Saturday marks the halfway point in Charlotte’s 150-day data center moratorium. Thursday night, the city hosted a town hall that brought together city staff, environmental advocates and industry representatives to address local concerns.
The debate over data centers has become a powerful political issue, raising concerns about climate change, water use and whether artificial intelligence will erase millions of jobs.
At the town hall, City Council member-at-large Dimple Ajmera moderated a series of panels. Kevin McNulty represented hyperscale data center developer Digital Realty, which is developing a 156-acre site on Moores Chapel Road.
“I asked about the infrastructure cost and who should pay for that. He said the industry … and they want to pay,” Ajmera said.
But tensions mounted during McNulty’s answers. When asked if he would live near a hyperscale data center, he struggled to speak over the din from the crowd:
“My answer is yes with a caveat,” McNulty said. “I would live next to a data center if it was appropriately sited and there were mitigations in place for the lights that are on the building.”
His answer was cut short by an audience member asking if he lived near any of Digital Realty’s facilities.
“I live about two miles from a data center,” McNulty replied, though he did not specify where or which data center.
City Council will decide what new policies, if any, to implement before the moratorium expires Nov. 5.
The data center debate continues
There were many alumni of Charlotte’s data center moratorium public meetings on the panels. Collin Brown, a land-use attorney who represented the PowerHouse data center in University City, spoke against the ban during a May hearing. During the town hall, he said that some data center growth is necessary for supporting critical digital infrastructure, such as propping up the city’s healthcare system.
“I don’t want my air poisoned or my water poisoned,” Brown said. “I want technology to support a good and healthy lifestyle, and I also want to have a clean environment.”
The moratorium doesn’t just block new rezoning requests. The city won’t approve permits for data center renovations, meaning developers can’t start new projects. Projects that are already under construction, like Digital Realty’s Moores Chapel facility and PowerHouse’s University City data center, are unaffected.
For activist Toni Mingo, who lives in University City, the question isn’t just how developers build new data centers, but where they build them. She worried that new hyperscale data centers would locate near Charlotte’s Black and brown communities, lowering property values.
“I have to say something about generational wealth," Mingo said. “Every time an African-American or Brown person moves forward, we are moved backward economically. We do not catch up.”
The water use question
Racks of powerful computers get very hot and need to be cooled continually while running. But a data center’s exact water use can vary wildly depending on its size and cooling system. The PowerHouse facility plans on using 1.2 million gallons of reclaimed water per day, while Digital Realty’s Moores Chapel site would use 35,000 gallons per day.
Charlotte Water director Angela Charles said this is similar to other industries, many of which have eye-popping daily water use totals. For example, some medical facilities use 173,000 gallons per day. She said one water bottler uses hundreds of thousands of gallons daily, reselling “this precious resource that we have and putting it in a plastic bottle.”
However, those figures don’t account for energy usage — which also requires water to generate. Hyperscale data centers require significant power independent of their cooling systems, sometimes consuming enough to match the output of a single power plant. Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones said that regardless of onsite water usage, large facilities will indirectly take a toll on the river basin.
For example, if a data center demanded 500 megawatts from the grid, Jones said Duke Energy’s Catawba Nuclear Station would need about 5 million gallons per day to supply that power. The nonprofit that writes the plan for managing the river basin, the Catawba-Wateree Water Management Group, has not considered data centers in its long-term planning, aside from noting the need to monitor them.
“It’s very important when we have a new type of industry come in — whatever that may be — that they are then paying for that modeling to be done,” Jones said.
The event culminated in a Q&A session as Ajmera selected question cards from the audience. Most focused on water use, including questions about how Charlotte Water handles drought conditions. Mandatory water restrictions remain in place, even as drought conditions have improved.
“Data centers are not priorities over citizens,” Charles said. She assured the crowd that new economic development — data centers included — would not come at the expense of existing customers. Charlotte residents would still be able to “wash, brush and flush” without fear that the tap won’t turn on.
