Ohio’s PORTS-Pike data center raises pollution concerns

By Melinda Zemper

The PORTS-Pike data center under construction in Piketon may be the largest in the world right now, but if it continues as planned, it will be an environmental and human health horror show.

Powered by a 9.2 gigawatt methane gas plant, it will pollute the air, impair the health of millions of people and heat the planet faster at the beginning of an existential planet crisis.

The Environmental Integrity Project reports the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus will release 53 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution annually – more than New York City.

With it will come 3,221 tons of nitrogen oxides; 1,543 tons of volatile organic compounds; 844 tons of sulfur dioxide; 3,921 tons of carbon monoxide; and 2,843 tons of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), too.

Most concerning are particulate matter (PM) emissions from the plant. Thirty times smaller than a human hair, when PM 2.5 is breathed deep into lungs, it enters the bloodstream, triggering inflammation throughout the body.

Significant scientific evidence links PM 2.5 with asthma, heart disease, stroke, cognitive decline, cancer and premature death. Particulate matter accounts for most of the eight million deaths from air pollution worldwide annually.

A study of a 96 MW gas plant powering a Virginia data center estimated it will cause $53 million to $99 million per year in health damage to the surrounding community each year.

The PORTS-Pike project will be almost 100 times larger.

Now add decades of radiation exposure from the former PORTS gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant that causes Pike County residents to suffer from premature death rates 109.6 percent above the national average.

Plus a substantial body of evidence showing increased illnesses from fracking and a Yale study determining babies born near fracked sites are two to three times more likely to develop leukemia.

The sum total brings us to a regional population suffering from respiratory disease and cancer from methane gas emissions—when cheaper, reliable renewable energy is available right now.

Fracking is an economic and environmental fail

Gas fracked in Appalachian Ohio — still the poorest part of the state after 15 years of fracking – will likely come from Ohio’s state parks and wildlife areas to power PORTS.

Egypt Valley Wildlife Area and Salt Fork State Park make up about 19,000 of the 22,000 acres the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management (OGLMC) has leased for fracking. These lands belong to all Ohioans for our pleasure and leisure. They should not be industrialized and monetized by out-of-state drillers.

Fracking is not only dangerous, it depletes and contaminates our fresh water. Each frack converts up to 60 million gallons of water from Ohio’s lakes and streams into toxic radioactive waste, euphemistically called “brine.” This brine is disposed into state-licensed injection wells, where it has migrated into orphan wells and production wells and now threatens Marietta’s drinking water.

Ohio’s 20th century energy policy should be ditched in the 21st century

Ohio’s supermajority lawmakers operating for years under the sway of the gas and oil industry chant a “business first” mantra, allowing regulatory agencies like the OGLMC to ignore state laws protecting our air, water and parks, and instead direct them to frack our public lands.

In the absence of federal EPA regulations and adequate state and local laws protecting our natural resources from predator corporations, it has fallen upon beleaguered communities to protest and push for data center moratoriums.

Voters are unhappy.

In truth, if billionaire OpenAI, Softbank and PORTS investors were forced to pay for the pollution and increased respiratory disease they will cause, this gargantuan gas plant might not be built.

It’s increasingly clear that if the state wants data centers, it must either require tech companies to pay for the negative health and environmental costs from fracking and methane gas plant emissions—including new transmission line construction— or permit data centers to run on renewable energy.

Google is building new wind, solar, and battery storage to power data centers in Minnesota, Texas, Virginia – as well as a virtual power plant aggregating distributed energy from residential, commercial and industrial customers on the same PJM grid Ohio shares with Virginia.

If clean energy can power data centers in other states, it can power Ohio, too.

Melinda Zemper is a board member of Save Ohio Parks, a statewide citizens group dedicated to protecting Ohio’s state parks and public lands from oil and gas extraction. She lives in Butler County.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio’s PORTS-Pike data center raises pollution concerns | Opinion

Graphic: Project map for PORTS Energy Center I, the first 1.7 GW of the planned 9.2 GW bas plant to power data centers at the site of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.