Piketon Vicinity, Pike County — What are the facts about the proposed data center(s) in and around the former Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County – especially with another public hearing or open house tonight? (Two of them?)
One source lists an Ohio EPA “public information session and antidegradation hearing” at 6pm tonight at the Piketon Comfort Inn…but I can’t confirm that elsewhere. If true, it will be near the Pike County Fairgrounds at 7525 US 23, Piketon, Ohio 45661.
Another public hearing, which I have confirmed – apparently on the same electrical generator but with the Ohio Power Siting Board / OPSB – will start at 5pm December 10th in the Piketon High School Auditorium.
(Another public event, on a water permit, had been on November 4th at the Pike County YMCA…and more are to come.)
Plans for the development of “the world’s largest AI data center” in and around the former Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County has been prominent in local news. (The one in Chillicothe, in the former Chilpaco paper mill, is a different story.)
The federal reservation that was the result of 1950s government construction of the atomic energy plant behind the hills south of Piketon and Waverly (but misnamed after Portsmouth, and nicknamed “PORTS”) has been the subject of environmental cleanup, demolition of the huge process buildings, and industrial reuse – including our January “More Insight on Two Major Developments Announced for Former Piketon A-Plant.”
But after trying to get a good handle on it today – in preparation for the one or two public hearings or open houses tonight – I can understand why anyone would be confused and bewildered.
A couple of sources have given me a good overview of it: online reporter Jason Salley, and Franklin Richards on Facebook. Follow these links to the most informative post by each, then look further into their Facebook pages for more.
You might also look at “Appalachians Against Data Centers” on Facebook, focused on – but not exclusive to – the proposed “data hall” in Chillicothe.
When you look at unlabeled aerial photos or maps of the area, the center of the federal reservation is the irregular oval area surrounded by “Perimeter Road,” with the three (or two remaining) large rectangular buildings of the Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
But the ink never appears to dry on this story.
While starting to write my version of it, I found a blog on Substack that had been published only 46 minutes before: “The behemoth coming to Pike County – What we know, and what we don’t, about the PORTS-Pike campus.” Gabriel E. Lade and Jialiang Chen begin with:
“Today’s is a longer-than-usual newsletter. In it, Jialiang and I do a deep dive into the details we can find around the PORTS-Pike data center campus. We spend the time because this thing is likely to be: (i) very big, and (ii) consequential, especially if we don’t get the policy details right on this.”
I don’t have the time to read and digest it if I’m ever going to publish a story today, so you’ll have to look at it yourself. I did see that they give a good overview of the project:
“SB Energy, a SoftBank company, is the primary developer…the plan has four parts.
“The centerpiece is a 10 GW data center campus that will stand partly on the former federal enrichment site (but mostly lie on adjacent private land). OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease on the campus, and NVIDIA is providing credit support for the campus.
(You may have heard NVIDA in national news today and yesterday…)
“Alongside the campus would come at least 9.2 GW of new natural gas generation…the gas plants will be owned by the U.S. government. Later filings put the planned gas closer to 10 GW.
“AEP Ohio would build new high-voltage transmission [line], which SB Energy says it will pay for. DOE puts the cost at $4.2 billion while SB Energy says it will be ‘at least $5.1 billion’…”
The blog features the best overall map of the project(s) I have seen so far – which I will not borrow, but encourage you to look it up.
And yet…I came across another recent updated map. Yesterday, Franklin Richards responded to a comment on his Facebook post with a map showing even more land involved.
I don’t have time to find his source and get a better copy of it, but it maps out these parts of the overall project:
- (Red) Dutch Run Technology Project
- (Purple) Artemis Power Generation Facility
- (Green) PORTS Technology Campus – Original 930 acres
- (Brown) Area 7 Additional Parcels (several small tracts)
- (Yellow) PORTS Technology Campus: Woodburn Heights Parcels
- (White) AEP Baku 765 KV Station Survey Area
- (Lavender) Portsmouth Laydown Area (small area within PORTS technology campus original)
- (Black) Kiewitt Drilling Area, Buildings 1 and 2
Also informative is an October 27th blog by the Buckeye Environmental Network: “PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, Related Infrastructure, and Potential Cumulative Impacts.“
“The project is huge and complex, involving infrastructure spanning multiple counties. It includes newly proposed and legacy fossil fuel power plants, multiple regulatory agencies, at least half a dozen private companies, an Ohio University-led outreach project, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).”
They include a bullet list of “Who is behind PORTS-Pike Technology Campus.”
The blog apparently covers only the southern project areas, excluding those east and north of the federal reservation.
They also mentioned that “OEPA [had] a public hearing scheduled for November 4 at 6 pm in Waverly for PORTS Technology Center Wetland Permits.”
The blog also includes a link to a Google Drive with “all the OEPA documents” regarding this wetland permit application.
A public information meeting on part of the project south of the federal reservation, a large natural-gas-fired electric generating facility, is partly in conflict with the schedule of the presumed public hearing at the Piketon Comfort Inn.
“Portsmouth Gas DevCo” has a letter sent to nearby property owners on the portsenergy.com website describing:
“public information meetings to discuss the proposed PORTS-Pike Energy Center II…which will consist of up to 5 gigawatts of state-of-the art simple-cycle and combined cycle natural gas-fired electric generation facilities and associated infrastructure, such as substations and electrical lines…”
“The Project plans to begin construction of the first phase in the 1st quarter of 2027 and begin phased commercial operations in the first quarter of 2029.”
A public information meeting was on November 5th, and a second will be 5 to 7pm tonight at the Pike County Career Tech Center at 175 Beaver Creek Road outside of Piketon.
Again, it is partly in conflict with the 6pm public hearing at the Piketon Comfort Inn…which I can’t confirm.
(Another public hearing, apparently on the same electrical generator but with the Ohio Power Siting Board / OPSB, will start at 5pm December 10th in the Piketon High School Auditorium.)
