"I just can't sit at home anymore," said Judy Abrook. The 74-year-old drove up from Pinehurst to attend a rally against data centers on Saturday, July 18, an issue that has incited both unrest and distrust in Lee County in recent months.
More than 35 people attended the protest at the corner of Jefferson Davis Highway and Tramway Road, in the sun-drenched grass in front of a CVS. "No Data Center" signs were raised over heads as passing cars honked, and people responded with cheers.
Judy Abrook, 74, protests in Tramway, off of Highway 1 in Lee County, NC. July 18, 2026. Photo by Diara J. Townes.
Abrook learned of the event through Linda Hoover, the co-chair of Indivisible Moore County. While not a sanctioned event, Hoover tapped into her network to bring residents of both counties to show their concerns. Most attendees learned of the protest through the Indivisible grapevine.
Hoover, a professional horse trainer in Moore County, said her frustration with the process comes down to one issue.
"I'd like the board of commissioners to be more transparent," Hoover said. "If this is so wonderful for all of us, then why is this not out in the open?"
"I'm not against compromise," she added, "but we need to be brought into the process.”
She adjusted her hands on the arms-length banner she held that read, “Alone we are one….together we make a difference.”
Linda Hoover stands with a wide banner that reads, “Alone we are one…together we make a difference,” for the protest against data centers in Lee County on Saturday, July 18, 2026. Photo by Diara J. Townes.
This is the local snapshot — what residents are seeing, hearing, and pushing back on right now. It's not the whole story. I've spent months digging into the money and process behind how this project actually got here, and that reporting is still underway. Subscribe to The Curious Scout to be the first to know when my next story is out!
“What’s the rush?”
Efforts to get a data center into Lee County began publicly as early as November 2025, after a story published by Inside Climate News reported that a crypto-mining company, Deep River Data, wanted to explore fracking as a power source for its data center operation.
The community, from environmental advocates and parents to a former prosecutor and scientists, spoke out against the impacts of a fracking expedition near a retired coal mine in Cumnock, familiar to residents along the Lee-Chatham county border for its collapse in 1925 that killed 53 men, still ranked as the deadliest industrial disaster in North Carolina history.
“No Drilling! No Fracking!” buttons provided by clean water advocates at the March 16, 2026 Lee County Board of Commissioners meeting. Photo by Diara J. Townes.
The Coal Miner’s Diner, an old-fashioned diner off of Highway 87 in Cumnock, in Lee County. Photo by Diara J. Townes. April 12, 2026.
For nearly five months, Zoning Administrator Thomas Mierisch and Marshall Downey, director of the county's Department of Community Development, working with their staff, crafted and presented rules for a new local unified development ordinance (UDO) for data centers, laying out how they would restrict noise levels, build land buffers, and consider water and energy use barriers away from residential areas.
“We talked with Central Pines Regional District first,” shared Mierisch, when asked about who the planning department consulted with to build out the UDO during the process. The City of Sanford released a document in an effort to answer questions from the community about data centers that were rising to a fever pitch on social media spaces such as Facebook and Nextdoor.
Any data center seeking to build in Lee County would have to use municipal water and tap into the electrical grid. They would not be able to source or discharge water without TriRiver, and would have to partner with either Central Electric Membership Corporation or Duke Energy to supply power.
In February, as more community members began reaching out to elected officials, members of the Lee County board of commissioners reached out to Jimmy Randolph, the CEO of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance.
Known as SAGA, it's a public-private entity that receives city and county money to support broad-scale economic development but is not required to report its expenditures to either governing body. City and county officials can request the reports, however.
The board requested research support on data centers from SAGA, and he obliged.
On March 16, after a contentious back-and-forth between then-Chair Kirk Smith and a Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Brooks Rainey Pearson in front of more than 200 meeting attendees pushing back against Deep River Data, Commissioner Robert T. Reives raised efforts to pass a moratorium.
By April 6, those efforts had stalled.
New data center rules were refined, going through rounds of adjustments by both the county and city, ultimately landing without resource protections and no moratorium. While most protections for water, air, and soil regulations run through the NC Department of Environmental Quality, residents were disappointed to see the moratorium left off the table.
"This is a step in the right direction," said Randolph, following the April 20 planning board meeting where members voted to recommend passing the UDO.
He said he was skeptical of Deep River Data from day one, and that a dozen data centers had approached SAGA through the state's economic planning commission; SAGA did not approach them.
SAGA CEO Jimmy Randolph speaking to commissioners about the consultants he invited to speak on behalf of the data center UDO on April 20, 2026. Photo by Diara J. Townes.
That same April 20 hearing featured four outside data center consultants: Andrew Waltzer, an engineer with Strategic Mission Critical Associates; Josh Cassarino, an acoustic specialist with Cerami & Associates contracted through Trinity Consultants; Carlton Wynn, a Senior Managing Consultant at Ramboll Associates; and Emily Bowers, the former state and local affairs director with the Green Building Initiative who departed the organization to form her own consulting firm, Fordwell Strategies.
They spoke in favor of the new data center rules without disclosing any connection to the project. Commissioner Samantha Martin, now board chair since May when Smith abruptly stepped down, noted her confusion when she interrupted the public comments and asked the out-of-town speakers, “How are you here?”