Building Resilience
So far, much of the state has been dealing with a Summer of flooding, followed by a heat dome, followed by more flooding— which has certainly challenged the state’s resiliency.
Kentucky has seen a significant increase in recent years, with over 17 federally declared disasters from 2024 to mid-2026 alone, including fatal flash floods and devastating outbreaks of tornadoes.
If you would like to support Kentuckians affected by this severe weather event, please visit the Team Kentucky Emergency Relief Fund. All donations go directly to survivors of emergency events in the commonwealth. And then call on your lawmakers to continue the work of the legislature’s Disaster Prevention and Resiliency Task Force. While that task force produced several recommendations, only a small number have been addressed.
Electric Vehicles Pay their Way
Last week, lawmakers heard from our friends from EVolve Ky, a KCC Partnergroup, on how electric vehicles pay their fair share for the upkeep of our roads, despite the fact that they do not contribute to a gas tax. You may find their testimony video here, and slide presentations here when they presented to the Budget Review Subcommittee on Transportation. Our thanks to EVolve volunteer Mike Proctor for his work on educating these lawmakers on the value of the electric vehicle market.
Left: Mike Proctor from Evolve KY testifies. Right: Join us this Friday for a film on regenerative agriculture!
Upcoming Events
FREE Healthy Soils Screening This Friday: We are hosting a screening of the film Roots So Deep — a film on regenerative farming, in Maysville to support our continuing efforts on passing Healthy Soils legislation. The presentation will be at the Mason Co. Library’s community room, 218 E. 3rd St., Maysville, KY. Signup here.
An example of things to come? An Amazon hyperscale data center, presently being built in Franklin County, Ohio
Speaking out on Data Centers— Take Action
The Lexington Urban County Council is one of the latest cities to pass a temporary moratorium on data center development, following similar efforts in other counties and cities in the state. and Louisville Metro Government is seeking public input on their proposed data center regulations, with a comment deadline of this Thursday, July 9th (link here).. You can find an analysis and recommendations on the regulations from our friends at the Kentucky Resources Council here. KCC has resources on data centers on our webpage here.
And we encourage you to write your lawmakers through this form to let them know your concerns about tax breaks for hyperscale data centers.
Meanwhile, it was announced last week that Anthropic Ai signed a $19 billion, 20-year lease for a data center in development near Hawesville, KY, on the site of the former Century Aluminum plant. This appears to be the first of Kentucky's major data centers to announce a tenant. Read the Louisville Courier-Journal article here.