"Since then, I've seen farms, dairy farms, orchards, all of them disappear."
Christopher Breeze said that at a town hall inside the Spring Mills High School auditorium in March, describing the 46 years he has lived in Berkeley County. His first home was in Bedington, the same patch of ground where a $4 billion data center campus is now planned. The room was packed. More than 25 people took the microphone that night, and most of them were worried about the same three things: noise, water, and what happens to property values once a 1.9 million square foot facility goes up next door.
If you're looking at land or a home near Falling Waters right now, you've probably already read a version of this story. Governor bragged. Developer showed up. Neighbors pushed back. What most coverage skips is the part that actually changes how you should evaluate a parcel in this area, and it has nothing to do with megawatts.
What Got Announced, and What Didn't
The facts of the project are straightforward. Penzance Management, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate firm, is building what it calls the Bedington Campus on 548 acres in the Falling Waters district of Berkeley County. At full build-out the site is expected to run 1.9 million square feet and draw 600 megawatts of power, backed by a $4 billion private investment. The project earned West Virginia's first High Impact Intelligence Center designation, and officials expect roughly 1,000 construction jobs during the build and 125 permanent positions once it's running.
What wasn't announced is just as telling. When Governor Morrisey unveiled the project in February, officials couldn't say when construction would start, what the power purchase agreements would look like, or what environmental review would actually turn up. A trade outlet covering the announcement noted plainly that timelines for development weren't shared. Months later, no public timeline has surfaced to fill that gap. This is a project defined as much by what remains open as by what's confirmed.
The Law Changed First, Before Any Bulldozer Showed Up
The reason this project moved as fast as it did isn't really about West Virginia's land or power grid. It's about House Bill 2014, the legislation that created the High Impact Intelligence Center designation in the first place. Under that law, a certified project can build its own power grid and operate outside standard local zoning review, while directing most of its revenue into state-level funds rather than the county budget alone.
That's a different kind of exposure than a typical rezoning fight, where neighbors get a hearing and a planning commission vote. Here, the review already happened at the state level before most residents knew the site existed. One resident at the town hall put it bluntly when he pressed commissioners on whether the facility, despite drawing power like a utility, would be treated as one for regulatory purposes. Commissioners didn't have a clean answer.
If you're evaluating a parcel anywhere near this footprint, that matters for a simple reason: the same designation that applies to Bedington is available statewide. West Virginia has similar high-impact projects moving in Mason, Tucker, and Jefferson counties, and the pattern is consistent. Local zoning authority gets set aside for projects that clear the state's threshold. Whatever happens with this specific campus, the legal mechanism that allowed it now exists as precedent for whatever comes next on adjacent land.
Why Some Neighbors Already Sold
The clearest signal in this whole story didn't come from the developer or the governor's office. It came from Joanna Gregory, who has lived above what she calls Bedington Falls for fifty years and told the crowd she's one of four households the new campus will surround.
"The people who sold their land for this data center did so to avoid Eminent Domain," she told the room.
Read that again. The people closest to the project, who had the most information about how this law works, made a specific bet. They sold ahead of a designation process rather than risk being forced out later under eminent domain provisions tied to utility-style projects. That's not a hypothetical concern raised by outside critics. It's a decision made by people who live there and understood the legal mechanics better than most.
This pattern isn't unique to Berkeley County either. Reporting on a similar high-impact project taking shape along the Ohio River in Mason County found the same behavior: people living next to that construction have largely chosen to sell and move rather than wait to see what the buildout brings. If you're shopping for land near a project like this, the willingness of long-time owners to sell quickly is itself information worth weighing, separate from whatever the marketing materials say about jobs and tax revenue.
The Money Isn't Settled Either
Part of the pitch for projects like this is the promise of new revenue flowing back into the county. Under the microgrid legislation that created the High Impact designation, revenue gets split this way:
- 50 percent to a statewide Personal Income Tax Reduction Fund
- 30 percent to the host county
- 10 percent distributed to all counties on a per capita basis
- 5 percent to an Electric Grid Stabilization and Security Fund
- 5 percent to an Economic Enhancement Grant Program
On paper, that 30 percent host-county share sounds like a meaningful win for Berkeley County. In practice, county officials still don't know exactly what it means for their budget. As of June 2026, correspondence between the Berkeley County Commission and the West Virginia Tax Commissioner shows officials pressing for clarity on how the law affects local revenue, specifically flagging the risk of losses in school aid funding even as the county stands to gain from the new project. Months after the initial announcement, the people responsible for the county budget were still asking basic questions about their own cut.
That's worth sitting with if you're weighing whether nearby land will see a tax benefit any time soon. The formula exists. The practical payout to Berkeley County residents, especially schools, is still being worked out at the state level.
The Number That Matters If You're On Well Water
If you're looking at acreage in the Falling Waters or Bedington area, water is the detail to run down before anything else. At the town hall, a resident who spoke about the water table laid out a comparison worth remembering: an open water system can draw around 5 million gallons a day, compared to a flow system limited to roughly 5 million gallons a year. That's a 364-fold difference in draw, raised specifically because the county has been described as being in the middle of a four-year drought.
County officials have floated using reclaimed water for the facility, which would reduce the strain on groundwater and lower costs for the developer at the same time. That's a reasonable mitigation if it happens. It hadn't been finalized as of this writing. For anyone buying a parcel that depends on a private well within a few miles of the site, the underlying question isn't whether this specific data center will cause a problem. It's whether the county's water infrastructure planning keeps pace with a project of this scale before your well is the one that runs low.
What This Actually Means If You're Looking At Land Here
None of this means Falling Waters is a place to avoid. Berkeley County remains one of the more accessible entry points into the Eastern Panhandle, and most of the county isn't inside this project's footprint at all. But if a parcel you're considering sits within a few miles of Bedington, a short list of questions belongs in your due diligence beyond the usual survey and title work:
- Is the parcel, or land adjacent to it, within any area the county has flagged for high-impact zoning consideration
- What is the well's tested yield, and has that test happened recently given the drought conditions described at the town hall
- Is any part of the parcel in a flood zone, particularly near Bedington Falls or the Bedington Bridge area
- Has the seller disclosed any communication with Penzance, the county, or the state regarding land acquisition near the project
- What does the timeline uncertainty mean for your resale plans, since officials themselves couldn't confirm a construction start date as of this writing
A licensed agent working across West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland can help you pull the specific answers for a given parcel rather than relying on the general reporting above, which is why this is exactly the kind of question worth raising before you write an offer, not after.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has the data center construction actually started? Not as of this writing. Officials have not shared a confirmed construction timeline, and the environmental and engineering plans submitted as part of the state's certification process are not required to be made public.
Does this affect land outside the immediate 548-acre footprint? The zoning exemption applies specifically to the certified project site, but the legal mechanism behind it, House Bill 2014's high-impact designation, is available to future projects statewide. That's a separate consideration from whether this particular campus expands.
Is the county actually getting new tax revenue from this? The revenue-sharing formula exists in state law, but Berkeley County officials were still seeking clarification from the state Tax Commissioner as of June 2026 on how it affects local funding, including school aid. The financial upside for the county isn't fully resolved yet.
If you're weighing a purchase near Falling Waters, or anywhere else across the tri-state region, Marcy Smith can help you get specific answers on a specific parcel rather than working from headlines alone. Explore the Falling Waters neighborhood page or reach out directly. Let's Connect.
