The massive data storage facility proposal would require annexation into the Town of Apex and a rezoning; neighbors are wary of energy use, air pollution, and quality of life impacts.
A dozen black cows graze by the side of Shearon Harris Road, on 189 acres just south of Old U.S. Highway 1 in New Hill, a rural, unincorporated town in western Wake County. Some rustic-looking farmhouse structures sit further back on the property, framed by gently sloping hills.
The Western Wake sewage treatment facility sits directly to the west of the farmland, and Duke Energy's Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant is located just three miles to the south.
"We are a terrorist attack waiting to happen," remarked a resident of the nearby Jordan Pointe neighborhood at a community meeting Thursday evening.
"And we're surrounded by schools," another neighbor added. "I mean, this is just such a recipe for disaster."
Jordan Pointe is a decade-old master-planned community that features more than a few million-plus dollar homes. At the neighborhood's poolside cabana, a group of two dozen residents discussed how best to organize opposition to a massive data storage facility proposed for the Shearon Harris Road farm property. They wouldn't be the only ones affected; two more large communities are planned on either side of Jordan Pointe, each with hundreds of new homes.
Just two days earlier, Jordan Pointe residents met with the developer and learned more about the project stoking their concerns. The data storage facility, according to notes taken by a resident and reviewed by the INDY, is a proposal from Maryland-based developer Natelli Investments LLC. Preliminary plans call for four to six buildings, up to 75 feet tall, and 80 three-megawatt generators on the site that would be used during power outages and tested weekly. A 60-foot buffer would surround the perimeter of the property.
As large data facilities pop up across the country to power technology and, increasingly, run ever-more powerful AI, residential communities are grappling with their impacts, including the staggering amounts of water -- up to millions of gallons a day -- and electricity they require.
It's not clear how many data storage facilities are located in North Carolina -- the state doesn't keep an official list, and some of their locations, including those housing government data, are kept secret -- but "data centers exist, humongous and modest, in rural counties and in cities," a March News & Observer report found.
Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft all have large centers in western North Carolina. And the Triangle is already home to some small facilities, including TierPoint in RTP, CyrusOne in Durham, and a new American Tower facility along Chapel Hill Road in west Raleigh that opened this spring.
Concerns voiced at Thursday's meeting at Jordan Pointe ranged from health and quality-of-life impacts, including air pollution from burning fossil fuels, noise and light pollution, and the costs and environmental repercussions of using energy from the power grid and clean water from the treatment facility.
According to notes from the developer's meeting with neighbors on August 19, Natelli Investments LLC is a third-generation real estate firm that shifted to data center projects five years ago and has built similar facilities from South Carolina to Maryland. (The attorney for Natelli Investments LLC, Beth Trahos of Fox Rothschild LLP, who is listed as the contact person for the project, did not respond to questions from the INDY).
The company has been evaluating the parcel of land at 4232 Shearon Harris Road for over a year, the developer's representatives told neighbors at the meeting. The proposal requires the 189-acre site to be annexed into the Town of Apex followed by a rezoning from residential to light industrial that would require a text amendment to the town's development ordinance to add a definition of a data storage facility (see below). The developer aims to file the annexation, zoning application and text amendment by September 2 according to a slide from a presentation the INDY viewed.
According to Wake County real estate records, the property is still owned by Michael L. Goodwin; it's not clear whether the sale of the property is contingent on the developer getting the annexation and rezoning. It's also unclear why Natteli Investments LLC wants to be annexed into Apex rather than asking for the rezoning from Wake County.
Representatives for the developer pitched the community on the project's economic benefits, neighbors say: an estimated $10 million in annual tax revenue for Apex and Wake County, plus an additional $1.2 million in tax revenue to the state; $300 million in compensation for construction labor; and an $850 million in additional economic contributions -- lodging, food sales, materials costs -- during the construction period.
According to the neighbors' notes, the proposed data storage facility would require around 250 megawatts of energy -- the equivalent of 25 percent of Sharon Harris Nuclear Plant's 1 gigawatt output -- that will come from the existing energy distribution grid. Duke Energy is conducting a feasibility study to confirm power availability (the results of which might not be shared publicly), but neighbors say it seems clear that the facility will require more power than what's currently available.
"From a financial point of view, there's [likely] going to be some infrastructure upgrades, and there is a cost aspect of infrastructure upgrades, which is most likely going to pass through to the communities," says Jordan Pointe resident Sarav Arunachalam, an adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Arunachalam notes that, while North Carolina used to rely on burning coal, in the last two decades the state has come to rely more on natural gas.
"Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and if you're going to have excess capacity somewhere in the grid, in Duke Energy's portfolio, then it's going to lead to excess emissions of carbon, excess emissions of other pollutants which cause both air quality and health risks in the near term while carbon dioxide impacts are more of a long-term issue for climate change," Arunachalam says.
The generators, too, could require burning fossil fuels, potentially diesel, for power. Exposure to diesel exhaust can inflame the body's T cells and alter their function, which can be harmful to people with asthma and could trigger autoimmune and allergic responses.
And the use of treated wastewater, sourced from the Western Wake Regional Water Reclamation Facility, which is jointly owned by the Town of Apex and the Town of Cary, could also contribute to air pollution. That water could be pumped through pipes housed inside the facility to cool machines powering the operations of cloud computing, data analysis, or the functions of tech corporations, governments, and other entities storing data and providing internet services.
According to the neighbors' report-out from the meeting with the developer, about one third of the water the facility utilizes will evaporate and the rest will cycle back to the treatment plant. Evaporated water mixes with air pollutants, Arunachalam explains, and eventually is redeposited -- on homes, plants and trees, and the ground, which could harm humans and ecosystems.
"That may have some other health impacts based upon just a deposition of what gets evaporated and the potential mix of air pollution in the evaporated water," Arunachalam says.
Jordan Pointe residents and other New Hill neighbors are organizing to speak against the proposed data storage facility at the Apex Town Council meeting Tuesday evening. They've also started a petition opposing the data center, with more than 1,000 signatures, and are working on launching a website and raising money to hire legal representation.