There’s home in these hills: West Virginia isn’t AI’s dumping ground
The image of juncos flitting through cherry trees is doing a lot of work in this piece, and I think that's fair. West Virginia has been sold before, told that the next big thing will save it, from timber to coal to natural gas. Now the pitch is AI, and the data centers that come with it need land, water and power, all of which the hills have in abundance.
I get the economic argument. The state has lost jobs and young people for decades, and a facility that brings hundreds of construction jobs and tax revenue is not nothing. But the author's worry is about what gets traded away, and that's a real question. Once a hollow is cleared and a substation goes in, the ferns and the quiet don't come back.
I'd want to know more about what's actually being proposed, where, and what the local communities think. The piece reads like a lament more than an investigation, and that's fine, but the debate deserves specifics. My own take lands somewhere in the middle: progress is coming one way or another, but the people who live there should get a real say in what the hills become, not just a promise that this time it will be different.