According to Adams County Economic Development, there are three major sites being looked at right now: the Stuart Station property, the Killen Station property, and the property that connects State Route 52 to Ginger Ridge Road, the Buck Canyon Properties land.

Those aren’t random parcels. Those are large, strategic pieces of ground with river access and transmission nearby. And on the Buck Canyon property specifically, the proposed buyer has been doing environmental testing for almost a year. Almost a year.

You can see those testing documents in the files tab on this page.

Here’s what’s important: that testing didn’t just start yesterday. It’s been happening quietly. Residents were only formally made aware after everything blew up in Mt. Orab and people started filing records requests and asking questions. That timing matters. When a company is testing soil and land for a year, that means serious interest. That means planning. That means they’re not just “thinking about it.”

Now let’s talk about something that makes Adams County different. Most of our townships are unzoned. A lot of us love that. We like not having layers of rules. We like being left alone. But here’s the reality, unzoned protects you from your neighbor building a shed, not from a billion-dollar corporation buying hundreds of acres. In an unzoned township, there are very few tools to slow down or regulate massive industrial development. Limited setbacks. Limited noise control. Limited review authority. If enough land is purchased and state permits are secured, local power can be very small. That’s just how the structure works.

And Adams County isn’t the only one. Zoom out and look at Southern Ohio. Brown. Clinton. Scioto. Pickaway. Fayette. Large-scale projects are being explored all across our region. We have land. We have water. We have access to transmission corridors. The State of Ohio offers major tax abatements and sales tax exemptions for data center construction. Permits are being streamlined. PJM is processing massive power requests. Federal policy is pushing fast-tracked infrastructure. We are not anti-growth. We are not anti-technology. We are asking for transparency. We are asking for time. Time to understand water impacts. Time to understand what happens to wells and springs. Time to understand grid strain. Time to understand what this means long term before it’s locked in.

If you’re new here, take a few minutes. Read the documents. Look at the testing reports. Ask questions. Once land is converted and infrastructure is installed, there isn’t an easy way to go back. Adams County deserves to know what’s coming before it’s decided for us."
 

-Jessica Baker Feb. 20th