Community Files Lawsuit Over Stokes County Data Center Rezoning

DANBURY, N.C. (March 12, 2026) — Community groups and Walnut Cove area residents filed a lawsuit today in an effort to protect a way of life that has defined the Dan River corridor for generations — one built around farms, forests, and rural communities, that is now threatened by the county’s decision to allow an enormous, loud, polluting, and resource-intensive AI data center development to move forward. 

The lawsuit was filed in Stokes County Superior Court by Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) and Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). It centers around the January 2026 decision by the Stokes County Board of Commissioners to rezone approximately 1,845 acres of residential-agricultural land on the Dan River for heavy industrial use — clearing the way for the massive “Project Delta” hyperscale data center complex — while also opening more than a dozen mostly rural sites across the county to potential future data centers. 

The plaintiffs are cultural and environmental nonprofits National Hairston Clan; CleanAIRE NC; Dan River Basin Association; and 7 Directions of Service, and residents are Tim and Deborah Mabe; Terry and Barbara Woodcock; Roger and Jessica Richer; Ashleigh and Parker Tuttle; Tabatha Ashburn; David Beane and Lori Miller; and Rachel and Bryce Dillon. They argue in the lawsuit that the county acted without the procedural safeguards, factual grounding, and reasoned decision-making required by North Carolina law, and they’re asking the court to strike down both zoning actions entirely. 

Read the full complaint here.

“We live in a house built 40 years ago by the hands of our family, surrounded by our relatives, on land we’ve been on for three generations. We grow our own food and live a life we cherish on this land,” said Tim Mabe, a Stokes County resident and plaintiff. “This project and rezoning threaten not only our ability to exist here but also the meaningful existence of the community we love.” 

“Our foreparents are buried on the data center site. Not history in a book — real people, in the ground, and it bothers me deeply to think of those gravesites as being disturbed,” said Robert Hairston, Board Chairperson for the National Hairston Clan. “We strive to be good stewards of that land so their families can always come back to them. If they were your foreparents, would you want them moved? Run over? When you walk that land now, you can almost hear and feel that they were there. They deserve to rest in peace, and we will not let that be taken from them.” 

Commissioners overrode their own Planning Board’s recommendation to deny the rezoning and approved it 3-2 before a data center operator had been identified or key details about the project’s scale and infrastructure were disclosed. 

Additionally, Commissioners amended the zoning ordinance to add “Data Centers” as a permitted use throughout the county’s heavy manufacturing districts, extending the threat of development beyond the river’s edge to more than a dozen sites across the county that have remained largely rural in character. 

“For Indigenous people of this region, the Dan River corridor is not just land — it is a living cultural landscape tied to the Saura and other Siouan-speaking nations who have lived along these rivers for centuries,” said Crystal Cavalier-Keck, Co-Founder of 7 Directions of Service. “Our organization was founded to protect sacred places and defend the lands and waters that hold our ancestors’ stories. Data center development that threatens burial grounds, cultural sites, and the river itself is not just an environmental issue — it is a threat to Indigenous heritage and the responsibility we carry to care for these lands for future generations.”

“Projects like hyperscale data centers can bring significant air pollution from the large arrays of generators needed to keep them running,” said Jeff Robbins, Executive Director of CleanAIRE NC. “Communities along the Dan River — including historically Black neighborhoods like Baileytown and families such as the Hairstons and Baileys with generations of roots, churches, and cemeteries here — deserve real protection for their air, their health, and the places that hold their history.”

“The Dan River watershed is one of the most important natural resources in this region and decisions that could affect it should be made with careful study and public transparency,” said Tiffany Haworth, Executive Director of the Dan River Basin Association. “For projects of this scale, municipalities need to carefully evaluate potential impacts on both the citizens they serve and the environment, while ensuring residents have meaningful opportunities to engage in the planning process and a voice in the final outcome.”

The lawsuit contends the county’s approval was flawed from the start. Commissioners never properly noticed the zoning changes, failed to meaningfully assess impacts on noise, air quality, water, and sacred sites tied to Saura tribal history and the Hairston Plantation, where descendants of those enslaved on the property still live and maintain cemeteries nearby. The decision also rested heavily on the Project Delta developer’s claim of $20-40 million in annual tax revenue, a figure so inflated it dwarfs what Duke Energy and RJ Reynolds bring in combined. 

Commissioners approved the project over fervent opposition from residents — including many who were hoping to speak at a public hearing where they were never given the chance and others who wrote to their Commissioners but received no response. 

“It’s almost impossible to visualize the sheer scope of this project. That the Commission approved it without full consideration of the impacts on the community — particularly on the Hairston Clan, Bailey family, Saura tribal descendants, and other residents whose rural lives will be forever altered — is another instance of burdening the historic Walnut Cove community for the purported benefit of Stokes County,” said Anne Harvey David, Chief Counsel for Environmental Justice at SCSJ. “Zoning law exists to protect communities from exactly this kind of rushed and ill-informed decision.” 

Hyperscale data centers like Project Delta operate continuously, unlike most other industrial facilities. Keeping them running demands massive amounts of electricity, water, generators, and cooling systems, bringing a level of noise, pollution, and resource consumption unlike anything a rural community like Stokes County has ever seen. 

“Data centers bring significant impacts — from air, noise, and light pollution and massive energy demand to pressure on local water resources and land,” said Megan Kimball, Senior Attorney with SELC. “Through this lawsuit, we are working to ensure that communities along the Dan River — many with deep cultural roots and longstanding ties to this land — are protected and not forced to bear the environmental burdens of hyperscale data center development.”

### 

Southern Coalition for Social Justice, founded in 2007, partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities in the South to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights through the combination of legal advocacy, research, organizing, and communications. Learn more at southerncoalition.org and follow our work on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.  

The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region’s air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 250, including more than 160 legal and policy experts and advocates, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, VA, with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, DC. Learn more at selc.org.