The Stokes County Board of Commissioners is set to decide Monday night on a proposal to rezone land in Walnut Cove to make way for a large data center. The plan has drawn sharp opposition from community members, environmental advocates and local historians.
On a warm January evening, Stokes County resident Martha Hartley drives along a narrow road winding through rolling hills just outside Walnut Cove. She slows the car and points toward open fields bordered by forest.
“I just want you to see where it is,” Hartley says. “Cattle grazing. This is pasture land, forest land, hardwood forest. Beautiful views.”
She's referring to the land at the center of the rezoning request. Hartley, a historian, says the area is among the most significant sites in Stokes County. In the 1600s, it was home to the Indigenous Saura People. Archaeological digs conducted in the 1970s and 80s followed the discovery of a grave in the nearby floodplain.
“There are things that were not excavated, and certainly probably hundreds more burials,” Hartley says. “It is a sacred place.”
And Hartley says it is sacred not just to the Saura People. Further upland sit the remnants of the Saura Town Plantation, where hundreds of enslaved people worked and are buried. Many of their descendants still live in the area, she says.
“This is ancestral land for them,” she says. “A rezoning from farming to heavy industry is incompatible with this history. It destroys the value of this property as what it is, a place of significance.”
Those concerns have helped fuel widespread opposition to the project. Thousands of residents have signed a petition urging county leaders to reject the proposal. Bill Petree, a lifelong Walnut Cove resident, helped collect signatures.
He says the community has successfully fought off large industrial projects before.
“We had to fight fracking. We won that,” Petree says. “We had to fight a chip mill. And we won that. And now we’re fighting this.”
The site’s appeal to developers is clear. The land is largely rural, with few existing structures, and is located near Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Power Station.
The proposal comes from ELS, a company that says the data center could bring significant economic benefits to the county. The developer projects a potential $20 million annual tax impact. ELS previously withdrew plans for a similar data center in Matthews after facing community backlash.
In November, the company held a public meeting to gather feedback from Stokes County residents. CEO Drew Nations says the company is adjusting its plans in response to concerns, including limiting noise levels to 70 decibels and using a cooling system that would consume less water.
Nations also says there are no plans to build in the floodplain where the Saura People once lived, though he did not address concerns about burial sites connected to enslaved people on the property.
Petree says residents remain wary of what the project would mean for the area.
“We don’t need this kind of change that is going to be so disruptive to the landscape and the citizens,” he says. “The county commissioners are elected to represent the citizens. They’re not elected to represent developers from Charlotte.”
The Stokes County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to vote on the rezoning request Monday night at 6 p.m.
