DANBURY, N.C. (July 14, 2026) — In a move that defied months of overwhelming community opposition, the Stokes County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday night to approve text amendments that will open the area to data center development and reject a temporary moratorium.
Every public commenter opposed the move, and the hearing room, overflow area, and sidewalk outside were packed with people who came to say so. Three Commissioners voted yes anyway, with virtually no discussion, and they rejected the moratorium without debate that the county’s own Planning Board had strongly recommended.
The text amendments add data centers as an allowed use in Stokes County’s M-2 Heavy Manufacturing Conditional Zoning districts, opening the entire county from Danbury to King to Walnut Cove, to hyperscale data center developments for the first time. The amendments lack provisions for fire safety, emergency response, setbacks, generator and water usage, adequate noise limits, or the specific operational impacts of large-scale data center technology.
Chad Bailey, a Walnut Cove resident, wrote a statement that was read at Tuesday’s meeting. He specifically asked commissioners to consider the moratorium so they could have “real, enforceable standards” put into the ordinance about data centers.
“Amendment R would open the door to [Project Delta] and others like it, but it does not include the actual standards that would protect people like me and my neighbors…,” he wrote. “It opens the door before the county has decided what will be required to walk through it.”
He talked about the cultural and historical significance of Stokes County, not only to his ancestral families, the Baileys and Hairstons, who were enslaved on the site of the proposed Project Delta, but to the Saura Tribal descendants as well.
“Our collective history and this sacred ground belong to all of Stokes County, but as written, Amendment R does not require a developer to identify what historic, cultural, or sacred sites sit on a property before the county allows a data center there as a conditional use,” Bailey wrote. “That means a massive proposal like Project Delta could move forward without the board ever knowing what’s on that site or what would be lost once it’s covered in concrete and put behind a fence. You can’t make an informed decision without giving archaeologists and historians that time to study this ground and be heard. Once it’s disturbed, that chance is gone for good, and the Saura name becomes nothing more than a memory of what used to be here.”
The commissioners also disregarded the environmental concerns the community pointed to time and time again, and several members spoke to Tuesday. Cindi Olofsson, a Stokes County resident, tried to appeal to the Commissioners by highlighting how united the community was over its concerns.
“Under almost any other circumstance, you could put us all in a room together over another issue, and we’d probably spend the evening passionately disagreeing with each other,” Olofsson said. “In this, we’re united. We’re standing together because we believe Stokes County is worth protecting. How often do you see such a broad cross-section of your own community speaking with one voice? This is the peace that manifests when people come together in defense of balance and out of love for one another’s experience in this world. These are your neighbors. These are the people you were elected to represent. Please don’t dismiss what you’re seeing here. Don’t throw away something this rare and this beautiful. Honor it.”
The Commission previously voted the same way, 3-2, with the same Commissioners in favor and opposed, in January, on a text amendment allowing data center development as a matter of right. Commissioners voided that action following a lawsuit by community members and nonprofits represented by Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC).
Importantly, Tuesday’s vote does not mean a data center is coming to Stokes County immediately. Any data center developer, including ELS, the company behind Project Delta, must submit a conditional zoning application in a separate process, and that application must be independently reviewed and approved by the Commission. SCSJ and SELC will continue to monitor that process closely and will stand by the community.
Stokes County’s decision to open itself to development comes as at least 28 other North Carolina jurisdictions, including neighboring Davie, Surry, and the town of Mayodan in Rockingham County, have enacted data center moratoriums.
“Last night, the Commissioners chose the interests of outside developers over the people they were elected to represent,” said Anne Harvey David, Chief Counsel for Environmental Justice at SCSJ. “That is deeply disappointing, but it is not the end of this fight. There are still significant hurdles ahead before any data center breaks ground in Stokes County, and we will continue to support the community as they arise.”
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Southern Coalition for Social Justice came together in 2007 to give Black, Brown, and low-income people better resources in the fight for justice across the South. We are lawyers, social scientists, and communications professionals working to dismantle racism and oppression in the criminal legal system, in our environment, and at the ballot box. Learn more at southerncoalition.org and follow our work on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region’s air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 250, including more than 160 legal and policy experts and advocates, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, VA, with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, DC. Learn more at selc.org.