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An incoming Lawrence County data center divides the community and alarms some residents
By: Amanda Pirani
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HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WOUB/Report for America) — Nestled on the edge of Lawrence County and the Ohio River, Hamilton Township is a place people live in for the peace and quiet.
While Danielle Fletcher has moved over the years, she said she’s always found her way back to the township of 1,400, the same place where her mother and grandmother were raised. She’s always been quick to know what’s going on.
That is, until last month, when a data center began construction across the street overnight.
“It was a Thursday evening,” she said. “They … had a delivery of heavy equipment. That was the first we knew about anything.”
The next day, residents were surprised to hear about a ribbon cutting for the new “AI Center of Excellence” that would be coming to their town. Strata Expanse, the Texas-based company behind the project, said the 40-acre site is expected to include a 10-12 acre data center facility.
The Lawrence Economic Development Corp. sold three parcels of land to Strata Expanse for about $1.87 million in December.
The announcement saw significant backlash from county residents in and beyond Hamilton Township and spurred a special meeting by the Ironton City Council at the start of this month.
That’s in part thanks to the sales tax exemptions state lawmakers carved out in 2013 to draw tech companies to the state.
In a 2025 report, the Chamber of Commerce compared Ohio to Virginia, which is home to 663 centers. The report argued Ohio “has the potential to rival or exceed Virginia’s scale,” pitching data centers as the future of the state economy.
Data Centers directly contributed $3.7 billion to Ohio’s GDP in 2024, which was about $923 billion in total.
But some are voicing concerns, pointing to data centers’ strains on local utilities and large tax abatement requests. A township outside Columbus made headlines in September when it became the first to pass a moratorium on the projects.
After word spread of the nearby Strata Expanse data center, Ironton City Council proposed its own moratorium during its first meeting of the year.
“We … feel that it’s not in the public’s best interest to allow these things to come in, because we don’t yet understand the potential impacts it could have on us,” said Ironton Councilmember Jacob Hock.
Dozens crowded a Scioto County Commissioners’ meeting Jan. 22 to protest a planned 500,000 square foot data center in Franklin Furnace.
Increasingly, communities are asking: what’s in it for us? But Fletcher said getting answers hasn’t been easy.
Residents and public officials say they were left in the dark
She’s worried about the center’s potential environmental and health effects, and wonders whether it will affect local resources.
But Hamilton Township, like much of the county, isn’t zoned, leaving no legal pathway to prevent a development on privately-owned land.
“Then people like me in the county, who don’t have a local village or city that has zoning laws, we’re vulnerable,” said Fletcher.
Elected officials said they, like the public, learned of the data center after its ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“We’re … a little bit upset, because we didn’t know anything about it,” said Bob Blankenship, a Hamilton Township trustee. “The trustees had no input whatsoever.”
County Commissioners said they were similarly unaware of the project but have been working to get answers for the public.
“One of the things we did … was to dig in and try to understand who it was, what it was, and what we could expect to develop down there,” said Commissioner DeAnna Holiday.
Despite these assurances, some are asking if their elected officials could have done more to prevent the development.
“I don’t buy the excuses … because for the past year, these have been popping up all around the entire United States,” said Katie Hill, a resident of Lawrence Township.
Bob Blankenship and the Lawrence County Commissioners are on the board of trustees for the Lawrence Economic Development Corp., the organization that sold the land to Strata Expanse.
The LEDC requires that the board include elected officials.
The board of trustees met for their semi-annual meeting in October, where the potential for data centers in the county was discussed.
In an email statement, Strata Expanse Chief Revenue Officer Ellen Taylor said the company “worked closely with local leaders” and “does not undertake projects without … community consultation.”
Lawrence County residents hope to prevent additional data centers in Lawrence County
Community backlash has stemmed from concerns over how a data center would impact local resources, public health and the environment.
“We don’t want to die of cancer … or not be able to safely drink our well water or plant our gardens,” Fletcher said.
Direct health effects from data centers are primarily linked to the use of diesel generators. Other health concerns are the result of the indirect pollution centers emit as significant fossil fuel consumers.
Strata Expanse may use natural gas-fired generators, but not as its primary source of energy, according to LEDC Executive Director Bill Dingus.
An online petition started by county resident Kassidi Adams in opposition to the Hamilton Township data center has over 5,000 signatures.
“We cannot sit by as decisions are made that may sacrifice our environment and quality of life for corporate interests,” Adams wrote in the petition.
Strata Expanse expressed to the LEDC it could be interested in building more centers throughout the county.
“If it is the case, we have to fight it before it happens again,” Hill said.
In response to the center, Hamilton Township trustees held a special meeting to discuss the process of creating zoning regulations. It could take months to pass. If it does, existing industrial facilities like the data center would have to be grandfathered in.
Like Hill, Fletcher said she’ll focus her energy on preventing additional centers from coming into the area.
“If I can’t stop the one in Hanging Rock, I’m trying to spread the word, unify with my local residents and other people who want to help … protect the county,” she said.
The Data Center promises to provide its own power and minimize local impacts
Those who’ve worked to bring the data center to the county believe it won’t pose the same drawbacks as larger centers elsewhere in the state.
Dean Greene manages a company that consults on solar projects, and said he helped recruit Strata to build a data center because he believes it will operate more sustainably than others.
“For every megawatt of data center, there’s eight megawatts of solar, and then there’s fifty megawatts of graphene batteries,” he said. “And then they have hydrogen fuel cells as its secondary backup, and the third backup is the grid. So they have to have the other two down before they even use the grid.”
The data center will be built on a site near the Hanging Rock Energy Facility, a natural gas plant.
According to a Strata Expanse press release, the data center will use natural gas, though Greene and Dingus could not clarify to what extent.
Dingus said there is access to excess natural gas in the area because a pipeline was previously built to supply a plant for a company that filed for bankruptcy.
“There is a lot of potential there,” he said. “I don’t see this place having to use any of it, but it’s there if we ever need some additional energy.”
Hydrogen fuel cells are powered by the production of hydrogen gas. About 95% of hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, according to the MIT Climate Institute.
Dingus said it is possible the center may use natural gas-fired generators in addition to hydrogen as sources of backup power.
The project will also use geothermal energy to cool its computers, instead of cooling fans or the water-intensive evaporative cooling process. The data center’s HVAC contractor, Terry Callihan, said geothermal will prevent noise pollution and water use problems often associated with data centers.
“It uses the earth’s temperature to heat and cool the data center,” he said. “There’s no water exchange. It’s a closed loop.”
Since the data center could produce more solar energy than it uses, Greene and Dingus said Strata Expanse has promised to sell any excess energy back to the grid at wholesale cost.
“From my vantage point … if they’re going to generate a little more energy in the use, they’re going to use the recirculating system and they ask for no tax abatement,” Dingus said. “What are the negatives?”
Lawrence Economic Development Corporation faces criticism for bringing data center
The organization behind the Strata Expanse project, the LEDC, has come under increased scrutiny since the data center’s announcement.
“The main issue with that is the secrecy, the lack of transparency,” Fletcher said. “I am a resident. I’ve known that area my entire life. I’ve known any and all industry coming down that way.”
Even as data centers receive push back around the state, Dingus said he was surprised by the community response to the Strata Expanse development.
“For 25 years … we’ve brought many companies and we saw Strata Expanse just being another company,” he said. “We didn’t realize there was such a huge concern for that.”
Economic development corporations like the LEDC are created by governmental bodies to promote economic development in an area.
Though they may receive state grants for some projects, economic development corporations are not required to provide the same level of transparency as a publicly elected or funded organization.
Since the Strata Expanse project was a contract between two private organizations and no tax abatement was requested, the LEDC did not have to provide public notice regarding the development.
Other data center developments in the area have been similarly criticized for a lack of transparency. In Pike and Scioto counties, information about proposed projects is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements.
In Brown County, an NDA prevents a village council from clarifying for residents whether a large industrial development is a data center at all.
The LEDC has considered developing a data center project in the Hamilton Township area since last year. When asked why the LEDC did not consider informing the public of the project sooner, Dingus said it’s never been the organization’s practice to do so.
“If you come in and you’re willing to invest $50,000 or $5 million or $50 million, we always let you make the whole announcement,” he said. “We take great pride in being fairly confidential to our private companies.”
Dingus said the organization has only hosted one public meeting during its time in Lawrence County, for the Harvest Grows marijuana cultivation facility.
Dingus says center will support county’s economic development
Those in opposition to the Strata Expanse project said the risk of negative impacts isn’t worth the number of jobs it would bring.
Dingus said the data center is expected to provide about 15-20 permanent positions.
“You’re probably talking a small number of jobs, but there are a lot of them that will be highly technical jobs, which will be a fairly good salary for those,” Dingus said.
Strata has not confirmed the number of permanent jobs the data center will provide or their expected salaries. Strata representative Taylor said the center will create 200-300 local jobs but did not clarify whether those numbers included jobs during construction. Dingus clarified that the agreement to hire locally is not in writing.
Dingus views the center as another positive development the LEDC has brought to the county.
In an industrial park in South Point, he gestured toward a warehouse for Bimbo Bakery, one of many properties in the area the organization has refurbished to sell or rent.
“When I came here, this was a superfund site,” he said. “None of these buildings existed when the LEDC first moved in.”
Dingus said many people may not know about the LEDC’s benefits to the county because the organization conducts business quietly. He said less publicity means land might sell at a lower price and fewer people will approach the organization with specific requests.
Local homeowner worries industry growth comes at cost of farmland
Fletcher said she’s not opposed to economic development in the area and welcomes more jobs.
But over the years, she’s seen industrial facilities quietly encroach on her neighborhood.
“We’re not saying we’re not in support of industry or building the economy in the local area, but this is a residential area,” Fletcher said. “They keep forcing industry here without any input.”
She said prior to its sale, the land owned by Strata was leased to local farmers.
Fletcher anticipates more people will receive offers for their farmland as data centers continue to spread in the region. She claims she has received offers from the LEDC for her property in the past due to its location near industrial sites, though Dingus said this is untrue.
“We’ve refused both times,” Fletcher said. “I don’t want to, that’s my home. I’m not looking forward to the data center coming in.”
Amanda Pirani is WOUB’s Report for America Journalist covering Economic Livelihood. For more information about Report for America, you can click here.
Correction (1/24 6:08 PM): A previous version of this story stated that Bill Dingus said the data center could use diesel generators, when the correct quotation is “gas-fired” referring to natural gas.
Update (1/28 2:28 PM): A previous version of this story stated that the LEDC sold the land to Strata for about $367,000. This sale is reflected in the Port Authority’s December 2025 minutes. However, it has since come to WOUB’s attention that this sale by the Port Authority was one of three parcels sold to Strata for the data center for a total of $1.8 million, as reflected in Lawrence County Auditor records. The two additional parcels were sold by the LEDC.