Tomson

DAVIS — The mayor of Davis in Tucker County recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to testify before the Congressional House Committee on Energy and the Commerce’s Subcommittee for Environment. 

On March 4, Al Tomson testified on behalf of the National Brownfield Coalition, which is an organization that was founded in 2005 to bring together local government officials, private sector developers, environmental experts, nonprofits, and other sectors to promote an effective national strategy to facilitate brownfield revitalization.

The National Brownfield Coalition is composed of groups consisting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, and the National Association of Counties. The coalition’s mission is to provide grants and technical assistance to communities, states, and tribes to assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse contaminated, vacant, or underutilized properties.

The program aims to revitalize communities by turning contaminated sites into community assets. In Tomson’s own hometown of Davis, a defunct gas station has been turned into multiple businesses including a thriving brewery – Big Timber Logging Camp.

“The good news is that Davis was able to use the EPA Brownfields program and funding, with the assistance of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, to transform a contaminated, abandoned gas station right on our main street in downtown, into the Big Timber Logging Camp,” Tomson said during his testimony. “It is a beer brewery that has enlivened our town and brought statewide jobs and economic impact.”

Tomson told the committees that nearly 5,300 grants have been awarded to local governments, states and nonprofit organizations the past 30 years in the Brownfields Program. He added that the program has been a part of 75,000 environmental assessments during that time, and that 235,000 sites covering 4 million acres have been cleaned up and made ready for reuse.

During his testimony, Tomson said three bills put forth for consideration by the Subcommittee would have drastic and negative impacts on the viability of the EPA Brownfields grant program. He said the bills would open the door for private companies to drain resources in order to subsidize heavy industrial uses in local communities that may not seek or support such uses, without the safeguards of federal law.

“While there are some small improvements to the existing federal brownfields statutory structure that could be part of congressional action which brownfield communities would welcome, our main message today is that, if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it with controversial provisions that could undermine one of the most successful examples of federalism and intergovernmental, public-private collaboration at work in America,” Tomson said during his testimony.

“We support a clean reauthorization of the EPA brownfields program with a few minimal, non-controversial upgrades to the law and EPA program which Congress should put into action. Without reauthorization, EPA would lack clear congressional direction and stable authority to operate and expand the program to meet brownfield needs in American communities.”

After his testimony, Tomson spoke about data centers during a question-and-answer session with the committees. A Virginia-based company, Fundamental Data, has proposed that a 500-acre natural gas power plant billed as the Ridgeline Power Plant be built in close proximity to the town of Davis.

“The Davis community and the entire region are under a fundamental threat to our tourism economy, quality of life, and ability to determine our own future,” Tomson said during the session. “Just a few thousand feet from our downtown, a corporate LLC with no transparency about who they are or who is backing them, has obtained land on a brownfield beside the county landfill, to build a 1,600-megawatt power plant with 30 million gallons of diesel oil storage to power what they claim will be the largest data center in the world, of up to 10,000 acres.

“This so-called Fundamental Data Center and powerplant is a fundamental threat to our county, our economy, our public health, and our quality of life. The fact that it is on a brownfield and landfill area, in the midst of this outdoor recreation and conservation economy, does not make it worthy of support. 

“Now, we have a proposal from the House Subcommittee on Environment that says that this private LLC that would locate a massive power plant and 10,000-acre data center within sight of our tourism downtown, could be deemed a ‘nationally significant infrastructure facility’ without consultation or consent of our town, and could proceed unobstructed by any requirement to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. Further, such a corporation could be paid American taxpayer dollars to do it, by taking from the EPA Brownfield Grant program to subsidize a piece of their multi-billion private investment. All the people of Davis would find this unacceptable, very harmful, and a trampling of federal power on local government.”