WV Dept of Commerce Certifies Boone County data center project

“If the public wants to appeal, there’s no way for them to appeal something that they don’t know exists,” House Minority Leader Pro Tempore Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, warned during a legislative committee meeting earlier this year. Her frustration highlights the growing tension in West Virginia, where state officials have quietly green-lit massive, energy-hungry data center projects under a shroud of legislative secrecy.

The latest of these developments, reported by the Gazette-Mail, involves a sprawling campus planned for the former Hobet mining complex in Boone County. Known as “Project Country Roads,” the site is slated to become a massive artificial intelligence and high-performance computing hub, potentially scaling up to 10 gigawatts of power demand across 8,000 acres over the next decade. While the scale is immense, the process used to authorize it has left local residents and community advocates in the dark.

A Certification Issued in the Shadows

On September 30, the West Virginia Department of Commerce issued a “High-Impact Data Center” certification to Houston-based developer LM Core Energy Services. This certification, which followed an August 17 petition, effectively fast-tracks the project by tapping into the regulatory framework established by House Bill 2014. Passed in March 2025 at the request of Governor Patrick Morrisey, the law was specifically designed to strip away local zoning and regulatory hurdles for large-scale data facilities.

Despite the official certification notice signed by Department of Commerce Secretary Matthew Herridge, the state’s stance on the project’s finality remains contradictory. Department spokesperson Andy Malinoski told the Gazette-Mail that prospective economic development projects remain confidential until they receive final approval. This leaves a significant question: if the state has issued a formal certification notice, why does it simultaneously suggest the project is not yet settled?

The Human and Economic Stakes

For the residents of Boone County, the news of a massive industrial campus is not just a matter of economic speculation—it is a question of infrastructure strain. Large-scale data centers, or hyperscalers, require staggering amounts of water and electricity. In other parts of the state, these projects have already caused visible disruption. In Mason County, for instance, residents near the Monarch Cloud Campus project faced flooding in May after construction-related erosion control failures, and the site has since been hit with multiple environmental violation notices.

The West Virginia Data Center Accountability Project (WVDCAP), a coalition of stakeholders formed in September 2026, has begun pushing back against this trend. According to the group’s founding statement, the primary concern is the lack of public consent in projects that permanently alter rural landscapes. As Heather Ransom of Putnam United noted, the people choosing to build their lives in these towns should have a voice in whether a hyperscale facility is a compatible neighbor. The current legislative framework, however, treats these developments as confidential business deals until the shovels are already in the ground.

Conflicting Narratives on Oversight

The relationship between the state and developers like LM Core is complex. Internal LM Core documents obtained by the Gazette-Mail suggest the company claims to have “co-authored” HB 2014, a assertion that Ann Ali, the House of Delegates deputy chief of staff, denied, stating that the bill was drafted by the Governor’s Office alone. Furthermore, LM Core’s own investment presentations highlight “active hyperscaler conversations” with tech giants like Microsoft, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Amazon Web Services, with introductions allegedly facilitated by the Governor’s office.

Boone still considered for new data center despite moratorium

While LM Core CEO Jarrette Lewis maintains that the project is still in the exploration phase and promises community engagement once details are finalized, the lack of transparency remains a sticking point for critics. The state’s reliance on “supplemental project commitments” that are folded into confidential certifications creates a dynamic where the public is excluded from the very negotiations that will dictate the future of their local air quality, water access, and grid stability.

As the state continues to pursue its vision of a “data economy,” the disconnect between the rapid pace of corporate certification and the slow process of local public awareness shows no sign of narrowing. For now, the future of the Hobet site rests on a series of documents that remain largely hidden from the very people who will live in the shadow of the servers.

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