Zeros

When the Grid Becomes a Target: Appalachia Rewind When communities feel steamrolled by industrial buildouts they never asked for, what happens next? And could infrastructure incidents near contested development zones be more than coincidence? West Virginia is ground zero for that tension right now. Gov. Patrick Morrisey and the West Virginia DEP have been pushing hard toward a data center buildout, backed by House Bill 2014, passed in April 2025, which prohibits counties and municipalities from enforcing or adopting regulations that limit high-impact data center projects . [ West Virginia Gazette Mail ]  In Tucker County, a Virginia company called Fundamental Data applied for an air quality permit for what it's calling the Ridgeline Facility — a natural gas power plant and data center complex proposed to be built between the tourist towns of Thomas and Davis, covering potentially 10,000 acres . [ West Virginia Watch ]  Residents there created a grassroots coal...

When the Data Center Moves In and the Water Follows Residents along University Lane in Mason County, West Virginia didn't sign up to be a cautionary tale. But that's where they landed on the weekend of May 23rd , when a construction site for the Monarch Compute Campus — a data center initiative between AI company Nscale and energy infrastructure firm Fidelis New Energy [ MSN ] — contributed to severe flooding that damaged their homes. Site manager Jason Bechtle acknowledged that the storm dropped roughly a month's worth of rain in two days, and that while the site's stormwater measures had passed inspection the prior week , a stretch of silt fence gave way under the volume of water. [ The Cool Down ] The company said it would cover cleanup and repair costs. That's something, at least . But one resident noted the damage started earlier than the flood — during tree clearing, he says workers took down 12 to 15 trees on his property . [ WCHS ]  The floo...

Pennsylvania is having one of those moments where you briefly look around and wonder if somebody accidentally changed the channel, to a black-and-white television program from 1962 . Not because anything important happened. Not because aliens landed in Harrisburg . Not because someone outlawed rock music or invented a new sandwich involving canned tuna and green beans . No. We are doing this because David Wecht — son of the legendary Allegheny County coroner and TV personality Cyril Wecht — has ceremoniously switched political parties from Democrat to Republican, and naturally John Fetterman has thoughts. And the overwhelming feeling is not outrage. It’s not excitement. It’s not even confusion. It’s the sensation of getting trapped inside the American Adventure pavilion at EPCOT after two iced teas , and realizing the animatronics are still arguing about Hubert Humphrey. The funniest part is that everyone keeps trying to explain this as if it’s some earth-shattering i...