Alamance County’s leaders have been introduced to a lot of cutting-edge concepts as they prepare for a public hearing later this month about a proposed moratorium on the development of new data centers.
But there’s also one, old familiar issue that keeps creeping in as the county’s top brass try to make sense of the complex regulatory landscape that surrounds these massive, high-tech facilities.
In fact, the idea of countywide “zoning” was something of a running theme when the county’s board of commissioners addressed their upcoming public hearing during their latest regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday.
This once-taboo proposal got plenty of airplay that morning from Sam Powell who, in addition to being the county’s newest commissioner, serves as a liaison between the board of commissioners and Alamance County’s planning board.
“Alamance County has escaped without adopting zoning. It’s not the only option. . . but there are issues that we can’t do anything about without zoning.
“Rather than just jumping in there and doing something that might not be appropriate, we need to be out there talking to the community and sharing with the community what it would mean if we had zoning.”
– County commissioner Sam Powell
“Alamance County has escaped without adopting zoning,” Powell reminded his fellow commissioners when the proposed moratorium on data centers came up for discussion on Monday. “It’s not the only option. . . but there are issues that we can’t do anything about without zoning.”
The current debate over data centers isn’t the first time that the notion of countywide zoning has impinged on what, at first blush, might’ve seemed like an unrelated debate over land use.
During the past year alone, the board of commissioners has heard repeated pleas to introduce zoning to unincorporated parts of the county from the opponents of a proposed stump dump along Clapp Mill Road. Meanwhile, residents in the rural community of Saxapahaw have also clamored for zoning after the county received plans for two massive residential developments in their neck of the woods.
In both of these cases, the county’s existing rules effectively guarantee that the developers of these contentious projects will obtain county-level permits if they meet the criteria spelled out in the welter of land use ordinances that the county has implemented in lieu of actual zoning.
Last month, the prospect that this could also happen with data centers prompted commissioner Pam Thompson to call for a public discussion about a potential pause on the development of industrial-scale server farms in unincorporated parts of the county. Thompson went on to warn her fellow commissioners that Alamance County could be a sitting duck for a new data center as other jurisdictions tighten their rules for these behemoth facilities.
Although the rest of the board didn’t necessarily share Thompson’s sense of alarm, its members recognized that a moratorium could give them the breathing space to hammer out an appropriate set of new rules for data centers.
As a precursor to their vote on this temporary halt to new applications, the commissioners also agreed to hold a public hearing on August 17 to let members of the public weigh in on this matter.
During the board’s meeting on Monday, a couple of residents managed to get their two cents in ahead of the crowd when the commissioners convened a public comment period that leads off all of their regular meetings.
Emily Sutton, who serves as a “river keeper” for the nonprofit Haw River Assembly, used this opportunity to highlight three issues that she thinks the commissioners ought to consider during their discussion about data centers. She went on to mention the high demand that these facilities have for water, their potential contribution to erosion, and the regulatory problems that she said they’d pose in the absence of countywide zoning.
“Zoning is the tool that lets you decide where a facility belongs, what conditions are attached, and what the county gets to say ‘no’ to. A moratorium would buy you time to get the zoning right before another application lands on somebody’s desk.”
– Emily Sutton
“Zoning is the tool that lets you decide where a facility belongs, what conditions are attached, and what the county gets to say ‘no’ to,” Sutton reminded the county’s governing board. “A moratorium would buy you time to get the zoning right before another application lands on somebody’s desk.”
The lack of zoning also raised some concerns for Peter Childers, who has previously addressed the commissioners about the large residential developments that have appeared on the drawing board in Saxapahaw. On Monday, Childers argued that the county could use zoning to direct other unwieldy projects away from areas that lack the public infrastructure to support them.
“The data centers are another example of what you get when you don’t have zoning, and I know the planning department is working hard to develop something on this.”
– Peter Childers
“The data centers are another example of what you get when you don’t have zoning,” he went on to assert, “and I know the planning department is working hard to develop something on this.”
The misgivings that Childers and Sutton expressed were taken to heart by Thompson, who urged her fellow commissioners to overcome any phobia they have about zoning in order to protect residents in the county’s rural reaches.
“People talk about jumping into stuff. But we’ve been walking into zoning. . . and we need to know every angle of a data center before we make a decision.”
– County commissioner Pam Thompson
“People talk about jumping into stuff,” the commissioner declared. “But we’ve been walking into zoning…and we need to know every angle of a data center before we make a decision.”
Meanwhile, Powell told the rest of the board that he expects to hear more about zoning when the county’s planning board presents the results of an ongoing effort to weld the county’s land use restrictions into a single, unified development ordinance. Powell added that it may behoove him and his colleagues to reach out to their constituents about the ways that zoning could fit into this ordinance.
“Rather than just jumping in there and doing something that might not be appropriate,” he said, “we need to be out there talking to the community and sharing with the community what it would mean if we had zoning.”
The prospect of zoning didn’t seem to go down as readily with Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, who insisted that the commissioners should focus, instead, on proposals that can speedily address the issues they face.
Allen recalled that Matthew Hoagland, the county’s planning director, has previously complained about a lack of “teeth” in the county’s development rules. She went on to speculate that adding these regulatory chompers “would be faster and quicker” than having to concoct a whole system of zoning out of whole cloth.
Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, concurred with Allen’s position on this count.
“I think our best move is to get teeth in the ordinances and then move on to the next step.”
– County commissioner vice chairman Steve Carter
“I think our best move is to get teeth in the ordinances and then move on to the next step,” he insisted.
In the meantime, commissioner Ed Priola protested that this sort of rapid response may be less effective than a careful, deliberate revision of the county’s land use regulations.
“I think we need to take the time to determine what is the right path, rather than [take] what is the most expeditious path, which responds to the loudest voices.”
– County commissioner Ed Priola
“I think we need to take the time to determine what is the right path,” he added without any explicit mention of zoning, “rather than [take] what is the most expeditious path, which responds to the loudest voices.”
The commissioners plan to continue their conversation about data center regulation after the public hearing on August 17. This hearing will coincide with the board’s next semi-monthly meeting, which will convene at 6:30 p.m. in Alamance County’s Historic Court House in order to accommodate a larger audience than the county’s usual meeting chambers.
