Russell County is exploring the possibility of bringing a data center campus to a 236-acre site on a reclaimed coal mine off Gravel Lick Road near the town of Cleveland.
The site is part of Moss No. 3, a historic coal mine where a developer hopes to place three or four data centers, though he has not yet attracted companies that would occupy and operate the centers.
Two years ago, a different parcel of privately owned land on the site was proposed for a landfill, and the project was eventually rejected by county leaders after staunch opposition from the community.
The data center proposal comes from a partnership between the Russell County Industrial Development Authority, which owns the property, and Oasis Digital Properties, a Northern Virginia-based data center developer.
The authority, which has not released anything publicly about this endeavor, declined to comment on the project. Laura Gilmer, who became the director of the authority this year, said it is under a nondisclosure agreement with Oasis.
“Preliminary engineering, infrastructure assessments and reclamation work have been conducted to aid in preparation of the site for industrial use,” she wrote in a statement. “A project of this nature could create numerous jobs and highly significant tax revenue for Russell County.”
Ross Litkenhous, a co-founder of Oasis, said his team specializes in rural, secondary markets, including a project next door in Wise County. Oasis entered into a contract with the Russell County development authority in the spring of 2025, he said.
“It’s a piece of land that’s not suitable for much else,” Litkenhous said. “There’s a lot of power infrastructure already available that was very attractive to us.”
The deal stipulates that the authority retains control of the property while Oasis takes the next steps to develop it, Litkenhous said. The contract gives Oasis the option to eventually purchase the land. He declined to comment on the price of the land or the timeline.
Litkenhous said he anticipates the first building and power delivery could take shape in about two years, while the total project would take five to 10 years and would hinge on finding clients to occupy the three or four expected buildings.
Data centers have become a hot issue across the commonwealth and nation in recent months and years. Concerns center around their enormous power requirements, heavy water use with some designs and impact on the environment and quality of life, including light pollution and constant humming from the fans cooling the servers. Proponents want the increased tax revenue, development and jobs they would bring.
Virginia has more data centers than any other state, and with their concentration in Northern Virginia, the Southwest is becoming increasingly attractive to developers for cheaper available land with lower tax rates. Russell County passed a machinery and tool tax in December 2025 that matched the low rate of neighboring counties: 24 cents per $100 of assessed value, an incentive to encourage development.
Although some localities, including Bristol, have taken steps to stop or limit development of data centers, leaders from five localities in far Southwest Virginia, including Lee, Scott, Wise and Dickenson counties and the city of Norton, approved resolutions in 2023 stating they welcome data centers.
Power, water details for data centers depend on clients
In August, Oasis went to market looking for clients to occupy the potential buildings. Beginning construction is contingent on this matchmaking process, Litkenhous said.
Oasis has spent the past 18 months preparing the development authority’s piece of Moss 3 without putting shovels into the ground. Civil engineering and research have been the focus, Litkenhous said, including fiber studies, floodplains and understanding power availability.
Appalachian Power’s natural gas-fired Clinch River Plant is about two miles southwest of the site and has untapped capacity for power generation, Litkenhous said. He said Appalachian Power has confirmed it could provide 300 megawatts of power, using natural gas as fuel.
George Porter, an Appalachian Power spokesperson, said in a statement that the company does not discuss specific customers or projects unless those details have been made public by the customer, adding that any large-load request would be evaluated “to help ensure the customer pays its fair share while protecting reliability and keeping affordability a priority for all customers.”
If the deal is finalized, Litkenhous said the power would be provided on a “ramp schedule,” with an initial 100 megawatts being delivered to the site by 2028. Oasis would be responsible for building a substation to distribute the power to the buildings, he added.
Depending on which companies might end up as partners, Litkenhous said the project would probably end up with three or four “modestly sized buildings.” A 2024 state report described a “typical” data center as 250,000 square feet.
To cool the buildings, Litkenhous said, water options include Lake Bonaventure, a 66-acre lake nearby with capacity of more than 500 million gallons, according to a presentation from the development authority, and municipal water from the county.
Chris Dye, Russell County Public Service Authority director, said the authority reviewed its records and found no information or proposals related to data centers, but it did receive a “routine inquiry concerning [water transmission] line sizes” in the site area in May 2025.
“Based on current usage levels and infrastructure capacity, we believe there is available capacity to accommodate additional demand at the Moss 3 site,” Dye wrote in response to the request from Ernie McFaddin, former development authority director, according to records released to Cardinal News.
Litkenhous said there is not currently a plan for water consumption, which would depend on the clients. The buildings could be built with a closed-loop system, he said, which reuses water but requires more power.
Job potential for Russell County while residents remain in the dark
If able to build up to the power capacity, Litkenhous estimates that the development would generate approximately $20 million per year in local tax revenue and more than 1,000 construction jobs over a five- to 10-year period.
With the first 100 megawatts available in 18 months, and about two years to construct a building, he said the developer is looking at an approximately two-year schedule for each building.
Full-time jobs would depend on the number of buildings built, with 30 to 50 people expected to work in each, as well as opportunities in trades like HVAC and electric.
“I’ve seen firsthand … the benefits and economic impact that projects like this can have on communities looking for economic development,” Litkenhous said, adding that his team likes to take data centers “to places they should be, rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”
Litkenhous described the plot as tucked into a hollow, a flat area that’s hidden out of sight from the community.
The proposed landfill, however, drew backlash two years ago when residents anticipated the impact it could have on property values and the environment, including the Clinch River. There are houses off Ivy Ridge Road, which runs into Gravel Lick Road, and there are also some nearby farms.
Brandi Hurley, an attorney who worked to stop the landfill proposal, said the group chat where local residents discussed that project never died.
“We’re always waiting on the next secretive move, and what they’re going to do to advance it,” she said of the county government. “It feels like, to us, that the landfill is always looming.”
Hurley said she could see a data center at Moss 3 if the company that comes in works ethically, but she would prefer a solar project. Ultimately, she said, she wants communication and concern for residents who already live there.
“I would love for the county to do literally anything that shows they are concerned with the citizens already here,” she said. “That’s what we’ve always done … get these big guys to come here and pay people as little wage as possible.”
The intention to bring data centers to the complex has not been publicized by the development authority, but it made rounds on Facebook in August after community members noticed its listing on the Oasis website. Questions and theories peppered the comments of several posts, with the only information available being a site presentation linked to the project.
Litkenhous said once a more formal plan is in place, including signing on clients, the developers plan to host public meetings with community members. A public forum is planned for later this fall, although no date has been set, Gilmer said.
“Honestly, it’s because there is nothing to report out yet. This is all very preliminary,” Litkenhous said when asked why the project has not been publicly noticed. “Now we are looking to matchmake with end users … Until then, we’re not building anything.”
Litkenhous confirmed that officials are under an NDA and added that municipalities might be worried about violating specific terms in the agreement.
“It is limited in scope and not a blanket NDA,” he wrote in a response, adding that it ensures negotiations with clients and business strategies are not made public without their approval.
Gilmer said it’s standard for many development authorities working with businesses to have NDAs in place, adding “there is nothing unusual about this project.”
She denied a Freedom of Information Act request by Cardinal News for documents and communications related to the project, citing exemptions in Virginia’s public records code and referencing the NDA.
While some of the exemptions might be plausible, an “NDA is not a defense to a [records] request,” said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.
“NDA is only about things you can talk about,” Rhyne said. “You cannot contract with a party to waive the public’s right under the [Freedom of Information Act].”
NDAs have been used in development historically, Rhyne added, but they are coming to light under the proliferation of data center projects across the country.
McFaddin, who oversaw much of this agreement, said the NDA limits what he can say but added that a data center on Moss 3 would be life-changing for Russell County.
“If it was a sizable data center that went there … it could very easily eliminate personal property tax for every resident in the county. It has that potential,” he said. “It all comes back to how the county would choose to utilize the additional revenue that would be generated.”
County Administrator Lonzo Lester said the data centers are a development authority project and he has not been approached with a proposal. When a locality creates a development authority, it has its own separate powers as specified under state law.
Lou Ann Wallace, a member of the county board of supervisors, said in an email that she has no news to share, while other board members did not respond to requests for comment.
Litkenhous said Oasis is going through a robust planning and approval process with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and environmental organizations, and said if any mitigation is recommended, “We would absolutely do that.”
If construction gets underway, he said the goal would be to hire locally, as well as for full-time jobs inside the buildings. He’s had discussions with leaders at community colleges and the University of Virginia’s College at Wise to develop a local workforce, he said, and he envisions data center operations programs similar to those offered at Northern Virginia Community College.
Conversations are continuing at the state level on how to make data centers pay their fair share, after a statewide energy consumption tax was passed by the General Assembly. A subcommittee is exploring recommendations on other taxes and current exemptions before the 2027 legislative session begins in January.
There is currently one other data center in Russell County, operated by Northrop Grumman in Lebanon. The single-story building was constructed in 2007 and has 103,000 square feet, according to COPT Data Center Solutions.
A look back, and forward, at the rest of Moss 3
The site isn’t just any reclaimed coal mine. The Moss No. 3 Mine was the site of a pivotal turning point during the 1989-90 Pittston Coal Strike. Union workers took over the mine, then the third-largest coal preparation plant in the world, for four days, building human walls to prevent arrests and camps to feed strikers.
Cleaning up the old coal mine has been a years-long project of Russell County Reclamation. The work was funded in part through grants from the federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization Program.
Two years ago, Russell Reclamation was the company that proposed building a landfill on a parcel of the site, which was turned down by the county board of supervisors.
Around 2018, Russell Reclamation sold an adjacent parcel to the Russell County Industrial Development Authority, McFaddin said. He added that Moss No. 3 totals a little over 1,500 acres, and about 1,200 acres are still owned by the reclamation business. Part of that land will be developed with the assistance of a recent Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization Program grant.
Nearly 90 million tons of legacy coal waste will be converted into a “high-value, low-carbon pozzolan product used in green concrete manufacturing,” according to a release from Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s office.
McFaddin said there is enough of the material on the site, used as filler in concrete and cement mixes, “to operate the plant for 100 years.” Spanberger’s release said the project is expected to create 95 jobs over the next five years.
John Matney, a partner in Russell Reclamation, said by email that his group “has nothing to do with the data center discussion” and declined to comment on the coal waste project, also citing an NDA.
