I knew a kid who was at a high-school dance. He built up his courage and asked a girl to dance. She ignored him. Said nothing. Didn’t even look.
He stood there a moment. He knew she could hear. He’d seen her hear before. He knew he had spoken. He’d spoken before. She was simply refusing to acknowledge his request. Dismissing him.
The people of Tucker County are like that kid. They have asked the state government of West Virginia to please not build a behemoth, energy sucking, pollution-emitting data storage facility near Davis, Thomas, Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley.
The state government has ignored the people of Tucker County. The state government isn’t pretending not to care about the people of Tucker County. The state government does not care.
This is the latest chapter of West Virginia’s elected leaders and government institutions ignoring their citizens so they can please big business. Even if pleasing big business will harm their citizens.
Building a data center in Tucker County is like building a data center in the Grand Canyon. I’ve been to both places. Both places are equally beautiful and valuable. Both should be treated as national treasures -- not defaced by industry.
My understanding of data centers is that they house bunches of computers which store data from the internet, are important for Artificial Intelligence, consume enormous amounts of electrical power, generate a lot of heat, and then need more energy to cool the computers.
As my buddy Andy Irwin says of the data center in his hometown of Covington, Georgia, “It’s where they store all the cat videos.â€
I’m conflicted about data centers. I use the internet. But, I am proud to say I have never posted a cat video and have only ever once "liked" a cat related post. This is me fighting the system.
I have a bunch of apps on my phone. The app that causes me the most guilt is my Merlin bird watching app.
Say I’m out in the wild trying to identify a Dickcissel, or Yellow-breasted Chat, or a Tufted Titmouse (I believe one-third of all birds were named by junior high school boys). I open Merlin. It listens to the birds around me and sends what it hears to a data storage center. The data storage center rummages through its electronic files, burns carbon-releasing energy, slurps up water, belches air-pollutants, and then tells me exactly what birds I’m hearing. It’s amazing, but my fear is that by the time I receive the information, the data center will have caused so much ecological damage that the bird species I’m hearing will be extinct.
So, I’m conflicted about data centers. I don’t like them, but I use them.
I’m not being a “Not In My Backyard-ist.†Quite the contrary. If you must build a data center, build that data center in my backyard, instead of Tucker County. I live in Kanawha County, in the middle of the Chemical Valley, where every breath of air is almost as healthy as smoking. Freshwater seeps into our drinking chemicals when it rains. Ammonia and chlorine gas leaks are probably forecast in the Farmer’s Almanac.
Spare Tucker County and bring your data center here. Let your toxic discharges duke it out with our established emitters in the skies over the gold-domed Capitol. Let your huge tanks of diesel see if they can out-leak the tanks we already have.
The people of Tucker County, and other West Virginians, have asked the Republican-led state government, “Please do not build this here.†The government hasn’t ignored the people. The government simply dismissed the people’s wishes.
Our state government officials, purveyors and practitioners of Actual Unintelligence, say what they always say: “It’ll be great. It’ll be safe. It’ll create jobs. Sure, those jobs will mostly be short-term construction jobs that we’ll probably hire an out-of-state contractor to fulfill, but jobs are jobs. We take care of our people. Look at our coal miners. They have jobs where they can make money and get black lung. Who else has that?!
We allowed a Rockwool plant to be built across the street from an elementary school. Any ill effects those kids have from the emissions will be nothing compared to the polio and diphtheria they get when we eradicate vaccines.
We provide you some of the dirtiest electricity in America and charge you one of the highest rates in the country. Next year, you’ll probably lose your health insurance. Oh, and if you’re poor, you can’t buy soda, because soda is bad for you.â€
On behalf of the people of Tucker County, I ask the state government to please not build the data center there. I’ll be standing here in my tuxedo and cummerbund awaiting your answer.
