THOMAS (AP) — In late March, Pamela Moe was at her dining room table, skimming the local paper when something caught her eye.

A legal notice, by a company she had never heard of, for a facility near the city of Thomas.

Curious, Moe looked up the coordinates listed on the ad. She noticed the list of air pollutants the project would release. And then she pulled out her phone, took a photo and sent it out to a group of almost four dozen people all from or around the community, asking them what they knew.

But she soon learned that no one knew anything.

As news of the project spread quickly, so did the effort to learn more.

The community raced to fill in details about the project. They looked to confirm their suspicions that the project was intended to power a data center. Residents reached out to their local, county and state officials.

And as the news reached the broader public, worries also swirled among those who routinely visit Davis and Thomas for their scenic vistas, sprawling trails and dark skies.

But by the time the community had mobilized to get answers, West Virginia lawmakers in Charleston had stripped what little power they had over such a project. Counties lost potential tax revenue. Localities lost oversight. And residents lost a say.

“All of it just dovetailed so neatly and closely, it seems suspicious,” Moe said.

In December, months earlier, lawmakers were gearing up for a last minute special session where they could have considered legislation related to a data center project in Logan County. But the session never materialized after confusion on who was allowed to vote following the November election.

Then in February, during his State of the State address, Gov. Patrick Morrisey offered up his economic vision for West Virginia: Data centers, supercomputers and cryptocurrency.

A measure to help aid that vision was introduced into the House of Delegates on March 18, the last day to introduce legislation into the chamber.

Immediately following the day’s House floor session, Morrisey held a press conference urging lawmakers to pass the bill, dubbed the Power Generation and Consumption Act, to encourage the development of small local energy grids.

These developments would allow projects like data centers to operate independently instead of connecting to the larger electrical system.

“West Virginia will be the most attractive state in the country for data centers after this bill is passed,” Morrisey said. A few hours later, an air permit application for a natural gas-fired power plant in Tucker County landed in the inbox at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Air Quality.

Days later, the House Energy Committee took up the bill, approved an amended version and sent it to the floor for a vote.

In the bill, lawmakers diverted all the tax revenue from such projects to the state, leaving local governments without. Lawmakers also forbid local communities from restricting noise, lighting, or land use, stripping residents of authority.

The proximity of the project to the towns of Thomas and Davis worried Marilyn Shoenfeld, president of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, who called the mayor of Davis to find out what he knew.

Except, he also didn’t know anything, and neither did other officials.

“From a local leadership standpoint, none of us were aware that this was even a possibility,” said Al Tomson, mayor of Davis.

They knew that the application was for a natural gas-fired power plant independent of the electric grid, but not much else.

The number of combustion turbines wasn’t identified. The types of air pollution control devices weren’t listed. And the sources and types of fuel were missing. The company had redacted those details on its permit application, citing business confidentiality.