Officials in a North Carolina county voided a data center project's zoning permission after a lawsuit from two local advocacy groups. The company behind the project, however, seems set to refile its application.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) and Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) this week announced that officials in Stokes County had voided its rezoning decision and text amendment allowing for the development of a large data center campus, known as Project Delta, along the Dan River.

Proposed by Engineered Land Solutions, Project Delta aimed to develop multiple data center buildings across some 1,800 acres of land off Highway 311 near Walnut Cove.

However, the Stokes County board of commissioners voted this week to void the decision, noting that the county failed to meet statutory notice requirements before approving the project. The decision reverses the county’s January decision to approve the zoning and add data centers as a permitted use in its ordinances.

The county released a statement on the decision: “Some people have asked whether this is the end of the project, or simply a pause. Legally, it cannot be a 'done deal' either way at this point, because we chose to void the rezoning due to our own errors in the process. If the applicant wishes to continue, they have the right to amend and resubmit their request, which must meet the current criteria and go through a fully compliant public process. We understand the developer has expressed interest in continuing to pursue the project, but any future application will have to start over and follow all notice and hearing rules from the beginning.”

SCSJ and SELC had filed a lawsuit on behalf of 13 residents and four cultural and environmental non-profits in March.

“We’re glad the county recognized the flaws in their process and that their decisions cannot stand, but the communities of Walnut Cove deserve more than a do-over,” said Anne Harvey David, chief counsel for environmental justice at SCSJ. “They deserve a process that takes seriously what is at stake for them.”

“We appreciate the board taking this step to void its rezoning decision,” added Megan Kimball, senior attorney with SELC. “These are difficult decisions, and we respect that commissioners are doing their best to serve their communities. The board’s action has created an important opportunity for the county to slow down, put protections in place, and carefully consider future data center proposals.”

Walnut Cove is a town in Stokes County, some 18 miles north of Winston-Salem and 32 miles northwest of Greensboro. The proposed Project Delta site is located close to Duke Energy’s 2.2GW coal-fired Belews Creek Power Station.

The campus, reportedly set to total several hundred megawatts, would use a closed-loop cooling system to reduce water use, and the developer was set to cover all the costs of new substation(s) and transmission upgrades.

The land is owned by local developer David Couch, CEO of real estate firm Blue Ridge Companies. Couch is working with real estate developer Engineered Land Solutions for Project Delta.

DCD has reached out to Engineered Land Solutions for comment. The company released a statement to local press, telling Fox: “We remain dedicated to being a strong, trusted partner in Stokes County and demonstrating what responsible data center development should look like – that’s what ELS is all about.”

The company continued: “ELS will continue working closely with county leadership on any technical updates ahead of our rezoning application resubmission. The project is surrounded by existing industrial uses, including solar farms and a power generation facility, and has been responsibly designed with 100-foot buffers, a closed-loop cooling system, and noise limits.”

The Stokes County planning board voted to recommend against the plan on December 4, but the county board approved the rezoning in January. County officials had previously voted against proposals for a solar farm on the land.

County officials had also added as a permitted use in the county’s Heavy Manufacturing districts, potentially authorizing data centers as of right on all properties under that zoning county-wide, potentially allowing data centers to be developed on more than a dozen sites. That ordinance change has now also been voided.

If a new application is filed to restart the process, it is likely to meet strong opposition.

A petition against the project from Clean Water for North Carolina garnered more than 2,750 signatures at the time of writing. The group had called the project a “threat to local history and heritage.”