By Valerie Cury

For more than a decade, Casey Chapman has been a familiar figure in Purcellville’s development industry.

Chapman, his brother Sam Chapman and business partner Aaron McCleary are part of CaseCo, a Purcellville-based construction and development company whose interests have included residential and commercial construction, restoration and real estate development.

Among Chapman’s most controversial local projects was Vineyard Square on 21^st Street in historic downtown Purcellville. Chapman later served as manager of the project, which was approved during Mayor Bob Lazaro’s terms in office and remained active for more than 15 years.

The approved site plan called for a six-story development with 40 condominiums on the narrow, one-way street, despite being inconsistent with the Town’s Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Ordinance. The project was approved without an application to amend either document.

Vineyard Square was never built, although its permits were extended four times, including twice under COVID-era legislation pushed by development-industry lobbyists. 

By the time the extensions expired, Mayor Chris Bertaut had a Town Council majority opposed to further extensions. No additional extension came before the Council, and the long-running Vineyard Square approvals expired.

Chapman-associated businesses have also been substantial contributors to Erin Rayner’s Purcellville campaigns.

Campaign finance records show that over the course of her campaigns, Erin Rayner has received substantial contributions from individuals, businesses, LLCs and political organizations.

One of the political organizations contributing to Rayner was Citizens for Virginia PAC, a now-terminated super PAC with a Wisconsin mailing address.

Campaign finance records show that Jeffrey S. Brown contributed $25,000 to Citizens for Virginia PAC in May 2023, listing Dell in Sterling as his employer and sales as his occupation. Citizens for Virginia PAC subsequently contributed $15,000 to Rayner on Oct. 16, 2024.

Brown had previously contributed $5,000 directly to Rayner on Oct. 27, 2022, listing Red River in Sterling as his employer and information technology as his field.

Red River provides data-center infrastructure and has a dedicated data-center practice encompassing artificial intelligence and machine-learning platforms, cloud computing, high-performance computing, servers and storage, and security. Red River and Dell Technologies are longstanding partners, working together on infrastructure and data-center modernization.

Rayner also received $10,000 from Natalie Hornbaker and $1,500 from David Brian Hornbaker, both managers with development company Mountaineer Pipe Corporation. The Purcellville company is run by Calvin Chapman, Casey Chapman’s uncle. Rayner received $2,000 from Calvin Chapman individually.

Other contributions include $6,250 from CaseCo LLC; $4,250 from Merit Restorations, both Chapman affiliated companies; $2,000 from JAKCO LLC; $2,900 from individuals associated with undeveloped properties in Purcellville; $750 from Rainbud LLC; $250 from Chapman Brothers LLC; and $250 from Hirst Road LLC.

This election cycle, the names on Rayner for Mayor’s campaign finance reports are different.

Five business entities—Valley Energy Co., Hirst Road LLC, Rosebud LLC, Generations Holding LLC and CCand7 LLC—contributed a combined $8,500. All five reported the same address: 117 N. Bailey Lane in Purcellville, the current address of Valley Energy.

Meghan Kulinski, one of Valley Energy’s owners, contributed another $500 personally.

Together, the six contributions total $9,000.

When appearing before the Purcellville Town Council, Chapman has identified himself as “CaseCo LLC, 125 Hirst Road.” His involvement in Loudoun land-use issues extends beyond Purcellville. Board Chair Phyllis Randall selected Chapman to serve as a representative in Loudoun County’s Western Loudoun Rural Uses and Standards review.

The same Hirst Road address also appears in West Virginia corporate records for a venture operating on an entirely different scale.

Fundamental Data LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, registered in West Virginia in July 2024. Its principal and designated business address is 125 Hirst Road, Suite 1A, Purcellville.

Chapman is repeatedly identified in government records as Fundamental Data’s “Responsible Official.”

The company is now behind Ridgeline, a proposed multibillion-dollar energy and digital-infrastructure development in Tucker County, West Virginia, that Fundamental Data says is intended to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other large-scale digital systems.

But the corporate structure behind Fundamental Data is less clear.

West Virginia records identify two limited liability companies—Prism Fundamental LLC and Emerick LLC—as Fundamental Data’s managers. Both use the 125 Hirst Road address. Publicly available records reviewed by the Blue Ridge Leader do not disclose who ultimately owns or controls those companies.

One individual, however, appears repeatedly alongside Chapman in the Ridgeline permitting record—Lewis Reynolds, CEO of Prism Renewables.

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection correspondence shows Reynolds was involved from the beginning of the permitting process. When an agency engineer later assembled documents in response to a public-records request, he described collecting emails with Chapman, Reynolds and environmental consultant Leah Blinn.

A Project Measured in Gigawatts

Ridgeline is not a conventional development proposal.

Information presented to West Virginia officials described a contemplated first phase involving approximately 800 megawatts of natural-gas generation, 1.3 gigawatts of solar generation and 14 data-center buildings. A later phase could add approximately 3.1 gigawatts of gas-fired generation.

Ridgeline could eventually extend far beyond the initial site. Fundamental Data representatives have said the project, if fully developed, could encompass up to 10,000 contiguous acres across Tucker and Grant counties.

Fundamental Data describes Ridgeline as a “large-scale data and energy infrastructure project” designed to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing and enterprise systems, and says the project would deliver billions in private capital investment.

Chapman has been equally direct about its scale.

“Ridgeline is not a modest project, and it was never conceived as one,” he wrote in a March 2026 response to U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and other senators.

Chapman cited proximity to natural gas, a major transmission node, abundant water and substantial land. He also cited a jurisdiction that does not impose local zoning, permitting and regulatory layers that add cost and time to projects elsewhere.

That last point would take on particular significance because of a sweeping West Virginia data-center law enacted in 2025.

The Power Plant Behind Ridgeline

Fundamental Data entered West Virginia’s formal permitting system through the power plant.

On March 18, 2025, the company submitted an application to West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection for a large combustion-turbine facility near Thomas and Davis, which have a combined population of approximately 1,200, in a county with an estimated population of just 6,540.

The proposed facility would sit in Tucker County’s high-elevation mountain landscape, within two miles of Blackwater Falls State Park and portions of the Monongahela National Forest. 

The county is known for its mountains, forests, rivers, waterfalls and vast stretches of protected land. More than half of the county is protected, including Monongahela National Forest, Dolly Sods and Otter Creek wilderness areas, Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge and three state parks, including Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley. 

The landscape includes rare wetlands, red spruce forests, wildlife habitat and the Blackwater River, making it a destination for hiking, skiing, fishing, hunting, birding and other outdoor recreation.

The proposed plant would rely primarily on natural gas, with diesel for backup.   

“Ridgeline is not a modest project, and it was never conceived as one.”—Casey Chapman

The permit authorizes three 10-million-gallon diesel storage tanks—30 million gallons of storage capacity—with annual diesel throughput of up to 15 million gallons.

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection ultimately issued Ridgeline a synthetic minor air permit—a classification with enforceable restrictions intended to keep emissions below thresholds for major-source requirements.

But “minor source” does not mean emission-free.

The project’s permitted nitrogen-oxide emissions became particularly controversial because the permit allows up to 99.35 tons per year, just below the 100-ton threshold at issue in the permit challenge.

Opponents argued the facility should have been treated as a major source. Fundamental Data and WVDEP disputed that position, and the West Virginia Air Quality Board upheld the permit while requiring additional testing.

Natural-gas turbines and diesel generators can emit nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, carbon monoxide and other pollutants. 

The Potential Health Impact

A January 2026 analysis commissioned by Tucker United, a grassroots coalition of Tucker County residents and allies opposed to Ridgeline, examined the potential public-health effects of emissions from the proposed plant.

The study was conducted by Applied Impact, with Michael Cork of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as lead analyst and Harvard professor Francesca Dominici as senior scientific adviser. Using emissions authorized by Ridgeline’s air permit, researchers modeled the movement and health effects of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. 

The analysis found that Davis and Thomas could experience the largest modeled increases in PM2.5 and estimated more than 250,000 people across the region would be exposed to additional particulate pollution. 

Using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s COBRA health-impact model, researchers estimated $19 million to $35 million annually in health-related damages, including 1.2 to 2.3 additional premature deaths per year, along with asthma, heart attacks, respiratory hospitalizations and lost workdays. 

The modeled effects would extend well beyond West Virginia. The study estimated approximately 55% of the total population exposure burden would occur in Virginia. Loudoun County alone accounted for 4.25%.

A Real-World Example in Loudoun

At Vantage Data Centers’ VA2 facility in Sterling, Virginia DEQ records show eight natural-gas turbines, 40 emergency diesel generators and two diesel black-start generators. The gas turbines became the facility’s primary power source in 2024.

Loudoun County says it is the only data center in the county operating full time on natural-gas turbines instead of grid power. The county has described the continuous noise as reminiscent of a jet engine and audible within a 1.5- to 2-mile radius.

Residents have complained about noise, smoke and air quality, including breathing and hearing problems, headaches, dry eyes and hospital visits. One resident living approximately 150 feet from the facility told Virginia regulators that generator operation produced black smoke and disruptive noise.

Ridgeline’s contemplated reliance on large-scale natural-gas generation, backed by diesel, raises many of the same concerns.

“This Project Came Out of the Blue”

For many Tucker County residents, Ridgeline did not arrive through an economic-development announcement. They learned about it through the air-permit process.

Resident Pamela Moe discovered the project through the legally required air-permit notice in the local newspaper and began circulating information and filing public-records requests.

Local officials also said they had not been involved beforehand.

At an April 2025 town hall, Tucker County Development Authority Executive Director Steve Leyh said the project “came out of the blue.”

West Virginia Changes the Rules

At almost exactly the same time, West Virginia was rewriting the rules governing large data centers and the power systems serving them.

On March 18, 2025—the same day Fundamental Data’s Ridgeline air-permit application was received—House Bill 2014 was introduced in the West Virginia Legislature.

West Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Roger Hanshaw (R-Clay) was the lead House sponsor, joined by six other delegates. The legislation states that it was introduced “By Request of the Executive.”

The bill looked directly across the state line to Virginia.

Its findings identified Loudoun County as having the world’s highest concentration of high-level computational power and data centers and called that concentration a national-security vulnerability.

The legislation listed West Virginia’s competitive advantages, including abundant energy, proximity to Washington and what it called “the least restrictive regulatory environment in the Nation.”

HB 2014 did more than encourage data-center investment.

For qualifying certified microgrid districts and high-impact data centers, the law restricts local governments from enforcing zoning, noise, viewshed, lighting, development and land-use regulations, as well as certain building-permitting and inspection requirements.

“We Were the Guys”

More than a year later, an engineer working with Fundamental Data made an extraordinary public statement about HB 2014.

Edward G. “Ted” McGavran III, a professional engineer and principal of McGavran Engineering, was directly involved with Ridgeline. He attended the West Virginia Air Quality Board hearings in December 2025 in person with Casey Chapman and Lewis Reynolds as representatives of Fundamental Data and participated in a May 2026 Davis town hall about the project.

Then, on July 6, 2026, McGavran appeared before the City Council in Belmont, North Carolina, where he lives, and spoke openly about Fundamental Data, Ridgeline and HB 2014.

“We were the guys who basically wrote [HB 2014] and got it through the [West Virginia] Legislature in 2024 and early 2025,” McGavran said. “That gave us the opportunity to generate and set out the rules for what’s called a microgrid. Well, it’s really a ‘macrogrid,’ as big as it’s going to be.”

McGavran then described what he said the law meant for Fundamental Data’s West Virginia project.

“We can do pretty much whatever we want to do up there,” he said.

Fundamental Data subsequently disputed McGavran’s account, saying he was not authorized to speak for the company and that Fundamental Data “did not draft, write, or play any role in drafting HB 2014.”

Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s office also disputed McGavran’s statement, saying HB 2014 was the governor’s bill and its drafting had been limited to the governor’s office.

A Striking Contrast

Another portion of McGavran’s Belmont appearance presented a striking contrast.

While advising officials in his own North Carolina community about potential data-center development, McGavran urged them to consider protections against generator noise.

“We’ve got a small town, a small compact town, and so a diesel generator makes noise,” he said.

Yet HB 2014 prevents West Virginia localities from applying certain local noise restrictions to certified high-impact data centers and microgrid districts.

Fundamental Data says McGavran was speaking personally and was not authorized to represent the company.

In Belmont, McGavran was urging his own community to consider protections that West Virginia law restricts localities from imposing on qualifying projects.

That stands in sharp contrast to McGavran’s own description of Fundamental Data’s position in West Virginia: “We can do pretty much whatever we want to do up there.”

What Exactly Is Fundamental Data Building?

By 2026, even West Virginia officials were grappling with a fundamental question—What exactly is Ridgeline?

At a May 18 meeting involving Fundamental Data, state officials and local representatives, the company discussed a project involving a localized microgrid, large-scale gas and solar generation and 14 contemplated data-center buildings.

State Commerce officials concluded that the description appeared to trigger West Virginia’s high-impact-data-center certification requirements.

Chapman disagreed.

In a June 18, 2026 letter to the Department of Commerce, Chapman argued that Fundamental Data “does not represent a data center developer.” Instead, he said, the company develops electrical generation that could be attractive to data-center companies.

“The data centers contemplated for the project remain conceptual, and what is ultimately built will be determined by the eventual users of the power we generate,” Chapman wrote.

State officials rescinded their violation notice, concluding that it was not yet evident that Ridgeline would meet the statutory definition of a high-impact data center.

But Fundamental Data’s current public description of Ridgeline is more expansive.

Its website calls Ridgeline a “large-scale data and energy infrastructure project” designed to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing and enterprise systems.

Chapman has also made clear the facility is intended to evolve.

In his March 27, 2026 response to three U.S. senators, Chapman said Ridgeline is designed to be hydrogen-compatible and future development could incorporate advanced gasification and nuclear energy supported by carbon capture.

“We are not building a static asset,” he wrote. “We are building a platform.”

The House Speaker Later Represents Fundamental Data

Hanshaw was the lead House sponsor of HB 2014, which the official legislative record says was introduced at the request of the executive branch.

Less than a year later, on March 16, 2026, Hanshaw, an attorney with Bowles Rice, began representing Fundamental Data as an attorney in litigation involving the Ridgeline air permit.

Fundamental Data Was Lobbying Congress

Fundamental Data was also active in Washington before the Ridgeline air permit became public.

Federal Lobbying Disclosure Act filings show the company retained the Purcellville-based Da Vinci Group, a government-relations and lobbying firm, in 2024 to lobby the House and Senate.

One filing reported $10,000 in lobbying income and described the issues as commerce and data-management matters, including privacy protection.

A subsequent termination report listed $50,000 in lobbying income and described the work as including “Introductions to Members of Congress.”

Where the Record Ends

Ridgeline raises a larger question about how enormous data-and-energy projects are regulated.

The air regulator evaluates emissions from the power plant. State economic-development officials administer the high-impact-data-center law. 

Local governments have lost significant regulatory authority over qualifying projects. Meanwhile, Fundamental Data says the ultimate users of the electricity—and therefore the final configuration of the data centers—have not yet been determined.

From 125 Hirst Road in Purcellville, Fundamental Data has moved into a development world measured not in houses, apartments or commercial square footage, but in billions of dollars and gigawatts of power.

Ridgeline would rely heavily on natural-gas generation to support power-hungry digital infrastructure. Its emergence coincided with a West Virginia law designed to attract data centers with abundant energy and a less restrictive regulatory environment while curtailing significant local authority.

Loudoun County, with more than 250 data centers built or under construction and many more in the development pipeline, offers a nearby example of what development on that scale can mean for communities around it.

Data centers have been built throughout the county, including near established neighborhoods. Their enormous demand for electricity has brought the need for vast new power infrastructure, including transmission lines. They also place significant demands on water resources.

Across Loudoun, that expansion has raised concerns about noise, energy and water demands, land use, and proximity to established communities. At one Sterling facility, natural-gas turbines have amplified those concerns, with residents reporting continuous noise, smoke, air-quality concerns and health problems.

For Loudoun residents whose homes and neighborhoods lie alongside the industry’s continuing expansion and the infrastructure required to support it, questions about energy, water, land use, infrastructure, health and community impact are not abstract.