By Gordon Anderson | gordon@rantnc.com
Nearly 20 people addressed the Lee County Board of Commissioners on Monday, expressing opposition to a proposed data center on Lower Moncure Road.
The data center proposal became public on June 8, when it was announced that Virigina-based PointOne had applied for a permit to construct a 300,000 square foot data center on 56 acres off Lower Moncure Road. The facility, if built, would be operated by Dallas-based CyrusOne. The proposal is “phase one” of a development that totals 430 acres. Uses for the remainder of the development have not been announced.
PointOne has said the project represents a $900 million tax base investment that should bring in at least $1 million annually in new tax revenues for Lee County. But the project has received a large amount of criticism, particularly online, from data center opponents concerned about environmental and other potential impacts.
Monday’s meeting was over capacity, with a large number of people watching proceedings from outside the meeting room. Those who spoke did so during the meeting’s public comment period. The agenda didn’t include any action items related to the data center proposal.
Lower Moncure Road resident Eric Evenson said he believed the land the data center is proposed for was rezoned under false pretenses. The commissioners rezoned the land in August of 2025.
“When the representative from (real estate developer) Trustwell delivered a 28-minute presentation for a standard, quiet business park bringing 500 jobs, did you believe him?” Evenson asked. “The citizens believed him, so we accepted the rezoning. You believed him, so you granted it. Do you believe him now that the mask has slipped? Would this board ever trust them on another land use application? This isn’t economic growth, it’s an extraction of Lee County’s resources.”
Resident Michelle Eaves concurred, saying the proposal “is not a typical light industrial business.”
“A modern data center is an industrial scale operation that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said. “It requires enormous amounts of electricity, significant infrastructure, industrial cooling equipment, backup diesel generators, and depending on the cooling system used, substantial water resources. That is not the image most have when they hear light industrial.”
Several speakers discussed “infrasound,” which is sound below the normal threshold of human audibility (typically below 20 Hz).
“Low frequency, long amplitude waves is responsible for something called Havana Syndrome,” said resident Gary Phelps, referencing a disputed explanation for a cluster of illnesses reported by some diplomats in Cuba. “This is something a foreign nation did to our delegates. Would you willingly, voluntarily do this to your own citizens?”
Resident George Gilson said he didn’t believe data centers would be viable businesses long term, and warned that the county could be negatively impacted if that were the case.
“When this false boom is over, we’ll be left with a huge unusable property and buildings no one will be able to afford,” he said. “And in the end, the county and the taxpayers will be caught holding the bag.”
If the project is permitted, PointOne is looking to begin work in the fall of this year and be operational sometime in 2028. Prior to the June announcement, there had been months of speculation about the possibility of a data center in Lee County dating back to 2025, when it was reported that a company called Deep River Data was interested in accessing natural gas from an old test well in order to power an AI data operation. Concerns about fracking, as well as potential adverse impacts from that project – which was never officially proposed or submitted for approvals – led local leaders to adopt a rule set governing data centers in Sanford and Lee County. Those rules, among other things, banned fracking-associated data centers.
Most of the speakers on Monday continued to call for the county to enact a moratorium on data centers.
“Twenty one jurisdictions in North Carolina have paused data centers, including Charlotte,” said resident Keely Puricz. “And the list is growing.”
Commissioner Robert Reives Sr., a Democrat, said at the meeting’s end he thought the county needed to “work on” helping the public understand what powers the board has and doesn’t have. His comments appeared to refer to the county’s permitting process, which is governed by its adopted zoning and development regulations.
“Some folks seem to think that we’re on the front end of everything and that there’s no process to be followed,” he said. “I don’t expect the average person to know all the things that we have to wait for and go through before we make decisions, but I do feel feel sometimes we’re unfairly blamed for things that are not in our purview.”
Jimmy Randolph and Sanford Growth Alliance is responsible for bringing this data center to our county! SAGA needs to be included in any lawsuit action along with county commissioners! Dismantle Jimmy Randolph and his SAGA!!
I am all for bringing in a data center. 1 million in annual revenue means better schools, more jobs, and better quality of life. SAGA has laid out a comprehensive plan that is well thought out, and they have brought in experts to articulate how this would be run. It is very hypocritical that the people complaining about data centers almost are guaranteed to use cell phones, computer tablets and other digital means to communicate via……..wait for it……..DATA CENTERS.
I do not have a problem with Data Centers per se. They are part of what makes the internet work. They support all sorts of media that all of us use daily. The general public is the impetus for these data centers being built. Businesses, schools, and individual homeowners are driving the need for data centers. We need them to be competitive on the world stage.
However, it is within our jurisdiction to place requirements on these data centers. The biggest issue seems to be their energy usage.
Let’s require them to build solar energy farms and utilize geo-thermal technologies to reduce their carbon footprints. Our local and state authorities can make this happen, and all of us will be better for it.
Please, no to the solar junk. Completely made of toxic materials and cannot be deposed of safely when damaged or of old age (less than 20 years). Same for the batteries needed to ride through the nights and bad weather. A Small Modular Reactor is very expensive but the best way to go.
The way to go is to outlaw them in our very small over developed county.
Any SMR needs to be located on the old Carolina Plunder and Loot Property with a footprint below Shaddox Creek on the Chatham/Brickhaven side of the river. You would want it to be below the City’s water intake, not above it. Because CP&L so badly managed the construction of Harris, there is one unit instead of four and the closure of the Coal Fired Plant took more capacity off line. Let Duke do it, and run it. Duke has a good track record with nuclear power and even though the SMR should be nearly idiot proof, there are so many people in this area that are spooked by technology it’s better to have the Devil You Know on the hook for it.
How do you feel about it being in your back yard? Have you ever heard the noise levels it creates not counting the very large generators that have to come on and run at least once a month to test them. They are so big they rattle the ground up to over 1/2 mile. You want data center go move next to one. You will change your mind.
Cloud, you can’t just ban uses like this in North Carolina. That is against the law. Please tell us of a data center shaking the ground. I don’t know of any in this State. If you are speaking of data center out west on different soils and geology and in perpetual low humidity, that could be possible. But the land in question is not hard rock, but Triassic Clay Hole, which is akin to a cushioning pad. If you want to hedge your future, get decibel readings at your property at day and night and when airplanes are landing and when the power lines are humming. Then you can sue the company and the county if in fact your property is devalued and have a chance to collect or make one of them buy your land and you can move to a rural area. I suspect what will happen is that they will raise the value of your land 50% or more as the sanitary sewer and water lines are extended. But the value in your land will be from a commercial or non-farm standpoint. Someone is going to want to build a shopping center on Lower Moncure Road. They will want to build apartments at some point. NC State, Duke, and UNC-Ch are the drivers of this as the creators of the RTP. Actually the NC State Fairgrounds needs to move out of Raleigh and the area could use a Theme Park. The area between the Lower Moncure Road and River Road is perfect for a “Six Flags over Moncure”.
I would challenge the naysayers to turn off their computers, stop streaming videos, smart TV’s, online video gaming and give up their cell phones. Since most of all we use is computerized we rely upon these Data Centers. Even the cars we drive. Lastly, cloud services are also stored there.
The ones objecting are the hypocrites creating the need for these Data Centers. Utilizing alternative energy would be a partial compromise. Commissioners should make sure they go in areas that are zoned industrial.
If you look at the site location from and objective standpoint several things stand out:
A. It’s a low population area with about 14 houses within a half mile of the entire site, which is huge. There are only about 20 houses within a mile.
B. There are several industrial scale operations in the area now – The Airport with it’s 11,000 foot long apron and runway, an equipment yards at Hunter Farms, another equipment yard near the intersection of Old US 1 and Lower Moncure Road, CP&L’s old plant is on the other side of the River as well as the stinking plywood plant. At little further away as the crow flies is the Rock Quarry and on the south side of the area is Sanford’s Water Treatment Plant.
C. The area is crossed by the Seaboard Coast Line and Norfolk Southern RR. The area is crossed by a 500 and a second 230 KV high voltage power line coming from the Nuclear Plant. There is a cell tower and the City has a sewer lift station in the area.
D. There is not much traditional farming in the area but there is a lot of timber land. Timber qualifies for all the farming tax breaks but it’s not really farming per se.
E. A lot of these tracts of land, especially the bigger ones are now owned by out of state heirs, trusts, etc.
F. The size of the site and the elevation of the middle of it at 250 feet above sea level puts the finished floor above many of the homes within a mile. The top of that thing with it’s HVAC cooling is likely to be at the 300 feet level – above everything in the area. The way sound propagates it goes up and out on an angle above the roofs of almost all the houses.
G. Ground vibration and excess noise off the site are marks of incompetent local development regulation and stupid people doing the actual site plan and building plan reviews. The Sanford/LC planners and inspectors are not stupid, moreover they have personally vested interest in making sure the local people are as protected as they can be without putting the County into litigation it can not win.
H. Before Plan San-Lee was ever adopted, city planners told county planners that the area in question would develop as part of the greater Triangle but accepting that was difficult for the County (as if you could move the Airport from Tramway and the Triangle would not grow toward it).
I. The City and the County have to work with the Geology given to them. They also have to work within NC State Law which gives private property owners huge leeway in what they do with land. Intense proscriptive regulation is legal in California, Oregon, NY, and NJ not in the southeastern US.
J. Residents of the area need to focus on the fact that the area will continue to develop and most importantly on the actual site plan and building plans of anything other than a single family home. This applies not only to Lower Moncure Road, but to Moncure/Haywood, and Deep River.