We Are Not Alone: Building Civic Momentum With Tucker United 

By Amy Margolies, Cris Parque, Shaena Crossland 

Data center development has exploded across the country. While it might feel inevitable, the damage can be mitigated when we work together.

When we arrived in Atlanta for the Take Back Tech conference, nothing could have prepared us for what we found. We were amazed to see people from across the country, from rural hollows, desert borderlands, to the Gulf Coast, gathered with a shared purpose. Americans are increasingly concerned about the impact of AI data centers on our land, air, and water. What brings us together is a fierce love of place. 

Question the Hype

The AI industry sells itself as an inevitable step in our digital future. But hyperscale data center developments are just a new chapter in an old story. Large-scale AI data center complexes promise jobs, then build mostly automated facilities. They hand billionaires tax abatement packages so generous that local governments are left holding the bag for roads, emergency services, and schools, leaving communities with little economic gain. The violation doesn’t stop at the property line — the AI industry has also claimed dominion over something more intimate: our words, our images, our ideas, and our likenesses, taken without consent and used for private profit. The sum of human knowledge and creativity, extracted from communities and individuals alike, with no compensation and no permission. In other words: private gain at an immense public cost.

Blackwater Falls is one of the most photographed wonders in West Virginia. The land came under state park protection when the 446 acres were donated by the West Virginia Power and Transmission Company in the 1930s.

West Virginians are already paying for the buildout of transmission lines to Northern Virginia data centers through increased electricity prices. Now microgrid hyperscalers — giant AI data center complexes often powered by methane gas and diesel — will tower over our small towns, affecting our health and our way of life. Storing 30 million gallons of diesel fuel at the top of Pendleton Creek watershed, which feeds into Blackwater Falls State Park and continues to Kingwood, is a huge gamble. Who is responsible for the impacts on towns downstream if there is a spill? How could our local volunteer fire departments contain a blaze on a site of that size? 

The questions are endless and center on the fact that we will bear 100% of the costs but keep only 30% of the benefits. That means Charleston will pocket 70 cents of each dollar these facilities produce. No wonder they are so excited about data centers! Data centers are Charleston’s cash cows. Unfortunately, that profit is made off our backs, from our small towns, our (limited) water, and our lands. What we saw in Atlanta is that these giant facilities are now being built disproportionately in vulnerable communities, like our small towns, in poor states, in places with less political power to push back. This is not a coincidence—this is the business model.

A Critical Moment

Mother Jones rallies workers in Montgomery, WV, in 1912. The state has a rich history of rallying together to fight back against the greed of extractive industry.

In Atlanta, we saw the scope and seriousness of the resistance. Rural communities and urban organizers, Indigenous land defenders, lawyers, advocates, and tech workers are building strategy together. The movement is growing. But West Virginia needs to keep up with it. As a state, West Virginia has been systematically drained of the resources for the local civic institutions and networks that other rural communities can lean on. We need legal support. We need organizing capacity. We need each other. And a lot of people just need water.

Building a Movement One Step at a Time

So how do we build momentum? It starts county by county, neighbor by neighbor, in Tucker, Mason, Mingo, Berkeley, and onwards. It starts by telling the truth about what these companies are and who they benefit. It starts by each one of us showing up. It starts one FOIA, one phone call, one letter, one county commission meeting, or one neighborly conversation at a time. Don’t be afraid to take one action. Even one action is more than no action. 

Challenge yourself to step up and assert your freedom. And remember, come November, we can all exercise the power of our local voice — one vote at a time.

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