This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
Swain County held a public hearing Tuesday on a hot topic: a potential moratorium on data centers. Commissioners heard from a passionate public for over two hours, at what they later told BPR was the most crowded public meeting they’d ever seen in their administrative building. Members of the public, some of whom came from as far away as the Qualla Boundary, filled the seats and spilled out into the hallway.
Though data centers have stored the world’s emails and photos for years, advances in AI and cloud computing have led to a need for more servers. ‘Hyperscale’ data centers have been locating to places like Cherokee County where there is abundant fresh water. Data centers’ heavy water and energy usage requirements — which can sometimes be as much as a small town — are causing widespread alarm.
Some speakers spoke about Swain County’s specific history of eminent domain and removal — especially the removal of the Cherokee people from most of their original lands in the Appalachian region. Others talked about Appalachia’s history of environmental extraction from fracking, logging, and mining. Still others recalled the eviction of subsistence farmers on the Tennessee state line for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Celia Baker is a longtime resident of Swain County who said she has worked in data security for many years. She told the commission the industry is exploiting counties like Swain.
“The data center developers are targeting rural counties, poor poor rural counties, low on the tax burden, low on the educated workplace burden, high on the natural resource availability,” Baker said, to a chorus of scattered applause. “They are coming in to exploit that. That is what they do. That's what they've always done. That's not going to change, okay?”
Fred Crawford, a land surveyor from the community of Whittier was in favor of a moratorium, and he urged the Commission to make sure its ordinance language was tightly written.
“As a land surveyor, I have seen firsthand the impact of poorly written development restrictions and the loopholes that they can lead behind,” Crawford said. “And we don't have to start from scratch. We can look to what other counties have already put in place to handle these kinds of facilities.”
Other communities in Western North Carolina have recently considered or passed moratoriums in the past several months. Canton passed a yearlong moratorium in February; Clay County and the town of Brevard passed one last September; and the town of Boone, approved a moratorium just last week. Watauga County could potentially soon follow. A moratorium is a temporary ban, giving local officials a chance to do more research for a year before making a more permanent decision. However, Swain County Commission Vice Chair Tanner Lawson told BPR he feels in line with what he sees as majority public opinion in Swain County, against data centers.
“As a whole, I don't see a benefit to it,” Lawson said.
Only one speaker was cautious about a ban. “This is about turning our backs on something before we even understand what it is,” said the speaker, who did not state his name, to a chorus of boos and hisses.
The county does not have a data center company ready to locate its operations there, but Commissioners told the public they were alarmed at a recent email from a large tech company, Paces Technologies, inquiring about county zoning regulations.
The county will convene next at its regular meeting on April 21 to vote on the moratorium. If passed, it will take the next 12 months to research and develop ordinance language to limit data centers.
