By Miles Layton

EDENTON — No company has proposed building a data center in Chowan County. But that didn’t stop commissioners from spending a few minutes during Tuesday’s meeting hashing out whether the county should welcome the industry if it ever comes knocking — or brace for a fight over water, power lines and noise.

Worth noting: Camden, Gates and Pasquotank counties have a moratorium on data centers, and Perquimans is considering one, having held a public hearing on the matter on Tuesday.

Commissioner Ellis Lawrence raised the issue, warning colleagues not to get swept up in the promise of tax revenue without reckoning with what the infrastructure actually demands.

“There are problems that come with these data centers,” Lawrence said. “You’re going to have water problems. You’re going to have electrical problems. These are huge.”

He compared the looming debate to the county’s earlier fights over wind turbines, saying the scale of a data center’s needs — particularly for water and electricity — hasn’t been fully worked into any local planning.

“I don’t think we’ve designed this into the equation,” Lawrence said. “The amount of water that we’re going to need to handle these data centers.”

Before the board goes any further, Lawrence said, commissioners should do their own homework. 

Commissioner Tony Shaffer pushed back against the idea that data centers are something to fear, citing Loudoun County, Virginia, as a model for how the industry can be a windfall rather than a headache.

“There’s been counties in Northern Virginia who’ve successfully navigated this and established really good income and effective management,” Shaffer said. “Loudoun County is one of the most prosperous counties in Northern Virginia. They draw a great deal of their income from the data centers they have there.”

Shaffer, who said he previously advised the Federal Reserve on the industry, argued that roughly 70 percent of global internet traffic runs through data centers concentrated in that Northern Virginia corridor. Chowan County isn’t going to replicate that scale, he said, but shutting the door on the industry entirely isn’t the answer either.

“Growth in this area is not necessarily bad if it’s managed properly,” Shaffer said. He suggested someone from the county visit a jurisdiction with two decades of experience hosting data centers to learn from their mistakes before Chowan writes any rules of its own. “It’s just a question of political will and a good deal of understanding,” he said.

Vice Chairman Larry McLaughlin, who chaired Tuesday’s meeting, said the county doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring the issue, whether or not a project ever lands here. Artificial intelligence and the data centers that power it are only going to become more central to daily life, he said — and that cuts both ways.

McLaughlin said he’d heard a radio segment that morning laying out just how much has to fall into place — transmission lines among them — before a data center can even get built, and he acknowledged most board members, himself included, are still catching up on the subject.

“I think it behooves all of us to pay attention to the issue,” McLaughlin said. “There’s political sides to the issue. There’s the infrastructure side of the issue… it’s certainly something that we have to get ahead of, certainly in terms of our ordinances.”

No formal action was taken. Commissioners did not set a timeline for further study, though several members signaled interest in gathering more information before any project materializes in Chowan County.

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