PIKETON, Ohio — The Ohio Power Siting Board will hold a local public hearing on Thursday, December 10, on a proposal to build a large natural-gas-fired power plant south of Piketon, giving Pike County residents a chance to put sworn testimony into the state record before the board decides the case. The hearing begins at 5 p.m. in the Piketon High School Auditorium, 1414 Piketon Road, according to the Power Siting Board’s hearing notice.
Portsmouth Gas DevCo, LLC is seeking a certificate to build the PORTS Energy Center on about 776 acres roughly five miles south of the village, adjacent to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site, according to the board’s notice. The notice describes a natural-gas-fired electric generation facility with a maximum total capacity of 1.77 gigawatts, intended to provide behind-the-meter power to a nearby data center. The application is pending as Power Siting Board case 26-0746-EL-BGN, and the hearing is not an approval — no construction has been authorized.
Residents who want to testify must register when they arrive, will speak in registration order, and will be limited to three minutes each, according to the board. Local testimony is sworn and becomes part of the case record the board must consider, and witnesses with a supporting document can hand a copy to the administrative law judge for the transcript.
The board has said it has jurisdiction over the electric generation facility, but no authority to approve the data center itself, so testimony is most effective when it addresses the power plant’s siting: the board must find, among other things, the probable environmental impact of the facility, whether it represents the minimum adverse environmental impact, compliance with air, waste and water requirements, consistency with regional electric-system plans, the public interest, and effects on agricultural viability and water conservation.
The location makes those questions concrete for Pike County. The Department of Energy describes the neighboring Portsmouth property as a former gaseous-diffusion site where deactivation, demolition, waste management and environmental monitoring are ongoing — separate federal work, but one that shares roads, infrastructure and emergency-planning concerns with any large new industrial neighbor. Residents can speak to school-bus and emergency routes, private wells and public water sources, farm parcels near the site boundary, and where noise and lighting should be measured.
One detail in the public record is still unsettled: the board’s October hearing notice describes the project at 1.77 gigawatts on about 776 acres, while the board’s general case page describes up to 2 gigawatts on about 860 acres. The public pages do not explain the difference, and residents may ask the board to identify which filed version of the application its staff actually evaluated.
After the local hearing, the board’s record will also include its staff report — a recommendation, not the decision — along with party testimony and later filings, before the board issues an opinion and order granting, denying or conditioning the certificate. Pike County residents who cannot attend can follow the filings on the Power Siting Board’s case page for 26-0746-EL-BGN.