Emails Reveal Developer Interest in Adams County Power Plant Sites Before Public Debate

Long before Adams County residents circulated petitions at the West Union Walmart or packed community meetings to demand answers, a stream of developers from across the country and overseas were already deep in conversation with local officials about the former Stuart and Killen Station power plant properties along the Ohio River.

Newly released emails and records covering January 2025 through February 2026 document that outreach, identifying firms including Stream Data Centers, Arcange USA, and Next Generation Land Company as active participants in the inquiry pipeline. The documents include email threads, meeting requests, and grant-planning communications that predate the public debate that erupted in early 2026.

At the center of the correspondence is Adams County Economic Development Director Paul Worley, who coordinated Zoom meetings with prospective developers, connected firms to Viking Power, the site owners, and arranged calls with AEP Ohio and AES Ohio to discuss electric capacity and interconnection timelines. "The first thing [data centers] need is a lot of power and the second thing they may need is a lot of water," Worley has said publicly. "These sites do check those boxes. They're isolated." JobsOhio and OhioSE staff also appear throughout the records, offering guidance while cautioning that not every inquiry converts into a project.

The documents show developers zeroing in on the specific variables that determine feasibility for large-scale industrial or data center use: available megawatts, permitting windows, interconnection timelines, and potential fast-track options. Among the firms in the record, Arcange USA described itself as a "European investment group" seeking "real power availability" assessments and fast-track permitting options in what it called "strategic counties" across North America.

AES Ohio disclosed in a February 3 regulatory filing that a data center in the vicinity of the Stuart plant would require 1,300 megawatts of electricity by 2032, which would make it one of Ohio's largest, consuming 31 times the annual power consumption of Adams County. That disclosure helped trigger the wave of public concern that followed.

The Killen and Stuart plants closed in 2018, eliminating 700 jobs and costing Manchester schools $5.5 million in funding. Worley has framed developer recruitment as a direct response to that loss. He has been actively marketing the former power plant sites to data center companies, arguing the locations are ideal because of their existing power and water infrastructure, and has said the county does not want to turn away any opportunity to create good-paying jobs.

The records also extend scrutiny to the Buck Canyon tract in Sprigg Township. Buck Canyon Properties purchased 1,016 acres north of the Stuart plant for $2.65 million in 2024 and has applied for permits for a "light industrial use" project with 12 buildings.

JobsOhio, while active in the correspondence, noted limits on data center incentives while offering non-incentive supports such as site planning and concept engineering grants. That caveat matters: not every email thread in the records represents a project that will advance to a formal proposal.

Monroe Township trustees passed a March 2 resolution to establish a zoning commission to regulate development in its 27-square-mile jurisdiction, which includes the Killen plant. Trustees in Sprigg Township, home of the Stuart plant, passed a one-year voluntary moratorium on data centers the same day. Those votes came after, not before, the private discussions now visible in the released records.

For residents who pressed for transparency, the emails confirm what many suspected: that substantial developer engagement was underway well before any public forum was convened. The documents give concrete names, utilities, and engineering contacts that will likely drive questioning at upcoming trustee meetings and county hearings for months to come.