Two northeast Kentucky judge-executives took the stage on Monday night to address community concerns over a recently announced data center.
Greenup County Judge-Executive Bobby Hall and Boyd County Judge-Executive Eric Chaney were the main recipients of questions from the public in a town hall meeting held at the Boyd Convention and Arts Center in Catlettsburg on Monday night.
Both were given a chance to speak at the beginning of the event. Hall received heckling and negative responses from the crowd and Chaney was booed as he walked up to the podium for the first time.
On May 26, bitcoin mining company TeraWulf announced it had acquired more than 250 acres in the EastPark Industrial Park in northeast Kentucky for a data center. The site is west of Ashland, near Interstate 64.
According to a press release from the company, the data campus is anticipated to use 1 gigawatt of power over time, with half that amount to come online in early 2028. The amount of power anticipated for the project is more power than 800,000 average homes will use in a year.
Kentucky Power, an American Electric Power subsidiary, would provide the electricity.
On Monday, FIVCO Area Development District sent out a press release to state it had no decision-making authority on the data center. FIVCO ADD covers Boyd, Carter, Elliott, Greenup and Lawrence counties.
A statement released by members of the Northeast KY Economic Development, signed on by the judge executives of Boyd and Greenup counties and the group’s executive director, Hunter Boyd, states the project was a result of collaboration between judge executives in the FIVCO region, the office of Gov. Andy Beshear, the Cabinet for Economic Development and others.
Hall previously told WEKU he first heard about the project in August 2024.
“This is something that doesn't just happen overnight,” Hall said. “We're not going out here and building a Dairy Queen or a McDonald's that'll be ready in six months. There's a process to data centers.”
Kentucky Power is building a 345 kV substation connected to the existing 765 kV transmission network. According to Northeast KY Economic Development, approximately 94% of transmission upgrade costs are expected to be allocated outside of Kentucky. Of the remaining 6%, “the Muskie Data Center is expected to fund approximately half.”
In 2025, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a bill giving massive tax breaks to data center projects across the state, exempting them from sales and use taxes for 50 years on their computer equipment. A bill filed by lawmakers in the 2026 session to establish guardrails protecting existing utility ratepayers failed.
This data center is among dozens that are coming to Kentucky.
At Monday's meeting in Boyd County, more than 50 people were signed up to speak and share their concerns with the local officials and other community members in attendance.
People asked about the non-disclosure agreements the judge-executives were asked to sign, the impacts on local water and power supplies and the potential for jobs related to the data center.
The community was also interested in how the data center would affect their electricity bills, why the public didn’t get a say, the long-term consequences and the impacts on people in close proximity.
Hall pointed to other risks and decisions he has made for the community, including increasing taxes to fund an ambulance service.
“It is my responsibility as Greenup County Judge Executive to move Greenup County forward and to provide opportunities for our citizens,” Hall said. “In order to do this, I must make tough decisions and make sure I research the pros and the cons.”
Chaney explained how the data center project came to be and described himself as “one of the biggest conspiracy theorists that exist” and as a person who hates the government.
“You're not going to find very many people that hate government more than myself, and you're not going to find very many people that have less trust in the government than myself,” Chaney said before the event. “And here I am, the one under an NDA, holding information till after the project's done, right?”
He said he felt EastPark had worked out a great deal for the community. Throughout the evening, he referenced Hancock County’s data center also with TeraWulf and said that project was about six months ahead, so he and others could watch that project to see how the local project might unfold.
Lawrence County High School science teacher Aggy Vanderpool was one of the 24 community members who got to speak at the town hall. She raised concerns about where the water would come from for the data center’s planned closed-loop system and what would happen to the water when it left the data center.
“Do any of these local water treatment plants have the capacity to handle the water used for drawdowns, and more importantly, if so, are they able to remove the chemical additives before discharging into local waterways or directly into the Ohio River?” Vanderpool asked.
She provided a list of 10 questions to the local officials that she asked to be researched and answered within 15 business days.
Landen Gould, a Boyd County resident, took issue with the NDA’s the local officials signed and was skeptical of the possibility of jobs coming with the data center.
“The union reps talked about how this is good construction jobs,” Gould said. “What if they just decide to totally bring in all their own people?”
Chaney said he believed in the projects and the jobs that will come with it.
“I believe that after phase one is complete, we'll have 80 to 120 jobs, and I believe after phase two, we'll be sitting around 300,” Chaney said. “I believe that, I do believe that.”
Gould ended his time at the podium by calling for Chaney and Hall to resign.
Nicole Lawrence is a Boyd County resident and an English professor at Marshall University in nearby West Virginia. She said she and her husband live minutes away from the industrial park and nearby landfill on family land.
“I want to speak to the soul of Boyd County, and what does it mean to be a Kentuckian?” Lawrence said. “Well, how do Kentuckians relate to the land? The land is so important to us as a community and as a people, as farmers.”
She referenced Kentucky novelist Wendell Berry’s 2011 protest against former Gov. Steve Beshear’s decisions to support coal mining companies.
Lawrence said the region was still living with the consequences of that and how the area would live with the long-term consequences of the data center. She said she’s already seeing how AI is negatively affecting her students.
“The idea that in my backyard I'm going to carry the burden of a machine that is whittling away the soul of our young people is unconscionable,” Lawrence said.
Many questions related to the data center's potential water usage, cooling systems and possible impact on electricity were deferred by officials to a future meeting involving representatives with TeraWulf.
In total, 51 people signed up to speak. The event stopped at the 27th name on the list.
The Boyd County Fiscal Court met on Tuesday, and the data center was again discussed.
Another town hall will be held by TeraWulf on June 17. The location has not yet been announced.
