On Monday, Durham County joined a growing list of local governments looking to bring data center construction to a halt.
The Durham County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to revise the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), giving the county expanded power to lengthen the duration of a data center moratorium in the future.
At the start of the public hearing, board chair Mike Lee reiterated that the hearing would be specific to the UDO ordinance, not a moratorium vote. The earliest the board could vote on a formal data center moratorium is at its July 13 meeting. Durham County aims to join its partners at the City of Durham, which imposed a 12-month moratorium at the June 15 city council meeting.
Residents who spoke at Monday’s county commissioners meeting rehashed comments made at City Hall last week, saying that local officials and residents needed more time to fully understand the impacts of data centers on the community, particularly the hyperscale centers proliferating around the country to power artificial intelligence software. A handful of speakers pointed to the intensive demand that data centers have on water resources at a time when the region’s water supply is drying up due to widespread drought conditions.
“Durham residents are being directed to conserve water to ensure we don’t run out,” said Ashley Daniels. “What similar directive would be given to a data center in the event that Durham sees another season of historic drought in the future, and how would this directive be enforced?”
Danielle Purifoy, a lifelong resident of Durham, said that the water supply in Durham is already being strained by drought and pollutants.
“There are several threats to our water right now, including in my neighborhood in Old East Durham, where they’re meeting as we speak about Brenntag’s contamination of our water,” said Purifoy. “We’re in one of the biggest droughts in the state’s history, right here in our region. Lake Michie is dry, folks. Falls Lake is drying up. We have a responsibility to our water, to our future, to protect our water and soil from the development of these new data centers.”
Concerns over the impact of data centers are nothing new. Residents have been sounding the alarm on the environmental burden caused by data centers for over a decade, but the rising omnipresence of artificial intelligence and the increased demand for computing power driving the AI software is putting more strain on resources like water and energy.
In May, hundreds of residents gathered outside the Durham County courthouse to protest rate hikes proposed by Duke Energy, which the energy company has said it needs to modernize the power grid, among other things. But residents at that protest and at Monday’s county commissioners meeting argue that data centers are a primary source of increased energy demands, and that residents shouldn’t be the ones on the hook for footing the bill.
Data center moratoriums have become the talk of every town, city, and any other local government in the Triangle, though the changes to Durham’s UDO will give officials flexibility on moratoriums for any type of development that may present itself in the future.
In February, Chatham County passed a one-year moratorium on data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations. Two months later, the town of Apex followed suit, unanimously passing a one-year moratorium in the wake of a raucous public discussion over the massive 190-acre New Hill Digital Campus data center proposal that was ultimately withdrawn. Orange County also passed its own year-long moratorium.
County commissioners now have a couple of weeks to put together their own moratorium before taking a vote.
“I think that puts us in a proper posture to move forward in the direction that we see fit as a commission,” said commissioner Stephen Valentine. “I want to be on the right side of history, and I believe everyone else here does as well.”
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