m seeing more of our younger people have to leave
to get jobs, to be able to make ends meet.
[John Russell] Janet Gibson runs a food pantry in Mingo County.
Why do you think there’s such a push to put them down here?
[Janet Gibson] I think so that they can get away with whatever they need to get away with.
And they think that we’re
dumb hillbillies.
I don’t—I don’t know.
Is that something you heard before?
Yeah. Everybody’s heard it down here.
They think we’re stupid down here.
They think they’re just going to push it on us.
We’re not going to—
we’re not going to benefit from it.
[John Russell] But not every local is opposed to the project.
[Ernie Sammons] Everything costs something, okay?
The fact is,
does the benefit outweigh the bad?
And that’s what we’re talking about here, I think, does the benefit outweigh the bad?
And I think it does by a big margin.
[John Russell] Ernie Sammons owns the Twisted Gun Golf Course,
which sits on top of what used to be an old coal mine.
Now it’s slated to be the site of a new data center.
What is it about these data centers that you really want to go in here?
Why do you want this to happen?
[Ernie Sammons] It’ll generate jobs. Lots of jobs, lots of high-paying jobs.
[John Russell] We couldn’t find any hard numbers on how many jobs these data centers would bring.
But in general, data centers aren’t huge job creators.
Once they’re built, they usually employ somewhere between 50 and 200 workers.
And there’s no guarantee that any of those jobs will go to locals.
There’s a concern that these aren’t going to be local jobs,
that a lot of the folks that, you know, these are high-skill technical things.
Well, they won’t be for a lot of local people.
There’s a lot of local people here who’ve never had a job in their life.
They live off—they get a check every month, okay?
They’ve never had a job.
[Janet Gibson] “Create jobs, create jobs, create jobs.”
Who are you creating them for? Those 250 you’re going to bring in and house up there?
That ain’t my locals, that ain’t my ones that I’m helping compensate
income with a blessing box.
[Tyler Cannon] I’m sorry, I’m so fucking bummed.
Yeah.
So fucking bummed.
I mean, like—why are you bummed? Just tell me about that.
On our second day of filming, it was official.
The state’s Department of Environmental Protection had approved the permits.
[Tyler Cannon] If we’re talking dream scenario here, a permitting process
should be based on prior and informed consent
on the part of everyone miles around.
[John Russell] Is that what happened here?
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
In fact,
the whole focus of the organizing we’ve been doing for the last three months
has been to push the DEP to recognize the validity of local people’s concerns
and come down here to share with people what they want to permit—
or what they just permitted— in their backyards.
[John Russell] Powerful tech companies and politicians are already lining up
to write the next chapter of West Virginia’s future,
whether local residents want it or not.
And across the country, it’s a similar story.
Massive deals struck behind closed doors.
Local voices drown out.
And the whole thing is called progress.
But in the shadow of all of that, people here have been building something else:
an economy rooted in the land itself.
We’re in Mingo County, West Virginia, and when you’re here,
you gotta hit the trails.
The Hatfield-McCoy Trails
wind through Mingo, bringing people from all over.
Oh, dang. Look at that.
[Hatfield-McCoy Worker] Australia, Philippines, New Zealand.
[John Russell] Whoa!
England.
[John Russell] All that traffic brings real wealth into the county.
Gas stations, motels, restaurants.
And for the most part, it stays here instead of getting siphoned out of state.
It’s not perfect.
It won’t rebuild the schools or provide clean water, but it’s something.
And it begs the question:
Are data centers really the best that Mingo County can hope for?
Does it feel like this is inevitable?
Pretty much. It’s going to come.
But again, we can fight to make sure that it’s done correctly.
[Tyler Cannon] How I see this industry developing in the state is a bit of a mystery.
But one thing that I know for certain
is that the communities that are being presented with this,
they’re not going to take it quietly.
And they haven’t been.
[Tommy Powers] But you can at least take the message back
that says that if you approve this permit, you’re taking away my quality of life.
That’s right.
It’s not right
to come into our area and push this on so many people that don’t want it.
But the thing really is, a lot of people around here still do not know anything
about this.
Why? Why do you think there’s such a push?
You know, the governor is trying to make this a thing for the whole state. Why?
Why do you think there’s such a push to put him down here?
I think so that they can get away with whatever they need to get away with.
And I think that we’re
dumb hillbillies.
I don’t I don’t know that.
That’s something you have. Is that something you heard before?
Yeah, everybody’s heard it down here.
I think we’re stupid down here. I think they’re just going to push it on us.
I think we’re not going to.
We’re not going to benefit from it.
It just, you know, it looks like you’re meeting a really big need.
Yeah.
I don’t know if I’m meeting it, but I’m helping with it.
I’m helping with hunger.
I can’t give you a month’s worth of food,
but I can help you until your food stamps come in or your next check comes in.
Or are you just run out of a can of applesauce?
As I’ve
said, this is a once in a generation opportunity.
I think it’s going to drive economic growth and manufacturing
and bring a lot of high skilled jobs into the state.
And then the other thing it does is it takes the tax revenue.
Right?
So property taxes are overwhelmingly a local tax,
99% of property taxes stay in the local community.
Now, you know, if you’re in Mingo County, your property taxes are paying
for schools and public services.
That benefits all families, all businesses alike.
Under this new law,
70% of that would be diverted to the state.
So what is the extra money that’s going to the state going to be used for?
And who’s that going to benefit?
So, yeah, under this new scheme, property tax revenue from the data
centers is going to be diverted to state priorities that state lawmakers set.
The biggest chunk, half of it is going to go to a personal income
tax reduction fund.
So the idea is that it would,
data center revenue would
offset and allow us to ratchet down the personal income tax,
of which two thirds of any tax cuts would go to the top
20% of households.
Where?
Mingo County, West Virginia.
And when you’re here, you got to hit the trails.
That.
All right.
Hi, everybody.
From under a comforter in a hotel room.
It’s getting hot under these covers.
Okay.
Tyler cannot.
And for months,
they were met with.
Tommy Powers
isn’t your typical tree hugging environmentalist.
He was an underground coal miner for X years.
We’ll pick up.
Sorry, I haven’t got this yet.
And it’s not just pollution.
And it’s not just pollution.
Residents like Pam Serber have been sounding the alarm.
At this point,
we can only guess about who these data centers are really for.
Maybe it’s Metta who recently pledged to invest
600 billion in building AI infrastructure by 2028.
Or maybe it’s
Amazon also planning hundreds of billions of dollars in investments.
Whoever it is, the playbook isn’t new.
Massive projects often shut.
Whoever it it,
whoever it is.
The playbook isn’t new.
Massive projects often shrouded in secrecy,
and locals who find out far too late.
Once construction is already underway.
At this point,
we can only guess about who these data centers are really for.
Maybe it’s Mehta who recently pledged
to invest 600 billion in.
At this point, we can only guess about who these projects are.
Really for.
Maybe it’s Mehta who recently pledged to invest
600 billion in building AI infrastructure by 2028.
Or maybe it’s Amazon
also planning hundreds of billions in investments.
Whoever it is, the playbook isn’t new.
Massive projects often shrouded in secrecy,
and locals who find out far too late.
Once construction is already underway.
At this point,
we can only guess about who these data centers are really for.
At this point,
we can only guess about who these projects are really for.
Maybe it’s Mehta who recently pledged to invest $600
billion in building AI infrastructure by 2028.
But these data centers didn’t just show up out of nowhere.
First, the companies had to be invited in.
But these data centers didn’t just show up out of nowhere.
First, the companies had to be invited in.
But these data centers didn’t just show up out of nowhere.
First, the companies had to be invited in.
Across West Virginia.
Data centers are at the center of a new vision for the state’s future.
A top priority for Governor Patrick Morrisey.
Data centers are at the heart of Governor.
Data centers
are at the heart of Governor Patrick Morse’s vision
for West Virginia’s future.
Across West
Virginia, data centers are at the heart of Governor Patrick Morris’s vision
for the state’s future.
Data centers are being sold as a lifeline for this region.
Jobs, tax revenue, a way to jumpstart the economy
in one of the poorest parts of the state.
But the reality is a lot more complicated.
Property
taxes are supposed to be reserved for local needs.
With the vast majority of funding going to things like schools,
fire departments and roads.
But Governor.
But Governor Morse’s data center legislation
flipped that equation on its head.
Under the new law,
70% of property taxes from the data centers
will be diverted.
Under the new.
Under the new law, 70% of.
Under the new law.
Under the new law,
70% of property taxes from the data centers
will be diverted to the state.
But Governor Morse’s data center legislation
flipped that equation on its head.
Under the new law, 70% of property taxes from the data centers
will be diverted to the state.
That tax revenue could have gone a long way in Mingo
County, where 30% of people live below
the poverty line.
That tax revenue could have gone a long way in Mingo
County, where 30% of the people live
below the poverty line.
That tax revenue could have gone a long way in Mingo
County, where 30% of people live
below the poverty line.
Janet Gibson runs a food
pantry in Mingo County.
Janet Gibson runs a food pantry in Mingo County.
But not every local
is opposed to the project.
But not every local
is opposed to the project.
But not every local is opposed
to the project.
Ernie Sammons owns the Twisted Gun Golf Course,
which sits on top of what used to be an old coal mine.
Now it’s slated to be the site
of a new data center.
Ernie Sammons owns the Twisted Gun Golf Course,
which sits on top of what used to be an old coal mine.
Now, it’s slated to be
the site of a new data center.
Ernie Sammons owns the.
Ernie Sammons owns the Twisted Gun Golf Course,
which sits on what?
Ernie Sammons owns the Twisted Gun Golf Course,
which sits on top of what used to be an old coal mine.
Now it’s slated to be the site of a new data center.
Trans gas claims the project
would create 300 permanent jobs once completed.
But most data centers of this size end up
with dozens of permanent roles, not hundreds.
And there’s no guarantee that any of those jobs
will go to locals.
Testing.
Checking the mic.
Checking the mic for this and that.
Trans gas.
Trans gas claims
the project would create 300 permanent jobs once completed.
But most data centers of this size end up
with dozens of permanent roles, not hundreds.
And there’s no guarantee that any of those jobs will go
to locals.
All right.
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Previously Published on 100daysinappalachia with Creative Commons License
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