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Residents seek county guidance on data centers and report a missing neighbor during public comment
Summary
Two public commenters asked the commission for help — one sought information about data centers and their local impacts; another reported that a neighbor, Theodore Walker, was hospitalized over the winter and later placed in an unknown care setting, with privacy rules limiting what neighbors can learn.
During the public comment period, two residents asked the Berkeley County Commission for information and assistance.
Patricia Neely introduced herself and told the commission she is new to the area and wants to learn more about data centers and their implications for Berkeley County and the state. She asked where residents should go for information and offered to share her phone number so staff or commissioners could follow up. "I'm trying to learn more about the data centers and what that's going to mean for our county and what that's going to mean for our state overall," Neely said.
Paul Butler later raised a separate concern about a neighbor, identified in his remarks as Theodore Walker, who suffered a winter health emergency and was later placed in a care home. Butler said neighbors do not know which care home or which social worker is managing Walker's case and that privacy rules such as HIPAA limit what government agencies can disclose. He described community attempts to locate Walker and asked whether the county could provide guidance on what neighbors may reasonably expect to learn.
A member of the meeting suggested contacting the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) as a starting point, while noting DHHR's ability to release information is constrained by privacy protections. The commission did not resolve the specific cases during the meeting; staff follow‑up was not recorded on the public record.
The comments raised two takeaways for residents: where to seek neutral factual information about proposed data center activity, and the limitations neighbors may face when attempting to locate or check on adults admitted to care settings.
