# Editor’s Notebook: Are data centers the new coal mines of Kentucky? **Published:** 2026-06-18T09:30:25.000Z **Source:** [Kentucky Lantern](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/18/editors-notebook-are-data-centers-the-new-coal-mines-of-kentucky/) **Republished from:** [Kentucky Lantern](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/18/editors-notebook-are-data-centers-the-new-coal-mines-of-kentucky/) (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) **Canonical:** https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/18/editors-notebook-are-data-centers-the-new-coal-mines-of-kentucky/ By Linda Blackford, [Kentucky Lantern](https://kentuckylantern.com) · June 18, 2026  (A mountaintop near Cumberland, Kentucky, remains scarred after it was strip mined in search of coal. Many mining companies walked away without remediating the land after filing for bankruptcy. Now a new mine is planned in East Tennessee on the Kentucky border. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)) Are data centers the new coal? Or are they the new landfills? Or the new prisons? The comparisons aren’t perfect, but they are easy to make: a brand new shiny industry owned by out-of-state corporations comes to a beleaguered region with the promise of (some) jobs, part of an ephemeral promise to buttress the failing economies and [depopulating regions of Kentucky.](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/04/13/eastern-kentucky-is-running-out-of-people-and-time/) Like the coal needed to fuel our national industrialization, data centers are inevitable because of the AI boom and our energy needs that are exploding right now. Like coal, data centers have the ability to take over large swaths of land, pollute our water, and with the help of tax incentive giveaways, do little or nothing to help our people. Places like Kentucky are attractive to data center developers: like the coal seams of old, we have what they need with relatively cheap electricity, lots of cheap land, plenty of water, and a deep need for jobs, any jobs. And just like coal, we are seeing our leaders give away the store with tax incentives and [an almost total lack of regulation for whatever comes next.](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/15/utilities-say-their-rules-protect-ratepayers-against-big-data-centers-some-argue-more-can-be-done/) As writer James Brancome said in a [recent piece in the Lantern](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/04/five-decades-later-the-mountains-still-need-what-they-never-got/): “The region is being recolonized for its electricity and its empty land. Local communities are being told, again, that this represents opportunity.” #### Profits out, poverty in Joe Childers, an environmental lawyer who has worked to undo many of the injustices of the coal industry, [including the broad-form deed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_form_deed), noted that now, as then, much of Eastern Kentucky’s land is still in the hands of out of state corporations. Those corporate owners may be happy to turn over their land to data centers, particularly if it’s been strip-mined to a level surface. “The land owners and the data center owners, those are the folks who can meet in board rooms and get together,” Childers said. “You’ll have the same companies who profited off coal now profiting from data centers developed on their property. I think there’s a connection to be made there – a strip mining industry that basically kept these communities in poverty for 100 years, and data centers, which aren’t the answer to that.” But of course, a mayor in a town rapidly losing population because of a lack of jobs is going to look for them wherever they can, including in data centers. That’s where it would be useful to have some state parameters put into law, such as forbidding local officials to sign NDA agreements, stopping the corporate welfare of tax incentives that will give away as much as they get, and making sure the costs of massive new loads of electricity won’t be palmed off to ratepayers. The General Assembly has, so far, declined to do any of that. #### A new attitude The difference is that this time around, people are fighting back. Kentuckians in every region of the state are asking questions about proposed data centers, some of them with Eastern Kentucky’s history with coal mining at the front of their minds. “This is Appalachia. We have a very long memory here,” said Boyd County resident Rachel Wilson [at a recent and very raucous meeting about a proposed data center there.](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/02/starting-it-off-shady-residents-question-ndas-protections-for-proposed-boyd-co-data-center/) “Most of that memory is boom and then bust, so you want us to get excited about a boom. We’re all concerned about how much that boom is going to cost us, and when is it going to bust, and who’s going to pay for that bust.” As Lantern reporter Liam Niemeyer has written, municipalities are pushing back [with bans and zoning restrictions for data centers](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/08/some-kentucky-counties-and-cities-are-hitting-pause-on-data-centers/). And one Eastern Kentucky city might be the model: Pikeville officials have entered into a memorandum of understanding with a company proposing a $250 million data center that would employ 40 people when it’s finished. But officials said any agreement would ensure the company meets all tax obligations, and they have hired a firm to do an analysis of future costs and benefits. Coal made a lot of people a lot of money, and it allowed our country to be a leader of the industrial age. It also left behind environmental destruction, hollowed-out economies, and a population that’s been leaving the region ever since. So if data centers are the next coal industry, let’s hope our people and our leaders will ask harder questions and make stricter rules than they did the first time around. ## Sources - [Kentucky Lantern](https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/18/editors-notebook-are-data-centers-the-new-coal-mines-of-kentucky/)