West Virginia

The largest footprint in West Virginia belongs to Alphabet Inc., behind 1 tracked facility. QTS Realty Trust, LLC round out the most active operators in the state. Many of these sites are filed under shell or project names rather than the parent's — our operator column resolves them back to the real corporate parent wherever the chain is documented.

Geographically, the buildout clusters: Kanawha County leads West Virginia with 1 facility and a composite risk score of 4/100. Morgan County and Mason County follow. Our county risk score weights project exposure (40%), power demand (30%), water draw (15%), and land footprint (15%); the full breakdown is shown on each county page.

West Virginia is not done growing. 13 facilities are in the pipeline — proposed, permitted, or under construction — which is where residents still have a say at zoning hearings and in rate cases. Each pending project is a decision about land, water, electricity prices, and tax revenue that hasn't been finalized.

We also surface the accountability trail: 8 state bills mentioning data centers and 6 recent news items are tracked for West Virginia below, pulled from LegiScan and GDELT and refreshed automatically. Legislation is linked to the counties and operators it names; news is classified by community sentiment.