MAYSVILLE — Under a setting July sun, 30 frustrated farmers and landowners gathered in the shade of a neighbor’s garage. They unfolded lawn chairs, shared cool bottles of water and began trading grievances and speculation about a cash-rich new development with its sights on their land.
The problem was, nobody quite knew what the development was, who owned it, or when it would come.
Since fall, at least seven residents across a 5,000-acre area outside Maysville have been approached by Mason County officials who encouraged them to sell their land for an unspecified industrial development project.
But those same officials couldn’t answer questions about the development because they signed confidentiality agreements with the unnamed company behind the project, which further spurred rumors: Was it a solar farm? A penitentiary? A landfill?
The group included the Huddlestons, who reluctantly agreed to sell their land, seated beside the Grossers, who adamantly refused. Others are still deciding whether they should hold onto the farmland their families have owned for generations or cash in while they can.
But they all agreed on one thing.
“Something this big shouldn’t be kept quiet,” said Max Moran, standing in the semicircle of community members in the last slant of evening light.
Desperate for an answer, residents started piecing together clues. Neighbors cross-referenced information that officials let slip — the project, whatever it was, would need huge amounts of water, which would explain its proximity to the Ohio River.
In May, after scouring through online public records, they discovered a new customer was requesting service from the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) for a 2.2 gigawatt project in Mason County, nearly doubling its annual generation capacity.
Spring gave way to summer and, finally, residents connected enough dots to uncover the mysterious new customer: a hyperscale data center.
Read the rest at the Courier-Journal.
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