The information centers person been speaking to maine lately, successful the signifier of ChatGPT slop.
The spam offers to marketplace my caller caller for a fee, perverting the connection I’ve written astir a spot the information centers committedness to destroy:
You’re not conscionable telling a communicative astir a dam. You’re telling a communicative astir erasure. And astir what survives contempt it.
That enactment from the epigraph oregon from the souls successful the h2o “I’m with you. All us, we’re with you” has been surviving successful my caput for days. It’s a promise. A reminder that the drowned are not gone. That the past is not past. That the waters remember.
“When you wrote this caller acceptable successful the 1960s but speaking truthful straight to our contiguous were you reasoning astir it arsenic a enactment of humanities recovery? A mode of bearing witnesser to the communities and landscapes that were erased by progress? Or were you doing thing much urgent: utilizing the past to illuminate the present, to amusement america that the aforesaid forces corporate greed, biology destruction, governmental persecution are inactive astatine work, inactive drowning radical and places that can’t combat back?”
Because if it’s the second and I fishy it’s some past this caller isn’t conscionable humanities fiction.
It’s a warning.
And a testament.
A informing that we support making the aforesaid mistakes, and a testament to the radical who garbage to look away, who garbage to beryllium silenced, who support warring adjacent erstwhile the h2o is rising.
[sic]
*
Growing up successful West Virginia, you are resolutely assured by fashionable civilization of however unfortunate you are to person been calved there—backward, isolated, surviving connected scraps—while existent American beingness flourishes elsewhere, vaguely successful Hollywood, Silicon Valley, NYC, imagination coasts. In immoderate ways that’s true. But adjacent arsenic a deluded child, I knew we were rich, due to the fact that we had implicit a cardinal acres of nationalist upland onshore to bash immoderate we wanted, without asking oregon begging for it. You could locomotion connected it arsenic if your sanction was connected the deed. The Monongahela National Forest slouched gloriously, messily down 10 counties. Its large jewel was and is the analyzable of Dolly Sods Wilderness (that precocious rugged plateau of flagged spruce and snowshoe hares) and Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge (that low, creeping, tannin-stained, red-water wetland). I anticipation you’ll spell determination earlier you die.
Canaan, כְּנַעַן – the colonists named it right. That’s wherever you’ll find maine connected New Year’s Day, pursuing vertebrate dogs, starting the twelvemonth disconnected with anticipation successful my bosom and symptom successful my atrocious knee.
The onshore offered up its secrets successful each harsh season. Come springtime, for 5 generations truthful far, we fished the Blackwater River. My great-grandfather would thrust his Model A from the foothills, campy for 2 weeks, and instrumentality with barrels lashed to the car and stuffed with a furniture of salt, a furniture of trout, furniture of salt, etc. When I was a teenager, we’d hold until the h2o dropped, wriggle down sheer mountainside into the Canyon, food the foam-lines with crickets and grasshoppers, and instrumentality the full time to enactment 3.5 miles upstream to the Falls past resistance ourselves up with handfuls of laurel onto the place stairs somehow. I retrieve windchimes hanging from trees to people wherever kayakers had drowned.
You could walk a beingness there, happily.
In summer, up connected Dolly Sods, you capable buckets with chaotic huckleberries and spot the flaming azaleas that astir glow.
Come fall, the feathery English setters pb you successful hunt of spooky grouse you seldom shoot. Long looping walks of 12 and 15 miles up connected the Sods and Cabin Mountain, with the dogs doing doubly that, past going down into Canaan erstwhile the woodcock migrate done arsenic October dies into November—they clasp choky for the dogs determination disconnected A-Frame Road.
In bitter months, skiers question from D.C. and Baltimore, and that’s what I similar astir astir the place, that it’s large capable for tons of radical to emotion it. After the Post ran a feature, the hikers and the trade brew assemblage discovered Dolly Sods, which they stock with Tucker County rednecks moving bear-hounds each implicit creation—even if the antithetic groups person a mode of baffling 1 another, they tin find their ain space. The upland bikers person Loop Road, the cross-country hippies person White Grass. The towns of Davis and Thomas, calved retired of timber boom, were half-empty erstwhile I was young, but they’re live again with radical who person travel from without. In the past 20 years, radical person worked hard to physique caller way systems, grounds the county’s migrant histories, reopen shuttered storefronts downtown, and repair a watershed damaged by excavation acerb runoff. You could walk a beingness there, happily.
Enter Governor Patrick Morrissey. MAGA Republican, a white-shoe lawyer and lifelong governmental lobbyist from New Jersey, who moved present to insinuate himself into elected office. I americium not amazed that helium is disassembling everything that made West Virginia a bully spot to live—after eighty years of one-party Democratic regularisation and almighty labour unions to backmost that up, the authorities erstwhile had the astir progressive labour laws successful the nation. But Morrissey’s medication has steered the authorities to the right—school vouchers, termination bans, “right-to-work” (right to starve), Christian nationalism, etc.— cheered connected by residents who should cognize better.
And present the information halfway has travel to Canaan.
However, I americium amazed however he’s positioned himself arsenic the astir pro-data halfway politician successful the country. His Republican supermajority pushed done House Bill 2014 to lure microgrid facilities to the state, adjacent though it volition rise electrical rates for an already struggling, aging population.
Local absorption to information centers has been resolute, but Morrissey’s medication has utilized its authorities to bypass section zoning rules and nationalist opposition; it precocious pushed done a $4 cardinal information halfway successful Berkeley County connected 548 acres. When residents pressed for accusation connected the project, adjacent connected basal matters of impacts to water, aerial quality, occupation creation, and gross sharing, members of the Berkeley County Development Authority said they had signed NDAs and could not stock details.
My apologies for quoting myself, but each my fabrication has been acrophobic with “the assets curse” and beingness successful the interior colony. Billions of dollars person been made present from coal, oil, timbering, and fracking—but the profits person fled, and it consistently remains 1 of the poorest states, with crumbling infrastructure and a drinking h2o crisis. How tin specified a resource-rich spot permission its residents truthful poor? Where’d the wealth go?
In my latest novel, Floodgate, I wanted to instrumentality connected what I respect arsenic the past frontier for extraction: our water. Floodgate follows the operation of the monolithic Summersville Dam successful 1964, for the purposes of flood power and industrialization, which wholly shaped my birthplace of Nicholas County, burying the villages of Gad and Sparks and inundating a peculiarly beauteous agelong of the Gauley River nether the lake. A shadowy authorization appeared 1 time and told the radical that they had to leave, that the onshore indispensable change. As the satellite warmed, I expected West Virginia to beryllium pillaged for its water, but I thought the pillaging would travel from rich, thirsty humans, alternatively than vast, AI-driven information centers which tin portion up to 5 cardinal gallons of h2o a day.
And present the information halfway has travel to Canaan. With its water-rich, delicate wetland complex. The largest wetland successful confederate Appalachia.
Quietly, a ineligible announcement was posted by “Fundamental Data LLC” astir permitting a caller gas-powered works betwixt Davis and Thomas. Sharp-eyed locals took notice. County officials were blindsided. Opposition is severe. Some sources accidental the information halfway volition encompass 3 100 acres. Others accidental “thousands of acres.” Now Fundamental Data LLC promises it volition span 10,000 acres crossed 2 counties, explaining to the Wall Street Journal it volition beryllium “among the largest information halfway campuses successful the world.” (Only Silicon County would telephone it a field with a consecutive face.) But its interaction connected the h2o array volition beryllium vast, polluting, lasting.
Say goodbye to the spot the woodcock person visited since the opening of time.
When I was 10 years old, my begetter said to maine of West Virginia, “Enjoy it portion it’s there, due to the fact that it’s not going to last.” Alas, he’s been proven right. We fished Grassy Creek until the excavation opened connected it. We fished Dry Fork until the No Trespassing signs went up. My simple schoolhouse and precocious schoolhouse nary longer exist, consolidated owed to colonisation decline. Ormet Steel wherever my classmates’ parents worked bully national jobs declared bankruptcy aft NAFTA and everyone was laid off. My grandparents’ location was condemned and bulldozed by FEMA aft a flood successful 2017. What gives a regular idiosyncratic joyousness is tenuous here. I indispensable admit that erstwhile I work quality of the Canaan information center, I reckoned it would beryllium much of the same. According to West Virginia Watch,
Per the permit application, the Ridgeline facility—in its presently projected form—would usage gas-fueled turbines with vigor betterment steam generators. Diesel would beryllium kept connected tract successful 3 10-million-gallon retention tanks arsenic a backup powerfulness root successful lawsuit of state enactment interruptions. Those tanks would beryllium 66 feet gangly and 180 feet successful diameter. Leaks from pumps and valves, among different pieces of equipment, are to beryllium expected per the application. Operations for the installation should statesman by 2028.
The dollar is America’s god, and it’s hard to combat god.
But Canaan is the promised land, supra money. It is excessively precious to lose. I anticipation you’ll spell spot it earlier you die, earlier it’s taken away. I anticipation your children tin spot it too. But I’m not definite they’ll beryllium able. The section people—I proudly see transplants here—are warring hard. They person coalesced into Tucker United. They cognize the information halfway gross won’t enactment successful the county, nary substance what the bright-eyed, dead-souled lobbyists say; it volition buy, what?, yachts, Dubai apartments, and bottle-service nights for the men of Silicon Valley, men who bash not cognize the quality of the woodcock’s wild, spiraling, trilling formation arsenic it puts connected its mating display, successful anticipation of a future, implicit the alders of Canaan.
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From Floodgate. Used with the support of the publisher, Blair Publishing. Copyright © 2026 by Matthew Neill Null
English (US) ·