Water, Water Everywhere... and Not a Drop to Drink (w/ Maria Russo, WV Rivers Policy Specialist)
The 2026 West Virginia legislative session is over, but the fight over water, land, and local control is far from settled. In this conversation, I’m joined by Maria Russo, policy specialist with West Virginia Rivers Coalition, for a post-mortem on what lawmakers did—and failed to do—on flood resiliency, drinking water infrastructure, above-ground storage tanks, and the growing threat posed by high-impact data centers. From southern West Virginia’s ongoing clean water crisis to the Eastern Panhandle’s battle over farmland and opaque development deals, this is a conversation about what West Virginians are being asked to sacrifice, who gets to decide, and why the state’s most precious resources still too often come second to outside profit.
The Legislative Session Ends
Troy Miller: All right, March 20th as we’re recording this. And so the West Virginia legislative session is officially done, which means we could have a post mortem on it.
And here to talk about that, and I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for some time, is Maria Russo, who is a policy specialist with West Virginia Rivers at wvrivers.org. We had Than Hitt on back in September to talk about more of the science side of what we could expect looking forward into the legislative session.
And now we can see what actually happened because I don’t know, Maria, it seems to me like the legislative session starts and everybody has some sort of idea of what bills are. You know, some of them are hopeful, some of them, many of them are awful. And then the committees and everything happens, it starts really gearing up, and it’s really easy to lose track of things unless you’re paying attention to particular pieces of legislation.
So first of all, thank you for joining us on the Blue Ridge Breakdown today.
Maria Russo: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s nice to be here on this first day of spring. So thanks for having me.
Troy Miller: It is the first day of spring. And I have to say, I know there’s nothing more you’d rather be doing on a sunny 60 degree day Friday than sitting here and recording with me virtually.
Maria Russo: Yes, exactly.
Troy Miller: So you’re welcome for the opportunity. And with that, what. Can you just give me kind of a summary of some of the bills that were. That were. You were watching what some of the outcomes may have been and, you know, start wherever. I also have West Virginia Rivers’ policy brief from a week or so ago here.
So we’ll go. We’ll use that as a rubric if nothing else.
Maria Russo’s Overview of the 2026 Session
Maria Russo: Awesome. That sounds great. Yeah. So we are coming off of the 2026 legislative session. It’s always kind of like a process to figure out what just happened because everything, like you said, is moving really quickly. There’s a lot that happens, there’s a lot of conversations that happen, and sometimes we see some progress made and sometimes we see setbacks, and sometimes we see nothing at all happen on some pretty serious topics.
So yeah, I feel like I’m still kind of chewing on what this session was defined by and kind of what we’re left with. I would say overall, this session was a little slower than what we’ve seen in the past. I think in past years we have seen, especially the Senate, the last few years we have seen the Senate come out of the gate and pass like 30, 40 bills, like right off the bat.
And we just didn’t really see that this year. We really saw a slower ramping up of this session. So I think that can kind of tell you a little bit of the tone that we saw. And so, you know, in some ways that works in our favor with some of the issues we’re pushing for because we have a little more time to work with legislators on the front end of things when session kicks off.
But sometimes it can work against us too, because we saw a lot of bills die right around crossover day, which is of course this huge day where bills that start in the House have to be over in the Senate and vice versa. So we saw a lot of, like, you know, pretty big pieces of legislation die, and we do every year, but I think there was a lot more that kind of moved slowly this year.
So that was kind of surprising for me because I feel like, and don’t get me wrong, it was still fast, a lot still took place early on, but it was kind of a different tone, I think, this year in the session. So I think that’s good, like, context to start off.
Troy Miller: Absolutely.
Maria Russo: As far as our specific issues I’ll jump into a little bit. We went in with some pretty clear priorities at West Virginia Rivers Coalition. So we went in asking for funding in the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. This is a fund that was formally created in 2023 after the state had created some flood plans.
But there was never a real structure to make some of that happen. We have seen tremendous flooding in West Virginia over the years, and this flood fund was kind of created to, in theory, get money to communities for both proactive flood mitigation and flood response, but we have never seen any dollars put into it.
So a really big priority going in was to get some funding into that fund to actually make it useful. A second big priority we had was around water infrastructure. We have kind of all heard at this point that southern West Virginia is really struggling with some of their water infrastructure. Most people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water.
So we were really hoping for that to be something that crossed the line of crossover day. We also are keeping a really close eye on data centers. So coming out of last year’s legislative session, you know, we had this huge House Bill 2014 that passed that kind of set the rules of the game for data centers.
This year, those rules were actually put into place. So we were following that process very closely to figure out what was in those rules, what was not in those rules, and how can we affect any change on. On them in that data center build out process. So that was a big one. Another area we had was Ohio river restoration.
So there is kind of a lack of federal funding for the Ohio river area. So I live over in the Chesapeake Bay watershed region, and there’s quite a bit of funding that comes from the federal level. There’s none that goes to the Ohio River. And so we were really working with legislators to try to flag some support there, which we can get into a little bit more.
And then kind of the last piece that I’ll cover is we generally have a grounding value of just clean water. So we’re constantly watching for any bills that might pop up that threaten that. And year after year, we see the Above Ground Storage Tank Act come under fire. This is a bill that passed, or this is an act that was established after the 2014 water crisis, where one of these storage tanks leaked into water and left a lot of West Virginians without safe water.
And so we see it kind of under attack every year. We saw that happen again. And there were some big, big outcomes there, which I’m happy to get more into. So that’s kind of the overview of what we were looking at going into session.
And I’d love to pause and just hear from you, like, what direction should we take it? What are you. What are you most interested in hearing?
Water, Geography, and the Reality of West Virginia
Troy Miller: I want to, I want to take the opportunity because from my background when I went to university and all this, one of the things I really realized is that economics without geography, geographic understanding is really kind of a vacuous effort, you know, and this is one of those key things, right. West Virginia is the only state that is completely in the Appalachian, Appalachian mountain range, which means that basically everywhere is floodable.
Whether you’re, you know, there’s. There’s always. There’s downstream from the mountains, everywhere there are valleys and rivers. The entire state is basically bound by rivers. The Ohio river on one side, where I’m from, very dear to my heart. I’m from upstream. So not as. As dire as some of the stuff in Parkersburg and Huntington.
The long term is Dow dupont repercussions of industry. And this is for listeners who aren’t necessarily in West Virginia. Better understanding. And so there’s kind of this paradox of like water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink if you’re in the coal fields, you know, like you’re constantly under threat of these.
The flood resiliency that hasn’t been invested in. When I was running for office a couple years ago, I know I was one of the candidates who was boldly saying, like, climate change is happening and I hated having to go. I’m not here to discuss whether CO2 is driving it. I’m here to make sure that when are that our legislature is addressing the ways that things are changing.
The fact that the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture with every degree centigrade of warming means that these storms can bring down that much more. And in West Virginia, where some of our development has been mountaintop removal, even in places like Wheeling, you know, the Highlands is basically a big mountaintop removal project. They cut off the top of a mountain, didn’t do adequate drainage. And that’s how you ended up with the floods in Tridelphia last year. That, you know, this torrent of water coming down a hill, that can happen anywhere in West Virginia.
And at the same time, our potable water resources, our groundwater resources are relatively scarce and are being threatened by these data centers. And I would actually like to get in because I think you’re one of the people who I think understands HB 2014 better than most, was really kind of on the front lines of working with, not only trying to prevent it from being passed as it was, but then making sure that the rulemaking following that did put some sort of guardrails on these things.
Because basically my summary of HB 2014 was that it was a bill that didn’t set rules around data centers. It ripped apart rules that counties could have used for data centers. So I’ll toss it back to you with all of that is just kind of what I see is kind of essential background and big picture of what. What you’re working with with West Virginia Rivers.
And again, it’s like there’s an abundance of water, but there’s still drought conditions in large parts of the state because the water comes down so fast, it doesn’t actually recharge the groundwater. And then there are all of these threats to the groundwater from, you know, if it. Whether it’s a data center or here, just down the road from where I’m recording this right now, the water bottling plant that they tried to, you know, is still relatively in limbo. There’s still lawsuit trying that back through. But. So the threats come from all directions, don’t they?
The Data Center Fight and HB 2014
Maria Russo: Yeah, yeah. And the challenges, as we know, none of them exist alone. Right. So what you’re talking about is like, it’s all compounded challenges that we’re facing. So you’re absolutely right. Our water resources, we have abundant water resources in West Virginia, and we’re so fortunate for that. But that can change really quickly.
Right. So the Potomac river is what we call a flashy river. It goes up really fast and it goes down really fast. And so that is just by nature of the state’s geography, in part. Right. Just like what you said. I saw an interesting. I was watching an interesting video about how West Virginia is the least flat state in the country.
It’s not the highest mountains. Right. We don’t necessarily have the high peaks of Colorado, but it’s the least flat. And if you think about that as an area that really affects some forms of economic development, what can and cannot be placed in certain places, it really affects our water resources. Right. It affects our Internet of what we’re able to get to people or not.
Right. So it’s all these compounded challenges made more difficult by these mountains that we absolutely love. Right. But it presents well.
Troy Miller: They’re some of the oldest mountains on Earth that are a half a billion years old.
Maria Russo: Exactly. They’re ancient, they’re beautiful. They hold so much. But I think that it presents some really interesting water challenges. And so, yeah, I feel like we were going into session with some real concerns about both water quantity and water quality. And to your point, those things are totally overlapped. Right. Like, people like to talk about those challenges separately, which is fair, but they often live together.
If you’re experiencing, you know, and some places experience, experience one more than the other. But if you’re experiencing both water quantity and water quality challenges, it’s that much more difficult. Right. So I loved your quote about like water everywhere but not a drop to drink. We’re seeing that in so many places. You know, we are seeing places that have a ton of water available, but when people turn on their taps, it’s running black, it’s running brown.
They’re getting burns on their skin from the water that they’re using. You know, it’s like they’re. That’s not the water that we.
Troy Miller: And this is.
Maria Russo: If we have these.
Troy Miller: These also aren’t uniquely West Virginian. Like, these systems flow. What is it, 70% of the headwaters east of the Mississippi either start or travel through West Virginia at some point. So these are important water resources for all of our surrounding states too.
Maria Russo: Totally, totally. And where some of the headwaters for the Chesapeake Bay watershed and for the Ohio river that eventually flows into the Mississippi, like, that’s pretty huge. So we talk to people a lot about that, of how we have to be stewards of this water because it ultimately flows to a ton of people in this country, you know, and just, I mean, people rely on us being good upstream neighbors so that they have what they need downstream.
So that presents a really interesting kind of context, but to kind of take it there. I’m going to take it to House Bill 2014 and data centers because I feel like it’s really top of mind for people. I’m actually planning to go to a public meeting tonight about a new high impact data center that was just proposed and announced for Berkeley County.
So that’s the neighboring county to where I live and I’m planning to go to that this evening. They actually had to move the venue of the meeting because they’re expecting so many people. So they moved it to the high school auditorium. This is a huge issue for people. I mean, and so, okay, just for a little context, for some level setting.
So you’re right that House Bill 2014 passed in 2025. So we saw this bill that was being really pushed by the governor’s office. And what we saw is this essentially resulted in buy right development across the state with very Little regard, actually no regard needed towards any local zoning and any noise, any light complaints that people in the local community have. It’s essentially null and void.
Because this said data centers are coming to West Virginia, and we’re going to put them where we need to put them in order to have economic development impact for the state. And the original bill that we saw introduced had no tax revenue going back to the local community. It was then later amended to have a portion of that tax revenue to go back to the local community. But, I mean, this was a huge, huge thing.
And these data centers are also going to be accompanied by a lot of times these micro grids where they can power their own energy generation for them to use, which comes with its own challenges.
So we are seeing, and also for context for people, House Bill 2014 said these facilities and microgrid and data center facilities may not be more than 2,250 acres. That’s huge. Like, can you think of a place in your life that you spend a lot of time that’s like 2,250 acres? Like, I can’t really think. You know, it’s like, that’s a lot of land.
So we’re seeing that really now come into play because again, that passed in 2025. Now in 2026, they have the rulemaking process. The legislature has to say, okay, here’s the rules of the game that when a data center wants to come in, here’s what they apply to for the Department of Commerce, and here’s all the rules they need to play by in order to get approval.
And unfortunately, that entire process is not transparent to the public. So the entire process is considered confidential business information, which I think on the one hand, we know confidential business information, that’s a real thing, right? Businesses are competing for some of these projects, but to have no information provided for the public and no local control and very little tax revenue that’s coming to these communities, it’s just kind of like a totally, again, like a compounded challenge.
So we’ve seen this come into play. We’re now seeing it actually play out. There was some positive discussion around bipartisan water use transparency this session. We had some success in the House to try to amend the bill. We actually are, to the rules. I’m sorry, the rules package that was moving through, we did not successfully amend it in the House, but then when it went over to the Senate, we were able to get an amendment in there which I can talk about around water use and water access, but it’s still not enough.
It’s not enough for what communities need to have the information in order to know what they’re actually going to be dealing with here.
Troy Miller: Yeah. And for context, if I math, as you said, it was 2,250 acres.
Maria Russo: Yeah.
Troy Miller: That’s three and a half square miles.
Maria Russo: Right. And they don’t have to be all on one parcel. So, so the, the rules just defined actually say that the parcels can be no more than four miles apart, which is also like really far. So you could have like a piece here, four miles a piece here, four miles apiece here. So then you’re seeing a tremendous amount of build out all considered under like one facility.
Now they have power needs and requirements that are probably going to keep them confined to a specific area, at least at first. But I mean the footprint of these we just have and we’ve seen in other places where build out has happened. Right. We’ve seen some stories come out of Tennessee, we’ve seen some stuff come out of Virginia. These facilities are a massive footprint and they’re having really big impacts on communities.
And you know, the thing I’ve been telling a lot of people as I’m lobbying in the Capitol is like, you know, a lot of legislators are really convinced that they’re not going to have that footprint. And I’m like, okay, then convince us. Give us facts that make us really know that what you’re saying is true. Because without information, without transparent information, the. I keep saying the only thing the community has to do is speculate.
Because without information that’s all we can do is like try to understand what this might be. And it might not always be exactly the impact that it’s going to have, but that’s because we don’t have any other information to work with. You know.
Raccoons, Real Estate, and the Limits of Speculation
Troy Miller: Right. When your colleague than was on in December, I posted that interview out and made a transcript of it, shared it out and somebody was like, I don’t know, I’m unconvinced by this. You know, this isn’t helpful. What would be helpful is if you said, you know what the cost benefit analysis would be of having these.
And I’m like, that’s the problem, my man. This is. We can’t know that. Sure, they could do these things in very responsible ways, very costly ways for them. That cuts into their bottom line ultimately because that’s the, that’s the trade off. You know, we have to be able to do the analysis from the business side and that’s the reality.
Sure, they can do more closed water loops, they could use less water they can use less power. They could do it things in a way that it doesn’t drive up utility rates, but those are all costs that they have to then internalize. That cuts into their bottom line. And I always also emphasize, who are, who are these data centers for?
I’ve seen now some of the legislators talking about how, well, if you’re seeing this video on Facebook, that’s because of data centers and all of this. And I’m like, yeah, you know, but also if your information is being collected through any number of dragnet operations, if, if the government wants to have all of your stuff, if a private corporation wants to have all of your stuff, you know, Sam Altman is now talking about, he wants AI and all of this to work like a utility where you pay a certain rate so you can use different models.
Well, but all those models are based on information that they stole and then put into a data center to run these models. And so it’s Silicon Valley’s technology that’s being run for the benefit of basically exclusively Wall Street. And it’s, it’s just, it’s a very West Virginia Appalachian story because that’s how the timber industry was, that’s how the coal industry was, that’s how the natural gas industry was.
There’s these outside forces, outside owners who will operate and own until it becomes unprofitable for them. And then we’ll be left with the leftovers. And there is an Onion article, and obviously the Onion is a satire newspaper, but there’s a lot of truth in satire a lot of times. And one of the things was, well, what will these data centers hold in 30 years?
Answer. Raccoons. That’s the reality of what we’re looking at here.
Maria Russo: Oh my gosh, I love that.
Troy Miller: That’s the raccoons and a pilot agreement all the way up to it so that they don’t have to pay the taxes so they can hire the three people for that time. You know, it’s mind boggling to me because it just doesn’t, you know, people are like, do your own research. Why don’t you learn about it? And all the things that data centers actually power. And I’m like, I, I, that’s actually my concern, guys.
Maria Russo: Yeah.
Troy Miller: But again, goes back to this. There’s no way for the community to know how these projects are being done. And that’s by design.
Maria Russo: It’s by design. We’ve seen that. Totally. A word that keeps coming to mind as you’re talking is the word unprecedented. Right. Like we keep being in These unprecedented times. And it’s absolutely exhausting. Like as a millennial, I’m like, can we have a little like just pretty unprecedented time? Like could we just have a precedent and like maybe just live in that for a little?
Because it’s like these unprecedented times. I mean we saw COVID 19, right. That was unprecedented. And I would put these data center build outs in the same category of like it’s pretty unprecedented. There is no precedent set. I mean maybe the only place a precedent has been set is like in Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia.
And like, wow, if you go there like it is, it’s pretty shocking what we’re seeing there. I know than who you’ve spoken about. My colleague went on a tour a few months back through Data Center Alley and just saw some of these like neighborhoods that got data centers put up as their next door neighbor and like, wow, the impacts are huge.
And you know, I think you’re right about the technology is changing over time and people come to us all the time and they say they’re not going to use that much water because it’s the closed loop system. And I’m like okay, in theory that is would make sense. Right. But a couple things are wrong with a closed loop system.
First is that they’re actually some of the most expensive systems to build out. So to your point, with their bottom line, we are seeing that the prices of closed loop systems are higher than if they just use water for cooling. And that’s. That’s an issue. Right. The other thing we’re seeing is that the biocides and the different chemicals that are involved with a closed loop system.
Right. So they have to use more chemic to then cool the water and reuse it. And so we’re seeing some of the discharges. Some of the studies coming out around that are really kind of striking. So you know, I think the technology will continue to change and I do think we will see water at, and I’ll give an example, the Berkeley County High impact Data center that you know, I’m going to this meeting for tonight.
I have heard that there are three water systems. Three water, yeah, I guess models that they’re proposing. One is very low water usage, one is very high water usage and one involves them bringing water in from elsewhere, which I, I don’t know how that would be very viable. Also I don’t know where else.
Troy Miller: Gas price is right now.
Maria Russo: Right. They’re not bringing that. Right. Water is one of the heaviest things to move. Right. So that’s not happening. Especially when it’s being built right by the Potomac, right by the OPEC and Creek. I mean, we are going. So that, you know, one option that they’re seeing is that they may be using gray water off of the water treatment plant that’s right near there.
That would be great. We would love to see that as, as one source. Right. But again, without more information, we can’t even begin to assess the impacts that this could have because we don’t have the information we need to do that. So it’s a really big messy, and
AI, Farmland, and the Future Nobody Can Guarantee
Troy Miller: We also don’t know who the end users are. All these, all of these things are real estate plays ultimately. And when you’re talking about how the technology is changing rapidly, one of the things that really bugs me is being geared up as some sort of artificial intelligence Manhattan Project that we have to take on to defeat the Chinese, of course.
And I have a couple of problems with it. First of all, the Manhattan Project was a publicly done project. All of the. All we did not go out and hire privatized nuclear engineers to build a private bomb that then, you know, GE got the license on and could own the bomb for the rest of forever.
Okay. That’s one thing. The other thing that really bugs me is that our models are basically for AI. We basically just add more nodes and you just add another series of nodes and the thing gets smarter or more intelligent. Well, I mean, that is one way to do it. It seems to me.
My understanding and I, you know, obviously I don’t have the proprietary information of how Deep SEQ runs, but my understanding is that they’re not. That is a model that doesn’t need. It doesn’t run on the same node based. Add more nodes and it gets smarter system. And the analogy I always, I keep using in terms of technological innovation is basically our AI models are like propeller planes.
And we keep on adding more propellers and they go faster and they can fly higher. And it seems to me like at some point somebody is going to develop a jet engine that doesn’t need all those propellers. And all of a sudden all of these data centers are going to be made irrelevant because, you know, we’re doing. We’re all of a sudden shifting to quantum computing or something like this.
I don’t know exactly how it play out, but technological innovation will proceed. And at the rate that it’s proceeding, I have every reason to believe that these data centers will house raccoons probably 30 sooner than 30 years from now.
Maria Russo: Yeah. And it makes your raccoon argument. Yeah. Become that much More powerful and kind of like puts us on our heels because it’s like, well, then why are we. You know, I’m thinking about this farmland in Berkeley county that’s going to be apparently made into a data center. It’s like, it’s, it’s beautiful farmland right now. It’s cows.
Troy Miller: This is some of the best farmland in the country over here in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.
Maria Russo: Absolutely gorgeous. And, you know, once it’s a data center, it will never be farmland again. And that is something that we are seeing so, so much, especially in Jefferson County, Berkeley County, Morgan county, like this eastern panhandle of West Virginia. The rest of the state, you know, is dealing with some different issues, but that’s a really huge issue we’re seeing here in the eastern Panhandle.
It’s just this development and we don’t, we don’t go back from that. Right. And I guess the like part about the, you know, we’re building these data centers so you can use more data, it kind of reminds me of the plastic straw argument. Right. It’s like me using a straw at lunch is not fueling. It’s not the basis of what’s fueling climate change and, you know, energy. Oh, gosh, yeah. It’s just. It’s not your straw. It’s not your straw. It sees huge.
Troy Miller: We can change every light bulb in this house and totally, totally.
Maria Russo: Now, do those things help? Sure. I mean, I, I’m always. And, you know, I don’t use straws very often. I’m using glass straws or whatever, because I’m trying to, you know, have a. Have less of an impact. Personally, I try to recycle, but those ultimately aren’t the huge things that are fueling a lot of these challenges.
So I’ll just say, like, to pivot us back to the legislative session, I know we went deep into a data center hole, which is easy to do as it’s so top of mind for people. But, you know, I’ll just say, I think when I look at what legislators are doing and I look at what communities are saying, because I feel like a lot of times we’re kind of a bridge between the two.
I just question whether our legislators are listening to and really hearing what communities are saying, because I think if they have the community as part of the process, like zoning works because it puts certain things in certain places. Right. And then it says these other places, maybe we shouldn’t put data centers or large industrial facilities or whatever, it’s kind of a Prioritization of land.
Right. That works. We’ve seen it work. I think, with wiping that off the board. I think we’re seeing a lot of communities feel like they have no power and no control. I think people often feel like the legislative session, you know, they walk away from it and they’re like, what did West Virginians get? You know, it’s like they spend a lot of time doing a lot of stuff.
Over 300 bills, or right around 300 bills completed the legislation process this session. How many of those, you know, delivered clean water to southern West Virginia? In my opinion, maybe part of one of them. You know, it’s like. And even that it was a small piece of the state budget that went towards water and sewer upgrades, and it’s a portion of what is really needed around the state, and we don’t know if any portion of that will be directed to southern West Virginia.
So I think we’re hearing people, you know, say the things that they need. Same with when we see these huge flooding events, right. We see. We have seen last year in southern West Virginia, and in northern West Virginia, we saw two huge flooding events that took lives, property caused, I mean, enormous challenges for weeks, months. Some communities are still recovering.
Troy Miller: Absolutely. Yeah.
Maria Russo: And I mean, some communities are still recovering from the 2016 floods that happened 10 years ago. You know what I mean? So it’s like communities are saying, we need more. And I don’t know, you know, that our legislators, I think sometimes they are saying, well, we need this other thing, and this is what we’re going to prioritize.
And I can see that that creates a tension, and I see that. That, you know, it just. It creates a new set of challenges that we have to keep pushing against. So I feel like in our advocacy, we try to really bring those voices into the Capitol. We try to really bring those very immediate needs that people have and make sure that our legislators at least are hearing from us that that is what people want to see.
Clean Water, Public Health, and What Communities Actually Need
Troy Miller: Yeah. And I mean, I’m going to say these are all words from my mouth. I’m not putting them in your mouth. But, you know, last we’ve seen all this movement to ban junk food for SNAP recipients and things like this, and, okay, well, that’s great, but if they can’t turn on their tap to drink water, then you’re really just, you know, thirsting them to death.
Like, a lot of the times, the Dollar General, Mountain Dew or whatever is the affordable option, and it’s not the best option, but people aren’t choosing that because they can drink, they can’t drink their water. I joked about, you know, if we really want to get legislators to start caring about above ground storage tanks, we should just fill them up with food dyes and punch a hole in one of them.
And all of a sudden, you know, RFK Jr. Will descend out and we’ll, we’ll deal with the problem of Red 5 or whatever in the waterways. And, and the other thing is we, that I, I really get upset about. And again, this is my own thing, the push for tax breaks and oh, it’ll bring in businesses if we get our income tax down to zero.
And I’m like, the problem is businesses don’t want to go somewhere where they have to pay for all of their flood resilience. Businesses don’t want to go somewhere where they have to buy watered bottle and mask because their employees can’t get water otherwise. And the tap water in the business is going to be poison.
It’s the analogy I keep on using is like you’re, you’re the cutting taxes to zero and not addressing any of these other things is kind and expecting businesses just show up because they don’t have to pay any taxes is like expecting someone to high dive into an empty swimming pool because there’s no admission cost.
Yeah, I mean nobody’s gonna do it or I mean they’ll do it once.
Maria Russo: Yeah, right, right. And we have to assess that risk that comes with that. Right. So it’s like, yeah, if we open our door to data centers, they might come, but at what cost? Right. At what ultimate risk for everybody? And that, I mean this data center in Berkeley county that’s being proposed, it’s mostly proposed in the floodplain, right.
In that area. There are some wetlands and some low lying areas in that, in that region. And it’s like, I would imagine that would create some serious challenges for them. We have yet to see what that would be. But because we, again, we’re with, we’re acting with very limited information, hoping to get a little more tonight.
But it’s, it’s all compounded and it’s really challenging. And I tell people it’s like an onion. And we might not be able to deal with all of those layers at one time, but we have to start peeling back the layers. We have to start dealing with one or two or three of these issues and not just adding more layers to the onion of impossibility, you know, of impossible solutions.
Because I think we are, at times we’re making it harder for ourselves so to we, and we saw that be a conversation at the Capitol. I mean, at a time when a huge region of the state has no clean drinking water, the last thing people want is to put more pollutants in the water.
And so, I mean, we did see that as an effective conversation piece this year. We did see more legislators vote against rollbacks to the Above Ground Storage Tank act than have voted against it in the past. So that’s a win to me. Right. Because that means we’re saturating the conversation. Like we’re having an effect.
In those conversations that we’re having, the bill was greatly amended so that like, the harm that would be potential to communities was greatly reduced. To me, again, that’s a win. Right. We’re now dealing with like only brine tanks, tanks that contain only brine, as opposed to tanks that could be holding crude oil and other, I mean, potentially harmful substances.
So we are seeing some of that breakthrough and some of that, like, saturate the narrative. But I don’t think it’s anywhere near enough that we need it to. So I mean, my big thing is like, we got to keep pushing also. I think I’ll remind people it’s an election year. You know, we’re going to see a really new set of folks in that state House.
I mean, maybe some of the same, but we know some of the people who are in the House currently are running for Senate. We know, you know, a lot of shifts are possible and so that will come with its own new challenges and opportunities next year. So I’m kind of eager to see how that all plays out. But yeah, it’s, it’s a tricky thing and I think we are in the midst of, of a pretty, pretty.
We got our work cut out for us, I’ll put it that way.
What We Value, and What We Fail to Measure
Troy Miller: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, as you were talking about the irreplaceability of farmland, I’m thinking about, you know, in economics we call it opportunity cost. And one of the things we have a problem of is we can assign value to timber, but we can’t assign value to the trees that, you know, then help with the productivity of the trees, not eroding, not, you know, providing oxygen, providing all of the ecological benefits. That’s much harder to put a dollar sign on.
And I’m going to take a moment here and it’s very timely because the Robert F. Kennedy Sr. Bobby Kennedy, the original Bobby Kennedy, the good one, in my opinion, gave a speech at the University of Kansas on March 18, 1968. And I didn’t know I was going to read from this today, but it’s incredibly timely considering it’s just a couple of days ago, the anniversary of it.
And I think about this a lot, so indulge me as I read this long paragraph from it.
Maria Russo: I love it.
Troy Miller: He says, this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another task. It is to confront the poverty of satisfaction, purpose and dignity that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community values and in the mere accumulation of material things.
Our gross national product now is over $800 billion a year. But that gross national product, if we judge the United States of America by that, that gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.
It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife and the television programs with glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or. Or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country.
It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. And I’d amend that last part to say, you know, all of this stuff in the legislature that’s been going on, they keep on pointing to treasuries and bonds and all of this and the value of this and that.
And it can tell us everything about West Virginia except why we are proud that we are West Virginians. And I think, you know, West Virginia Rivers Coalition, with the work that you all do, I think West Virginia rivers are something that pretty much any West Virginian, you ask them what they’re proud of.
One of the things is. And they have a memory of playing in the streams or playing in the rivers or rafting or whatever. And, you know, it seems to me that if we can’t prioritize our water quality and our water quantity for our people, who are 90 plus percent water, by the way, and all of the toxins that are in our water end up accumulating in us to great effect.
Then, you know, in summary, what the hell are we doing here? And that’s my, that’s my aside of a rant. And, you know, I don’t want to take up too much of your time on this beautiful day. Like, you go out and enjoy the river and the water quality around Jefferson
Closing Thoughts: The Voice of the Rivers
Maria Russo: county to get on the river this weekend. It’s, it’s prime season for that. But, yeah, I’ll just, I will totally echo your words and say this. This is kind of my thesis thought or closing thought, which is that we cannot put a price tag on our rivers. We cannot put a price tag on our mountains and on our streams.
It would be impossible because something that is so sacred, so ancient, there is no way to monetize. I mean, there’s no way to quantify how much that is worth because the, the benefits that it has for us, for all living things that, that, you know, use and exist around that, there’s no number that can be placed on that.
And so I always say at the legislature, I’m like, you know, we are the voice of the rivers in this building because they cannot speak for themselves in the same way. Right? And so they speak for themselves in their own way, I’ll tell you that. But they can’t be in their lobbying for their benefit.
And so that’s part of where our job comes in, is to protect these beautiful assets that we have and to make sure that that’s not just pitted against how much money we could potentially make off of them, but is also like honoring how much they do for us and how much, you know, that comes from having so many water resources, having such an abundance of water in West Virginia.
So that’s definitely something I keep close to my heart. And I appreciate that quote because I think it really drives that home.
Troy Miller: A half a billion years and we get here for a few dozen, you know, if we’re almost 100, if we’re lucky, who are we to, you know, spoil it for everyone for the rest of time? The hubris is unbelievable to me, but yeah, you know, it’s a tale as old as Gilgamesh at this point, too.
So.
Maria Russo: Amen.
Troy Miller: Maria Russo, policy Specialist for West Virginia Rivers wvrivers.org you can go sign up for their email updates. Find out all sorts of all the great work they’re doing. You can donate there. And if you’re feeling generous, you can donate to me on this sub stack, too. Maria, thanks for taking the time.
Maria Russo: Thank you so much for having me, Troy. I really appreciate it.
Troy Miller: See you soon.
This is an "AI"-assisted transcript, lightly cleaned and formatted for readability without altering the substance of the conversation. Mistakes are both machine and human, but responsibility lies with Troy.
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