Dark Skies vs. Data Center: Tucker County Residents Fight Planned 785-Megawatt Ridgeline Plant

Up in Tucker County, where the ski slopes of Canaan Valley meet the little mountain towns of Davis and Thomas, folks are squaring off over a project that could change the high country for good.

The plan is called Ridgeline. Fundamental Data LLC, a company based in Purcellville, Virginia, wants to build a large data and energy campus on a reclaimed coal-mining site near Davis, aimed at artificial intelligence, cloud computing and business data systems. The first piece would be a roughly 785-megawatt power plant that would generate its own electricity on site, running mainly on natural gas with diesel as a backup fuel.

Plans call for an initial footprint of about 291 acres, and the project could eventually grow to as much as 10,000 acres, roughly 15 square miles, reaching into parts of neighboring Grant County.

That has a lot of locals worried. The Potomac Highlands are home to some of the darkest night skies left in the eastern United States, from Blackwater Falls to Spruce Knob, and stargazers travel from all over to see them. Residents also point to the region's hard-won comeback: Davis and Thomas, each with around 600 people, have grown into a base for skiing, hiking, mountain biking and rafting, with a lively arts and music scene to match.

Opponents with the group Tucker United have raised concerns about air quality in Canaan Valley, where the bowl-shaped terrain and temperature inversions can hold pollution close to the ground, and about plans to store large amounts of diesel fuel near a creek that feeds local water supplies. An analysis the opponents commissioned estimated the plant could cause $19 million to $35 million a year in health-related damages. Fundamental Data has pushed back, saying that study assumes the plant runs at its maximum permitted pollution levels all year long, and that it will operate within its permit limits and store fuel safely.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has already approved the project's air-quality permit. Tucker United, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Sierra Club challenged that approval, but their appeal was dismissed in August on jurisdictional grounds. The groups have said they plan to take the fight to the West Virginia Supreme Court.

A 2025 state law also shapes the fight. It exempts certified microgrid districts and high-impact data centers from county and city zoning and from local rules on things like noise, lighting and land use. Opponents gathered about 1,000 signatures asking Gov. Patrick Morrisey to veto it, but he signed it, pointing to economic development and job creation. More recently, the governor has proposed a 20-year plan for what he calls responsible data center development.

Not everybody in the county is against Ridgeline. The company says the project would bring thousands of temporary construction jobs and about 500 permanent ones in fields like IT, engineering, electrical work and security. Tucker County Sheriff Jake Kopec has said he believes the criticism is overblown and that the county needs the better-paying jobs and tax money, noting the area serves more than a million visitors a year.

Tucker County has a long history of standing up to big development plans, including fights in the 1970s that kept parts of Canaan Valley and the Monongahela National Forest from being flooded or mined. Whether this one ends the same way is now up to the courts and the people of the high country. We'll keep you posted.