Plans for a data center near Apex may be dead for now, but the debate is still very much alive.
Less than a week after Natelli Investments pulled its plan for a massive data storage facility in New Hill, the Apex Town Council took the first step towards a year-long moratorium on data centers. The creation of a public notice, legally required by the state, was approved unanimously by the council at its meeting Tuesday night, and the moratorium is expected to come before the council for consideration again in April.
A moratorium would give the town time to research the impacts of data centers on the community and environment, and develop regulations for how future facilities can be built. Officials in Chatham County, just across the border from the proposed New Hill Digital Campus, recently approved their own one-year moratorium.
After backlash from Apex residents and Natelli’s withdrawal, however, Mayor Pro Tem Terry Mahaffey said he thinks it’s unlikely another data center proposal will come before the council.
“That’s just the reality,” Mahaffey said Tuesday during the meeting. “Staff won’t say that, but they’re thinking that. No one’s gonna see what just happened and say, ‘You know what? Next year … I’m gonna jump right in.”
Mahaffey added that if another data center is proposed, it would be after the town makes adjustments to its Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) and approves new regulations for data centers. Whether the Natelli project will be revived at that point is uncertain.
Last week, following withdrawal of the project, executive vice president Michael Natelli wrote in a statement that “The company indicated it will determine an appropriate course of action if, in the future, the Town of Apex ultimately approves a comprehensive zoning text amendment allowing data centers as an approved use within the Town’s limits.”
While council members said these regulations would be intended to protect residents, activists like Michelle Hofner O’Connor, co-leader of the Protect Wake County Coalition, which organized last year to oppose the New Hill Digital Campus, are concerned they won’t be strict enough.
“My hope at the end of the day is that whatever is authored is truly protective, is truly stringent, truly requests a high standard that prioritizes resident safety, and I do question if that’s going to happen,” she told the INDY.
As a biologist and clinical scientist who has been studying this issue for the last six months, O’Connor said she is concerned that town staff and officials don’t have the expertise necessary to effectively consider the merits and drawbacks of proposed regulations.
“If you’re not asking the right questions, you’re not going to find the right information,” O’Connor said. “I want to believe that everyone has the best intentions, but … you don’t know what you don’t know. And you can have the best of intentions and still make mistakes.”
Putting Residents at the Table
Mayor Jacques K. Gilbert made a proposal Tuesday that would have addressed some of O’Connor’s concerns—namely, the creation of a new committee, made up of residents and experts, to study the impacts of data centers and make policy recommendations.
Town council members, however, were reluctant to move forward, saying the town already has a body tasked with assessing environmental impacts and that the creation of any new data center regulations would by default be a transparent process that involves community engagement.
The council ultimately voted to ask the Environmental Affairs Board (EAB) to discuss how they wanted to handle the research and policy-making process. Council member Ed Gray added a provision that the board should report back to the council in 60 days, around mid-May.
“I do think in terms of an overall compromise, this would give [the EAB] the ability to figure out how to put together, if necessary, a resident committee,” Gray said. “Dare I say, I don’t think anybody who has heard our conversation is going to say, ‘Nah, we don’t think so.’”
O’Connor, who is in favor of the proposed committee, said it would create two-way communication between residents and officials, echoing Gilbert’s sentiments about the need to create a dialog with residents. She added that “it makes sense to add in people who are invested in this,” whether they’re for or against data centers.
“I think the most important aspect of this is having the right experts in the room, having the right voices in the room,” O’Connor told the INDY. “I’ll admit that isn’t necessarily even mine, but … the town can’t afford to hire, you know, a geologist, a physicist, multiple engineers, to all consult on this. So take the expertise residents have to offer.”
Gilbert pointed out that the committee could make the town’s policy-making process more transparent. Council members were generally in favor of more transparency and public input, but also concerned about the efficiency of creating a whole new committee, especially as the town is attempting to support and strengthen existing committees.
“This may be a strong term, but it feels like a little bit of a vote of no confidence in the people that we just appointed, if the moment that something like this comes up, we stand up a new committee instead of letting the existing boards serve us,” said council member Arno Zegerman. He added that the process of creating a new committee would take at least two months, a worry given that the town is looking at a one year-long moratorium.
Mahaffey was one of the strongest voices opposing the proposed committee, arguing that the process of amending a UDO, as well as considering rezoning cases, “is incredibly open and has a ton of public input.” With the Natelli proposal, “we never got that far in the process,” he added.
Moreover, Mahaffey said that he favors empowering the EAB to develop policy recommendations. EAB members, he said, are “dying to get another bite of this apple” after an October meeting in which they voted 6-3 in support of zoning conditions designed to address sound pollution, water and electricity usage, and emissions from diesel generators onsite.
The board did not weigh in on the overall project, but its vote indicated a favorable recommendation of the environmental measures if the council decided to rezone the land for industrial use, as the town’s long-range planning documents prescribe. Still, many residents were unhappy with EAB’s vote.
Council members went back and forth over whether data center policy was primarily an environmental issue, to be handled by the EAB, or if more people needed to be brought in to address broader concerns around traffic, health, cost-of-living, and other non-environmental issues.
“We should let them [staff] do their job,” said Mahaffey. “They’re able to have these meetings. They bring together advisory groups of citizens all the time.”
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