In North Carolina, Moratoriums are Protecting Communities from Unchecked Data Center Development

APEX, N.C. — With the rising use of artificial intelligence driving up demand for data centers, North Carolina communities have been faced with new, challenging questions. 

According to a Stanford University report, the United States is home to 5,427 data centers, more than ten times any other country in the world. Despite already being a world leader in data centers, development of new facilities has steadily grown, largely due to increasing use of AI. In North Carolina, many communities face the prospect of rapid data center development, and the environmental dangers that come with it.

According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, “large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons [of water] per day,” posing an additional challenge as the state has been taken over by drought conditions. In the U.S., data centers have prolonged reliance on fossil fuels. In Nebraska, a 644-MW coal plant originally scheduled to close in 2023 will stay active through 2026 to power new data centers. Many proposed data centers will come with environmental costs that local elected officials don’t yet understand how to measure or mitigate. 

In early September of 2025, Natelli Investments — a development company — proposed the New Hill Digital Campus near the town of Apex, NC. The hyperscale data center would span 190 acres — the equivalent of over 140 football fields — reshaping the idyllic New Hill landscape of rolling hills and farmland. The center would draw up to 300 MW of power, which is more than the entire town of Apex uses in a day, and would use around 100 highly polluting diesel generators. 

Lorraine McAvoy is a resident of New Hill, and an opponent of the project. As an active member of the recently founded Protect Wake County Coalition, she worked to alert her neighbors to the prospect of Natelli Investments’ proposal, helping garner thousands of signatures on a petition against the proposal. For McAvoy, who lives just a few miles from the proposed site, the project made no sense in the context of her rural neighborhood and community. 

“The more I learned it just became a bigger concern,” she shared.

Learning about the center’s proposed high water usage shocked her, especially as Wake County has been experiencing extreme drought conditions. As she watches her fig trees wilt in the lawn she can no longer water, McAvoy is naturally concerned about the Digital Campus’ projected use of up to 1 million gallons of water per day during summers. She also worried that the property value of her home would decrease if the surrounding greenery was obstructed by the large facility. On top of that, the constant low-volume hum that often comes with data centers, also concerned McAvoy — “That can really mess with people,” she said. 

McAvoy wasn’t alone in her concerns — through the Protect WakeCounty Coalition, word-of-mouth, petitions, Facebook posts, and public comments in town council meetings, thousands of residents made their voices heard. In the end, Natelli withdrew their application.

Data centers are not new to North Carolina landscapes — the first was built in Lenoir in 2007, and at least 93 data centers are currently operating in the state. But since the start of 2025, more than 20 new data center projects have been announced for the state. While Natelli Investments backed out this time, this won’t always be the case. 

Moratoriums — legal, temporary suspensions used to defer development approvals such as new data center proposals — have been a useful tool for towns interested in protecting themselves from data center development. These typically last anywhere from 60 days to two years, and allow officials to conduct research and develop policy approaches to new problems. For Terry Mahaffey, the Mayor Pro-Tempore of Apex, a moratorium seemed like the town’s only option.

He led the charge in implementing a one-year moratorium on data centers after Natelli withdrew. It became clear to Mahaffey that Apex’s zoning legislation was not equipped to consider the impact of a data center. So, he proposed a moratorium, which passed unanimously. During this time, the town’s Environmental Advisory Board has formed a data center subcommittee — with a representative from the Protect Wake County Coalition — which will meet regularly to conduct the necessary research to update zoning policy in Apex’s Unified Development Ordinance. 

Ultimately, Mahaffey says he doesn’t see a future for data centers in the town. “I see the data center industry moving away from places like Apex and moving towards lower hanging fruit, around the state of North Carolina,” he says. According to him, the potential revenue doesn’t outweigh the costs for Apex. But for other, more rural, NC towns, data centers may bring in revenue to fund necessary infrastructure. Mahaffey says, “There's a lot of places where the economic benefits that a data center might provide, although it might be kind of a drop in the bucket to Apex, it could mean a ton to some of these smaller towns and counties.” 

Dan Diorio, the Vice President of State Policy for the Data Center Coalition, says that data centers contributed “over $18 billion to the state’s GDP in 2024,” and “delivered more than $1.3 billion in state and local taxes.” Diorio suggests that moratoriums will slow this progress. However, the economic impacts of data centers are more complex. In some states, property tax exemptions for data centers have reduced revenue for independent school districts, while increasing demand on the power grid can result in energy rate hikes for individual customers. In addition, fast-paced, profit-driven data center construction has left many feeling disenfranchised, as familiar landscapes are quickly reshaped by corporations without any public input. 

In Charlotte, community protests against data center development culminated in a 150-day data center moratorium. Susanna Chen, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, collected signatures from neighbors to prevent the approval for a proposed facility near Reedy Creek Nature Preserve. 

Chen had been doing outreach regarding data centers for a while, but when she heard about the proposed center in East Charlotte, just a four minute drive from her home, she felt blindsided. “We talked to the people around us and our neighbors and nobody has heard about it either. That really feels unjust.”

The proposed 40,000 square foot facility would sit on over 50 acres of land, if the City Council approved American Tower’s request to rezone the land for data center use in a primarily residential area. It would be near Reedy Creek Nature Preserve, where recent city restoration efforts have protected headwater streams and wetlands. While the facility would be smaller in scale, its environmental impact is not yet clear. 

For Chen, a moratorium was a necessary step to remedy development approaches: “The way that they're being developed and approved is completely undemocratic.” While her activism eventually saw a payoff with the 150-day moratorium, she says the fight isn’t over yet. The moratorium does not apply to projects that have already been approved, including a hyperscale center being constructed in University City, a highly populated area. Through PSL, she is working for a statewide data center ban, hoping to prevent any new data center development.

Fears over data center development underlie a larger fear of corporate-led development, according to Chen. 

“I think there's a lot of anxiety in Charlotte right now about the way the city will develop. Over the past few years and decades, Charlotte has really boomed in economic growth by every measure, which results in a lot of upheaval in the way Charlotte used to be. A lot of the neighborhoods that used to exist in Charlotte for decades look completely different now today because of this economic shift. I think that the data center struggle really captures that type of anxiety that people feel.”

During this moratorium period, Chen hopes to see community engagement: “Talk to the people who will be affected.” 

*Cover image courtesy of Geoffrey Moffett via Unsplash