Mason County data center construction site floods again; locals concerned

According to residents on University Lane, located beside the data center construction site, this has been the third flood in their neighborhood.

"They flooded the center of this street Memorial Day weekend and it was horrific. It was three houses, and then it spread out and it went down the street," Mason County resident Marsha Frame said. "Three days later, they flooded our backyard and then this past weekend, they flooded those same houses again."

Frame said after the first two floods, the residents were told that there was mitigation done to handle the rainfall, but a third incident still happened.

Jim Pyle, another resident of the neighborhood, said of the three houses that dealt with the most of the flooding, all have experienced damage to their yards, as well as some of the houses' crawl spaces.

Of those three affected homes, one of the families has already left and more are looking to leave, according to Pyle.

On the street, there are 11 homes, including three that are vacant and two with "for sale" signs out front. According to the residents, almost every homeowner has received an offer from the company to buy their home.

Frame said as she sees people leave and doors go unanswered, there are layers of grief.

"It's grieving the death of this neighborhood. Our life, what we thought our life was gonna be," she said. 

'Hell on earth'

Pyle said the center's construction has changed the neighborhood. He said the loudest the neighborhood used to be was from a lawnmower — now it's bulldozers.

"It's been hell on earth," Pyle said. "A little while when they run the dozers and the equipment around the side, it shakes the house."

Frame said she has been consistently having to deal with dirt and dust that has been thrown into her yard and onto her back porch. With the amount of dirt and construction, she said she didn't even bother to plant the flowers in her backyard.

The Monarch Compute Campus data center and power generation microgrid is under construction along W.Va. 62 north of Point Pleasant with site preparation underway.

According to Nscale, "developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and Caterpillar, the site is the first-ever state-certified Artificial Intelligence (AI) Microgrid in the United States. Phase 1 is engineered to host 1.35GW of AI computing capacity, with delivery targeted by early 2028. Phase 1 is just the start: Monarch is designed as a multi-phase campus, with a clear expansion path to 8GW+ as workload demand grows."

An uncertain future

Among all the concerns of residents, the future possibilities of the site are what concerns them the most — and no one will answer their questions.

"Honestly, there's no sense in talking to them. Most of them, when they did talk to us in the beginning, they didn't know what a data center was. They didn't know that's what they were doing," Frame said. "It's kind of one of those, 'We just go and run the bulldozer where they tell us to go. We don't have any idea what's going on here.'"

Frame said she was unsure if the workers were being untruthful or just don't understand what they are doing.

"It's like a kick in the teeth from the governor all the way down to our local county commissioners," Pyle said.

Frame said she received an offer for her home from the company, but did not accept. Pyle said they have not offered him anything, but both plan to stay.

"I've been here since 1980. My wife and I moved here, raised a little daughter and everything. They're both gone now. I'm by myself," Pyle said. "I don't really have anywhere to go and I'm 70 years old. I don't feel like moving."

Frame agreed.

"I told one of our neighbors, I can go to a house that I hate in a neighborhood where I'm miserable or I can be miserable in the house I love. Right now, that's the choice," she said. 

State DEP issues permit enforcement order

On Tuesday, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection issued a unilateral enforcement order to Monarch Cloud Campus LLC following an investigation into stormwater permit violations at its Mason County site that contributed to flooding and sediment impacts in the residential area.

According to a statement about the order, DEP inspectors — following an investigation after heavy rainfall on July 11 — determined the controls were overwhelmed, allowing sediment-laden water to leave the site and enter neighboring residential properties. Follow-up inspections also found additional erosion and sediment control deficiencies elsewhere on the project, the release states.

The enforcement order requires Monarch Cloud Campus to "immediately repair and strengthen the stormwater controls that failed, install additional erosion and sediment controls where needed, and take whatever actions are necessary to prevent similar releases from occurring in the future," the statement reads.

"Construction stormwater permits are intended to keep sediment on the construction site and protect neighboring properties and nearby streams," said DEP Cabinet Secretary Harold Ward said in the release. "When those controls fail, or when work occurs without the required protections in place, the WVDEP will take enforcement action to ensure the problems are corrected."

Monarch Cloud Campus informed the DEP that it is working directly with affected homeowners to clean up and repair flood- and sediment-related impacts to their properties at no cost to the residents, according to the release.

The DEP will continue inspecting the site throughout the corrective action process, according to the release.