Case Summary
Community groups and Walnut Cove, NC, residents are challenging the decision of their County Board of Commissioners to rezone approximately 1,845 acres of residential-agricultural land on the Dan River to heavy industrial use. The decision authorized the use of that land for a large industrial data center complex referred to as “Project Delta.” The decision also opened up several other rural sites in Stokes County to large data center facility projects.
Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) filed the challenge in Stokes County Superior Court on March 12, 2026, on behalf of the local residents and community groups. The lawsuit requests the court reverse the rezoning actions due to a lack of procedural safeguards, factual analysis, and reasoned decision-making required by North Carolina law.
Why it's Important
Many Walnut Cove residents have deep ties to the land and communities cultivated along the Dan River over centuries. That region is the ancestral homeland for the Saura people. The land rezoned for Project Delta contains archeological sites where organized villages of the Saura people have been located — including a cemetery which contains the remains of people believed to be of the Saura tribe.
Following the forced removal of Indigenous peoples, the fertile lands along the Dan River were converted into plantation agriculture reliant on enslaved labor. After the Civil War, formerly enslaved families acquired farmland and established independent farming communities in southeastern Stokes County. Descendants of those families, including members of the Hairston and Bailey families, continue to maintain generational ties to land in and around the data center site.
In contemporary history, southeastern Stokes County residents have experienced repeated industrial encroachment and a struggle for basic infrastructure equity. The construction of a power plant, the Belews Creek Steam Station, effectively wiped out one historically Black farming community known as “Little Egypt.” Those remaining in proximity still face the environmental impacts associated with coal combustion and ash disposal, including from a coal ash spill into the Dan River in 2014, the legacy of which still haunts the community to this day. The data center site lies in this same river corridor with communities shaped by this history of displacement, infrastructure inequity, and environmental injustice. The site includes floodplains, wetlands, and areas of archaeological, spiritual, and cultural significance.
Modern data center facilities generate extensive and distinct impacts that can have especially harmful effects on rural regions. Data center facilities operate continuously, using substantial energy and water resources that can strain nearby communities. The facilities also introduce new pollutants, continuous noise, and industrial activity that directly impact the daily lives of surrounding residents.
In this region’s historical, cultural, and environmental context, the authorization of a hyperscale, heavy industrial data center — without considering the cumulative environmental burdens, infrastructure limitations, or environmental justice impacts —represents utter disregard for the community’s voice and for the costs the Walnut Cove region has long shouldered for the purported benefit of Stokes County.
