Monarch, Google project environmental fears drive opposition | Energy and Environment

But that’s what she and dozens of other residents made clear during a 3½-hour commission meeting Tuesday night about what they believe is on the table with a planned Google data center campus for the Buffalo area projected to potentially emit up to hundreds of tons of harmful air pollutants.

“What other cancers are we going to bring in with these data centers?” Ashley Armstrong of Eleanor, Putnam County, asked after reporting she had been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a chronic neuromuscular disease worsened by air pollution that causes weakness in muscles, sometimes including those that control breathing.

“I could stop breathing, and with the pollution that’s going to come out of these data centers, that can kill me,” Armstrong said.

Less than 48 hours later, Gov. Patrick Morrisey struck a different tone in hailing reports that artificial intelligence company Anthropic had agreed to spend roughly $45 billion over six years for AI computing capacity at a data center campus planned for Mason County by United Kingdom-headquartered AI infrastructure firm Nscale.

Morrisey, the chief proponent of the controversial West Virginia House Bill 2014 that he signed into law in 2025, stripping communities of local regulatory control over data center projects to fast-track their development, called the news “an extraordinary vote of confidence in our state and the strategy we put in place.”

A six-year, 460-megawatt deal was struck between Nscale and Anthropic under which the latter is to rent computing power from the former in a setup expected to come online in late 2027, according to a source familiar with the agreement.

The new Monarch Compute Campus is planned to be a 1.35-gigawatt data center and 2-gigawatt natural gas power plant.

Construction is anticipated to occur over roughly two years, with $69.2 billion in planned expenditures and some 400 and 245 employees expected to be employed at the data center and power plant, respectively, once operational.

An analysis prepared by business consulting firm Ernst & Young for Nscale published this month projects $329 million in state sales tax generated by equipment and material purchases for the data center and $76 million in sales tax revenues generated by material purchases for the power plant.

But projections of tax revenue influxes and other economic development fall flat for Putnam Countians who fear the Google project will have similar adverse environmental impacts in their communities as those already inflicted by Monarch site preparation work in the Point Pleasant area of Mason County.

“Floodwaters have poured into nearby neighborhoods in Mason County, damaging homes, creating mold [and] huge dust clouds, making it hard to breathe. Poor air visibility. Constant noise and heavy truck and machinery traffic. That is ridiculous,” DiDomenico said. “You wouldn’t believe it unless you pulled out of my road to see how dangerous it is.”

“We should evaluate these decisions on more than just the financial impacts,” Joseph DeGroff, of data center-focused community advocacy group Putnam United, said at the commission’s meeting Tuesday.

Putnam United’s stand comes amid growing evidence of data center development-linked environmental consequences for Mason and Putnam counties from the projects via a string of state-issued environmental violations for Monarch in the former and a state air quality permit application filed by a Google affiliate in the latter.

The data center-linked project planned via Monarch Cloud Campus LLC has racked up West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection-issued violations for erosion and sediment control failures, leaving stream waters polluted, soils exposed and vegetation stained.

Proposed for the project has been a gas-fired, off-grid electric power generation facility consisting of 864 natural gas-fueled heat engines called reciprocating internal combustion engines, with electricity generated by the facility used to power data center operations to be located within the planned power generation campus.

In March 2026, Nscale, a United Kingdom-based artificial intelligence infrastructure company founded in 2024, announced it acquired American Intelligence & Power Corporation, an artificial intelligence infrastructure firm affiliated with Fidelis New Energy that had been behind plans for the computing campus.

Nscale announced — but has not provided to the Gazette-Mail upon request — a signed letter of interest with Microsoft to deliver approximately 1.35 gigawatts of AI computing power from the campus, a site with up to 2,250 acres for which Nscale has declared plans to build one of the world’s largest AI factories to meet global demand.

Microsoft declined comment on a Bloomberg report Wednesday that it had walked away from the deal.

In an Aug. 11 letter addressed to Monarch Cloud Campus executive William Calhoun, DEP Division of Air Quality Director Laura Crowder said a July 29 DEP investigation established that Monarch construction had violated state statutes governing control of particulate matter air pollution, indicating failure to keep particulate matter from discharging beyond property boundary lines.

A Monarch Compute Campus spokesperson subsequently told the Gazette-Mail the company was working with the DEP to address the dust issue it identified. The spokesperson said that since construction started, the company added water trucks on continuous deployment and, since the July inspection, replaced the dirt road on site with a rock road to guard against dust from moving vehicles and added more street sweeping trucks to clean debris from the road.

Crowder noted in her letter that the DEP conducted its site probe in response to July 28 and 29 citizen complaints.

Earlier in July, the DEP issued an enforcement order to Monarch Cloud Campus following an investigation into stormwater permit violations that contributed to flooding and sediment impacts on nearby residents. The DEP said its inspectors responded after heavy rainfall on July 11 caused stormwater to build up behind erosion and sediment controls along the southern edge of the construction site. The agency said its inspectors found the controls were overwhelmed, letting sediment-laden water leave the site and enter neighboring residential properties.

Follow-up inspections found further erosion and sediment control deficiencies elsewhere on the project.

The enforcement order required Monarch to immediately repair and strengthen the stormwater controls that failed and set up additional erosion and sediment controls where needed.

In an Aug. 18 letter to the DEP, Calhoun reported corrective actions the company subsequently took included replacing and reinforcing a compromised section of silt fence along the south perimeter, regrading that perimeter and diverting runoff away from it.

The DEP on June 10 issued Monarch Cloud Campus a water pollution control permit violation notice after finding it failed to stop sediment-laden water from leaving the site without going through appropriate mitigation control, failed to protect fill slopes with measures to divert runoff away from them, didn’t maintain perimeter controls and allowed sediment deposits in an unnamed tributary of the Ohio River, a source of drinking water for over 5 million people.

On June 4, the DEP issued a violation notice to Monarch Cloud Campus after finding a section of perimeter control missing, mass earthwork being conducted earlier than approved, company failure to report sedimentation of a wetland and stream to a designated spill alert phone number, sediment staining on vegetation beyond where a woven geotextile fence should have been installed, lack of a stormwater discharge structure, and a large erosion gully formed from a failure to divert flows around exposed soils.

On May 28, the DEP issued a violation notice to Monarch Cloud Campus after determining the company allowed sediment-laden water to discharge from an incorrectly installed filter bag and enter the W.Va. 62 culvert on the west side of the site while also failing to install a sediment basin on the site’s south side as proposed in a DEP-approved stormwater pollution prevention plan.

Four days earlier, the DEP had issued a violation notice to Monarch Cloud Campus after finding sections of silt fence compromised and allowing sediment deposits past the project’s permitted disturbance limit on adjacent properties.

Some half-dozen Mason County residents living near the campus construction site experienced flooding on the weekend of May 23-24 after a silt fence separated at a connection point, ushering in a release of water after a weekend deluge. No injuries were reported, and West Virginia lawmakers representing the area said in a statement damage appeared to have been limited mainly to garages, crawlspaces and heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment.

A Monarch spokesperson told the Gazette-Mail that what the company has called a voluntary home purchase program to support the project allows homeowners not interested in selling stay in their homes, with offers extended until June 30, 2028. Homes acquired through the program will be used for employee or contractor housing, the spokesperson said.

As of Aug. 14, 24 homes had closed and another 14 homes were under contract, according to the spokesperson, who pledged that every participating homeowner would receive an above-market offer, with Monarch covering closing costs.

Monarch Cloud Campus has planned to start operations around Jan. 1, 2027, at the planned data center and power generation microgrid facility off Ohio River Road (W.Va. 62), where it estimates potential to annually emit:

1,043 tons of carbon monoxide, which can contribute to atmospheric chemical reactions that lead to ozone air pollution and climate change900 tons of volatile organic compounds, which can contribute to ground-level ozone and may cause cancer506 tons of nitrogen oxides, which can harm respiratory systems and contribute to acid rain38 tons of fine particulate matter, or soot, which has been linked to premature death in people with heart or lung disease, heart attacks, worsened asthma and diminished lung function

A report released in July by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental advocacy group, listed the Monarch project as having the second-highest estimated potential greenhouse gas emissions in the country among planned data center gas plants.

The Google-backed project near Buffalo in Putnam County would impact more than 34 acres of 17 wetlands and more than 45,000 feet of 34 streams to construct eight data center buildings, designated electrical substations, supporting office buildings, parking areas, internal access roads, stormwater management facilities, a wastewater treatment plant, a water treatment plant, utilities and related infrastructure, according to an application to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Wetlands purify water and retain floodwater, impacts that come in handy in West Virginia given its disproportionately poor water quality and flood-prone topography.

The project area is located near Buffalo on a 1,699-acre parcel situated along the eastern and western side of Charleston Road and east of the right descending bank of the Kanawha River between river mile points 18.8 and 21.

Melanie Lacy, of Buffalo, told the Putnam County Commission at its Tuesday meeting she fears the Google project will result in faster surface rainwater runoff on low-lying land around her Ida Street home.

“Where’s all the additional water going to go?” Lacy said.

Barbie Fronk told the commission she was a Putnam County native who moved away before buying property across from Lacy in July — a flat piece of property with an open floor plan to accommodate her husband, who has had to be rescued twice amid health struggles that include having battled cancer twice and possibly having Parkinson’s disease.

But soon after buying the property, Fronk recalled, she learned about HB 2014 through Lacy.

“My fear is, are we going to be flooded out as soon as we move in?” Fronk said.

Palo Alto, California-based Google affiliate Cumulus Group LLC on July 22 filed a DEP air quality permit application noting the project would include construction of eight data center buildings, ancillary support buildings and the following equipment:

288 2,750-kilowatt, diesel-fired emergency generators4 1,000-kilowatt, diesel-fired auxiliary backup generators2 1,000-kilowatt diesel-fired fire pumps128 evaporative cooling towers294 diesel belly tanks

Each engine would result in combustion products that include nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, fine particulate matter and hazardous air pollutants, according to the application.

A small portion of circulating water may become cooling tower emissions in the form of drift droplets that may contain dissolved solids from the cooling water, meaning that cooling towers could emit fine particulate matter, the application warns.

The application reports a facility-wide annual potential to emit:

249.06 tons of nitrogen oxides75.89 tons of carbon monoxide33.06 tons of fine and other particulate matter10.48 tons of volatile organic compounds198 pounds of benzene, a hazardous air pollutant that can cause blood cell cancers via long-term exposure

“The health issues, they’re really coming,” Dr. Kyle McCausland, an emergency room doctor who lives on the border of Putnam and Mason counties, told the commission. “Wait till you see the COPD. Wait till you see the asthma. Wait till you see the cardiac problems.”

Google created a site-dedicated website at buffalowvdatacenter.com at which the tech giant says it “evaluate[s] the local water source for each data center, using a science-based framework to assess watershed health,” seeking alternatives like air cooling or recycled water in areas with high water risk.

Google says on the site it will work closely with local leaders on traffic mitigation and needed road repairs.

The West Virginia Department of Commerce approved a high-impact data center certification under HB 2014 allowing Google’s project to advance in March after what a Gazette-Mail Freedom of Information Act request later revealed to be six-plus months of closed-door meetings before the project was made public in a March 27 Governor’s Office announcement.

Putnam County Commission President Andy Skidmore responded to repeated calls from residents to sue the state over HB 2014, which aims to incentivize data center development by removing local zoning and other regulatory control over sharing critical information about their projects publicly.

Skidmore said county officials were “looking at” filing a lawsuit over HB 2014 with Monongalia County but predicted an “extremely uphill battle.”

“If you guys take this passion to the Legislature, maybe we can have an impact,” Skidmore said.

But data center opponents looking for a foothold got a sense of how slippery the legal slope in that space can be Wednesday when the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals issued orders dismissing two cases in which Tucker United, a Tucker County-based community group fighting a planned, DEP air quality-permitted data center-linked project there was challenging the DEP’s August 2025 permit approval.

The court found it lacked jurisdiction under state environmental review statutes to rule on the challenges.

Environmental groups that have challenged the permit said in a statement Friday they plan to ask the Supreme Court to determine which judicial division should hear the merits of an appeal.

“When decisions are being made about the future of Putnam County, the people of Putnam County should have a voice in those decisions,” Putnam United organizer Jessica Lacy said. “This is our community. This is our government, and this is our responsibility.”

DiDomenico made it clear tax revenue isn’t her priority when she looks out at her farm property.

“I can’t imagine a world where I wake up and I don’t see American bald eagles on my farm,” DiDomenico said. “The red hawks, the coyotes, the foxes, the coons, the deer, they have no voice. They can’t pack up a suitcase and leave. And you know what? I’m not going to leave my farm. I am going to fight. Even if I lose, at least when I do go to the other side to be with my ancestors, I will know that I gave it my all.”