News

My name is Katey Zimmerman. I am here tonight in my role as your Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper with Sound Rivers, a local non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and advocating for the health of our Rivers as well as the communities that rely on them. 

Your planning board met on April 14 to discuss an industrial rezoning for 171 acres of city-owned land. Though it is clear (to us), that this land is for a data center (due to the conditions listed in the rezoning language), it has still not been disclosed what this land is planned to be used for. With all the community pushback against data centers, including right next door in Edgecombe County, you should know: we don’t want a data center in Rocky Mount either. 

And this is not because we’re opposed to economic development. We’re not opposed to this annexation or the industrial rezoning, we are just opposed to this lack of transparency in the City opening up its doors to data-center developers. 

Data centers are increasingly posing a huge risk to eastern North Carolina. They pose a risk to our cities’ infrastructure, our rivers and our communities’ health and wellbeing. Your constituents should not be asked to absorb these risks before they are given the information they need and deserve to make an informed decision and give their input before decisions are made. 

Some of the current conditions set for the rezoning are beneficial, like prohibiting the use of diesel generators, limiting noise and using “non water intensive cooling methods”, but they are not nearly enough to protect our communities from the impacts of data centers, and they are not enough to protect our river and water resources. 

For some examples:

• Hyperscale data centers can use millions of gallons of treated freshwater per day for cooling their equipment — this water would come from the Tar River.
• We’re in a severe drought period; river levels are already low and don’t have the long-term capacity to withdraw such large volumes of water without compromising ecosystem function or causing water-scarcity issues, especially in the face of climate change predicting more frequent and severe droughts.
• These cooling methods introduce a series of harmful contaminants to the water (including biocides, heavy metals and, although currently understudied, potentially PFAS or forever chemicals)
• The question we need to be asking is: Is Rocky Mount’s sewage-treatment system equipped to filter out these pollutants? Currently, wastewater treatment plants DO NOT remove PFAS, meaning these chemicals will end up in our waterways.
• These untreated pollutants will then reenter our drinking-water systems, furthering the threat to public health downstream.

These are just some of the water-related impacts to expect, but the last thing I’ll say is: In the face of this budget deficit, which is already putting a burden on your constituents, the premise of whatever short-term payoff is being presented should not come at the cost of burdening the City further with the impacts of a data center, which are long-term and far-reaching.