Hilliard Drops Amazon Fuel-Cell Appeal, Keeps Air Tests
Hilliard withdrew its ERAC appeal of the Ohio EPA fuel-cell permit and pledged post-startup air monitoring instead.
Hilliard is closing a legal chapter it never expected to win easily, while insisting the step is not a green light for the project next door to homes off Scioto Darby Road.
In a September 15 city release, Hilliard said it had withdrawn its Environmental Review Appeals Commission challenge to an Ohio EPA Permit to Install and Operate for a 72.9-megawatt solid-oxide fuel-cell plant at the Amazon Web Services campus. AEP Ohio is building and operating the site with 228 Bloom Energy units to serve on-site electricity demand. Council President Emily Cole said in the release that withdrawing the appeal is not an endorsement of the facility, and that the city pursued every option left under state law after retaining outside counsel.
WOSU first reported the decision for a regional audience and underlined the resident health concerns that drove the November 2025 appeal after council unanimously directed the administration to challenge the permit. The city's own write-up adds the record Hilliard wants on file: independent air-dispersion reviews commissioned after Bloom and AEP studies, a pledge to test air quality after startup so modeled numbers can be checked against real conditions, and frustration that Ohio Revised Code 4906.13(B) leaves little local power once the Ohio Power Siting Board clears a generator larger than 50 megawatts. AEP withdrew its local planning application in October 2025 citing that exclusivity.
AEP Ohio's Scioto Darby Creek project page frames the fuel cells as behind-the-meter power for the data campus and points neighbors to the OPSB case and EPA PTIO. Hilliard says it will keep supporting Norwich Township's safety and emergency-response review for the installation and the natural-gas feed that supplies it, including shutoff planning, site walk-throughs for fire inspectors, and responder training.
For neighbors weighing how data-center infrastructure changes life west of I-270, pair this file with our where to live guide and the metro map under Columbus neighborhoods. The practical takeaway is narrower: the ERAC fight is over, monitoring and township safety review are the levers the city says it still has, and state siting law remains the wall local zoning cannot climb even when residents pack a hearing room.
