Rural Virginia Community Defeats Massive Gas Plant and Data Center Proposal 

On Oct. 18, 2024, Amanda Wydner saw a rezoning request listed in her local paper. Balico LLC sought to develop 2,200 acres of rural land in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, for a massive gas power plant and huge data center complex of 84 buildings.

“It was literally more than I could take in,” she says, adding that the rezoned land proposal came all the way to her front yard and driveway.

Wydner, who has spent most of her life living in Pittsylvania — her dad was a tobacco farmer and both of her parents were teachers — immediately began receiving calls from other concerned neighbors. Two days later, a group of community members squeezed into a county official’s office to demand more information.

As Emily Ragsdale, who heads the Pittsylvania County Office of Community Development, started rolling maps to go over the Ballico proposal with county residents, Wydner says the magnitude of Ballico’s plan started to hit people — many people in attendance started to cry.

“This was something that we have never faced before,” Wydner remembers thinking that day. 

Community members acted quickly to mobilize opposition to Balico’s plans, which would transform their rural locale into an industrial park. They were distressed over the prospect of clearing agricultural land, the amount of noise and air pollution from the project, construction traffic, and the draining of local water resources to cool gas plant and data center components.

Within days of the newspaper announcement, yard signs and banners were in the works. Residents were making copies of maps to show the extent of Balico’s plan while placing phone calls to county leaders.

It was the beginning of a months-long process to protect their rural community and defeat a proposal that could dramatically alter Pittsylvania County.

Wydner and a group of people, including residents Lexi Shelhorse and Amy Walker, came from different political backgrounds but were connected through their love of land and identity as small-town Americans, and they were motivated to protect their rural community.

“I’m proud to live in Pittsylvania County because it represents the best of small-town America — where a strong sense of community, traditional values and neighbors helping neighbors still mean something,” says Shelhorse, another lifelong resident of the county, in an email. Her ancestor, John Barnett Shelhorse, arrived in Pittsylvania in 1790.

“When it comes to quality of life, water and air — it should be on everyone’s platform, no matter what side of the spectrum you are on,” Wydner says. 

“I had never been involved in a fight like this,” Walker says. “This was new territory for me.” 

Walker and her husband moved to Pittsylvania in 2008 after leaving behind corporate careers to dedicate themselves to restoring a house that was built in 1845 on land that once belonged to a predecessor of her husband. Walker is a professional in marketing and applied her skills to create flyers, place newspaper ads, write press releases and administer the Coalition for the Coalition for the Protection of Pittsylvania County Facebook page, which became a valuable tool in their fight. 

“It was a priority to make sure that everything that was shared was accurate,” she says. “When I created an ad or Facebook post, I had data to back up what was printed.” 

The coalition Facebook page’s number of followers started growing. Wydner explains that they placed an emphasis on sharing impacted community members’ stories on the page while using it as a conduit of information. 

“[The Facebook stories] always had a huge reach,” Walker says. “When you can place a name and face to the situation, it is powerful. It makes it real.”

Balico’s proposal to build a 3,500-megawatt gas-fired power plant in the Chalk Level community of Pittsylvania — which would be the largest ever built in Virginia — started to sink in. According to Wydner, at first, people did not fully understand the immense size of a 3,500-megawatt power plant. She found aerial photos of a similar 3,750-megawatt plant in West County, Florida, that is as big as 166 football fields. 

She says her mouth dropped when she came to understand how massive Balico’s plant would be and the amount of pollution it would create, noting that the West County gas power plant was ranked in 2022 as the 29th dirtiest power plant in the county. 

“The first of its kind in Virginia would be dropped right here to the side of our county seat,” Walker says. “We’re all taught that gas-fired energy is clean. It’s not clean — no one can live near it.”

Organizing in the community ramped up with canvassing in local neighborhoods and speaking engagements at local churches. People were concerned about how the development would affect the viewshed of their bucolic lands, according to Wydner. 

“No one wanted [Chatham] to turn into an industrialized megapark,” she says.  

Word on the street began to circulate that community opposition was forcing the county planning commission and board of supervisors to reject the Pittsylvania County proposal, and Balico withdrew its project. But in November 2024, the company resubmitted an application that was reduced in scope, requesting to rezone 760 acres of land for a dozen data centers with a “dedicated power source,” leaving the size of the proposed gas plant unchanged.

This began a few months of back and forth. Balico would put its proposal to the county, then ask to postpone the hearing at the last minute, before a vote could occur from county supervisors — and return again with a similar proposal. At the same time, Balico began building up its own support by enlisting local business leaders to endorse its promises of job opportunities and tax revenue. This created deep divisions in the community, according to organizers.

The opposition did not back down, and residents continued to pack the monthly board of supervisors meetings.

“The key was not backing off,” Walker says, adding, “I moved forward with the attitude, ‘this just gives us more time to get out our message, and to further grow and unite the opposition.’ And it did!” 

“I think dragging out the rezoning process was completely disrespectful to our board, to our county staff and the residents,” Shelhorse says. “It felt like Balico was holding our county hostage.”

Shelhorse, Walker, Wydner and two other community members retained the nonprofit law firm Southern Environmental Law Center to represent them. 

“SELC really helped us understand the process and what our rights were as citizens,” Shelhorse says. “They analyzed our county ordinances and helped us understand how our local laws protected us.”

SELC partnered with Harvard University researchers who released a study analyzing the public health impacts of the Balico proposal. The report indicated that the 3,500-megawatt plant would release high levels — 326.53 tons — of particulate matter 2.5, a dangerous form of air pollution. The Harvard researchers estimated that the plant could cause $31 million in healthcare costs annually.

The situation boiled to a head before the April 15 Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors meeting, when Balico requested to withdraw its application again ahead of the meeting. After hearing hours of powerful public testimony against Balico’s proposal, the county voted to reject Balico’s request to withdraw and then, in a separate 6-1 vote, denied the company’s plan altogether. 

“To be in that auditorium filled with opposition to Balico was amazing,” Walker says. “People were there and believed they could defeat Balico.” 

Shelhorse said she was ecstatic and relieved from the vote. 

“I felt like the board really heard the people,” she said. “They really understood how projects like this have to be considered carefully because you can’t undo industrial development.”

Since defeating the Balico proposal, Pittsylvania residents have three new potential fossil fuel projects coming their way: A section of Mountain Valley Pipeline’s Southgate extension is proposed to start in their county, as would the proposed Southeast Supply Enhancement Project and Power Express pipelines from Transco.

Wydner, Walker and Shelhorse agree that the community will remain engaged as the proposals for these projects undergo regulatory processes. 

“I believe moving forward there is more community awareness,” Shelhorse says. “I believe our residents understand that we all have to be more involved and aware of what’s going on.”

Walker vows to continue using the coalition Facebook page as a forum to educate county residents and show them how to participate. 

“My job to inform, educate and engage continues,” she says.

They feel that being involved in updating the county’s comprehensive plan, which will guide the county’s development and operations for the next 20 years, is a way to steer Pittsylvania in the right direction. 

“It’s time to lean in and engage in the process,” Wydner says. “We are going to make the effort for the future, a trajectory of reasonable growth while maintaining the culture.”