Along the Dan River in Stokes County, farms, forests, and small rural communities have shaped the landscape for generations.  

Families here grow gardens, raise livestock, rely on private wells, and spend time in nearby woods and waterways that are central to daily life.  

For many residents, this land is more than scenery — it carries deep personal, cultural, spiritual, and historical meaning. 

This region is the ancestral homeland of the Indigenous Saura people. Archaeological and historical records document Indigenous settlement along the Dan River corridor for hundreds of years prior to European colonization, including the large Saura villages located near present-day Sauratown and Sauratown Mountains. 

“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,” says Crystal Cavalier-Keck, Co-Founder of 7 Directions of Service. 

After emancipation, formerly enslaved families built independent farming communities rooted in land ownership, agriculture, and church-centered community life. 

Descendants of those families, including members of the Hairston and Bailey families, continue to maintain generational ties to the land.   

A historic place under threat 

Communities along the Dan River have long faced environmental burdens, economic displacement, and infrastructure inequities that have disproportionately affected the area’s historic Black communities and Indigenous land. 

The most visible example came in the 1970s, when construction of a coal-fired power plant and cooling lake flooded and displaced entire neighborhoods in Belews Creek—a legacy that still affects residents through the power plant’s continued operation. 

Now, history is repeating itself, this time in the form of massive industrial data center complexes. 

Opening the doors for an AI data center 

On January 12, 2026, the Stokes County Board of Commissioners approved two decisions that would fundamentally transform this rural Dan River landscape and its residents’ way of life. 

First, the county rezoned approximately 1,845 acres along the Dan River — land previously designated for residential and agricultural uses — to allow for a hyperscale data center complex termed Project Delta. This decision was made despite a recommendation from the county’s own Planning Board to deny the Project Delta rezoning and despite unresolved questions about the project’s scale, infrastructure, and impacts. 

Second, the county amended its zoning ordinance to allow data centers as a permitted use in heavy manufacturing districts across the county — opening more than a dozen additional sites to this type of development. By adopting data centers as a permitted use, future data center construction can now occur as of right, without the county’s approval or a required public hearing.  

At the time of Project Delta’s approval, major details remained unknown.  

No specific data center operator had been publicly identified, and critical information had not been disclosed, including how many buildings would be constructed, how large they would be, and what infrastructure would be required to support the massive complex. 

Without this information, the county could not possibly understand what it was approving — or the consequences residents would be forced to live with.  

“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.” 

Data centers bring real impacts  

Modern hyperscale data center campuses like Project Delta operate around the clock and require extensive supporting infrastructure, including:  

• Large electrical substations 
• Arrays of  power generators 
• Industrial cooling systems 
• Enormous electricity and water demand.  

These facilities generate constant noise increase air pollution, strain water and power resources, and disrupt residents’ quiet, rural life. 

Data centers — especially hyperscalers like Project Delta — bring impacts unlike many traditional industrial facilities. 

In Stokes County, these approvals mark a sharp departure from decades of land-use planning and from the rural development pattern that has long defined communities along the Dan River.  

“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.” 

For nearby residents — many of whom rely on private wells and live just feet from the proposed site — these impacts are not theoretical. They are immediate and personal. 

Cultural and ancestral stakes 

For many families, the stakes go far beyond environmental concerns. 

“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.” 

Archaeological evidence confirms the presence of Indigenous burial sites and historic communities within the project area, raising serious concerns about irreversible harm to cultural resources. 

“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,” said Cavalier-Keck about environmental injustice impacts of the recent zoning decisions that would allow data center development across Stokes County. 

This rezoning is wrong and illegal 

The county’s decision to quickly greenlight these zoning changes without adequate information, analysis, or public process will upend the lives of residents, harm natural and cultural resources, and fundamentally alter the character of this community. 

That decision is not just misguided — it is unlawful. 

That’s why SELC is suing on behalf of community groups alongside the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, representing impacted residents, to challenge both the Project Delta rezoning and countywide zoning amendment. SELC’s clients include CleanAIRE NC, Dan River Basin Association, and 7 Directions of Service. 

“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.”