Against all odds: A tiny Ohio village fights an international data center and its 800 MW gas plant

By Cathy Cowan Becker

Wednesday night took me to the small village of Ashville, Ohio, to testify against an 800 MW fracked gas plant planned to power an EdgeConneX data center, located directly next to children’s soccer and baseball fields and on top of the village aquifer.

I was not the only one to testify. In fact, I was 51st out of 80. As you can see from these photos, the townspeople turned out. There was so much incredible testimony from the people directly affected that it’s hard to know where to begin.

The Congressional candidate Don Leonard telling the Ohio Power Siting Board that he’s not against all data centers, just dumb data centers powered by fossil fuels.

Jessica Holes, a high school environmental science teacher in Ashville, explaining the effects of greenhouse gas pollution on our climate and of particulate matter on human health.

13-year-old Dylan Jones explaining that he didn’t get a vote even though this will affect him longer than anyone — and if it’s approved, he won’t want to stay or come back.

Just before, Dylan’s mom, Amber, testified that her parents who live 500 feet from the gas plant site both have COPD. “Am I supposed to tell my parents to wear a gas mask every time they leave our home?” she asked.

She tried to submit a statement from her parents’ doctor, but the EdgeConneX attorneys objected. The OPSB agreed to take the letter by email.

One couple brought photos of their three kids, went through their names and what they like to do, and asked whether the kids could go outside if the gas plant is built: “All I see is money for the schools, money for the water treatment plant, money for the fire department — but where’s the money for the kids who get sick?”

Another couple whose front porch faces the gas plant site testified together. The husband has heart disease and his wife has asthma. They had recently retired to Ashville. His voice broke as he wondered what would happen to their lives. Multiple other people who would live near the gas plant were also in tears as they testified.

The worry about health is absolutely warranted. This 800 MW gas plant will emit 402 tons of fine particulate matter every year, which will cover the entire village. PM 2.5 is so small that it penetrates the lungs, gets into the bloodstream, and triggers inflammation throughout the body. It is linked to asthma, heart disease, stroke, neurological damage, and 8 million premature deaths worldwide.

Besides showing up to testify, Ashville residents Kimberly Ackison, Alli Meade, Sue Carter Moore, Heather Elice, Laura Virginia, and my friend Brian Meyers are intervening legally in the case at the Ohio Power Siting Board.

The residents have also gathered enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot allowing citizens to vote on whether to approve the data center and gas plant. The village council tried to squash that, but the residents took it to the Ohio Supreme Court and won. Now it’s in the hands of the Pickaway County Board of Elections, which will vote on Monday. 

The EdgeConneX gas plant would spew over 4 million tons per year of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas pollution — about as much as the city of San Francisco. Imagine that next to a village of 5,000 people.

When it was finally my turn to testify, I told the board that the gas would likely come from fracking Ohio’s state parks and wildlife areas. Three times as much public land was approved for fracking just in June than had been approved in the previous three years combined. That’s to power data centers.

This affects the people of Appalachia who live near fracking operations — and where the toxic and radioactive oil and gas waste is disposed of. For years they have experienced higher rates of respiratory disease and children’s cancers, and seen 40 to 60 million gallons of their freshwater turned into oil and gas waste for each frack well.

The oil and gas industry in Ohio has a track record of an accident or incident every 1.5 days — and the waste doesn’t stay in the disposal wells where it’s put — it is now threatening the drinking water for 40,000 people in Washington County.

This and the other 12 gas combustion plants proposed and approved to power data centers in Ohio will make everything much worse. More public land will be subjected to fracking, and more frack waste will migrate into other wells and drinking water.

If all these plants are built, Ohio could put 86 million tons of NEW greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere — more than the country of New Zealand — just as the climate crisis is reaching a tipping point.

If you think the storms and floods we are experiencing now are bad, just wait.

But what does give me hope is seeing real people come together to say NO to the cabal of big tech and big oil trying to hijack their town at the cost of their own and their children’s health.

The costs to health and climate are never figured into the equation for fossil fuel infrastructure. If they were, gas plants like this could not be built.

The people of Ashville made those costs very apparent tonight. If the OPSB still approves this project, it won’t be because the townsfolk did not do enough. They have left no stone unturned in this fight. Other communities need to follow suit.