NOAA Environmental Security Computing Center data center, Fairmont, West Virginia

NOAA's Environmental Security Computing Center, a federal supercomputing data center in the I-79 High Technology Park in Fairmont, Marion County, West Virginia, is operating and growing. The agency is installing a new research supercomputer called Rhea in a modular unit next to the existing center, adding about 30 petaflops of computing power, roughly 30,000 trillion calculations per second, to speed forecasts of weather, droughts, floods and wildfires.

NOAA awarded $99.3 million to General Dynamics Information Technology to build Rhea, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. As of May 2026, Rhea was still being installed.

NOAA renewed its lease on the building with the West Virginia High Technology Foundation for another 20 years. Foundation president Jim Estep said the expansion is meant to draw more commercial weather and AI companies to the park, calling Rhea "one of the first big things that (the park) expansion was in preparation for." NOAA's design leaves room for several more modular data centers on the site later, and the center already houses NOAA's Hera supercomputer.

In May 2026, Hog Lick Aggregates, next door in White Hall, said it is studying a private data center and microgrid on its 277-acre site that could support NOAA's computing work using geothermal cooling from a shuttered coal mine and local natural gas. Company president Brian Redmond called the study preliminary with no timeframe, and the proposal has drawn criticism on Facebook.

Under West Virginia's 2025 law, House Bill 2014, the state certifies these "high impact" data centers and bars local governments from enforcing their own noise or pollution rules against them. In February 2026 the House voted down amendments that would have required water disclosures, 500-foot buffers from homes, schools and churches, and a local petition and vote. "I believe in local control," said Del. Laura Kimble, R-Harrison, who voted against those added rules.