Petition for Immediate Moratorium in Lee County, NC
Petition for Immediate Moratorium in Lee County, NC
The Issue
PETITION FOR
PUBLIC HEARING, RECORDS DISCLOSURE,
AND TEMPORARY DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT MORATORIUM
To the Lee County Board of Commissioners and, where applicable, the Sanford City Council Submitted by concerned residents, landowners, taxpayers, and stakeholders of Lee County, North Carolina.
Date: June 15, 2026
I. Petition
We, the undersigned residents, landowners, and stakeholders of Lee County and the City of Sanford respectfully submit this petition under N.C.G.S. § 160D-107 to request the immediate enactment of an emergency, temporary development moratorium on all data center applications, site plan reviews, and administrative approvals. We also request that a public hearing be scheduled prior to any scheduled TRC meeting (which we believe may be scheduled for June 25)
This petition is not submitted as an anti-development document. It is submitted because the public record now raises serious concerns that the people of Lee County were asked to evaluate one public facing project description while a materially different and more consequential project was being assembled beneath it.
II. Timeline
This section is limited to facts, records, public materials, or official/project statements presently known to the petitioners. We offer the information below as a starting point for your inquiry, believing that the public record indicates the following:
August 18, 2025 Lee County Commissioners Meeting
1. On August 18, at the Lee County Board of Commissioners Meeting, the Trustwell Property Group, LLC Representative (Trustwell) presented a “Business Park” with assembly/logistics jobs proposal for Lower Moncure Road to the Lee County Commissioners and the Lee County Planning Board. The core of the vision was to transform the "countryside" agricultural acreage on Lower Moncure Road into a modern business hub. Officials were informed that the Light Industrial (LI) designation would specifically be used to court firms specializing in light manufacturing assembly, commercial packaging, logistics, and professional office spaces.
2. When Trustwell presented their vision to a packed house in 2025, they explicitly claimed overdevelopment fears by pitching low-impact traditional commerce. They explicitly named light manufacturing assembly, logistics hubs, and packaging facilities as the intended tenants. They never used the words "data center" or "industrial server farm." They stated that there would be zero residential housing or subdivisions built on the 430+ acres. A major selling point of his presentation was the property's natural logistics advantage—specifically, an active rail track that runs directly through the site. They emphasized that utilizing the rail infrastructure would pull logistics burden off local roads while remaining highly attractive to major commercial tenants. They shared that the project had already been quietly in the works and under refinement for approximately three years before they officially brought it forward to Lee County leadership. They did not provide any information on an end-user. They did not mention the fact that non-disclosure agreements were being signed.
3. Trustwell used the words "light industrial business park", the specific parameters and strategic infrastructure, he pitched actually serve as the clear architectural footprint of a data center:
a. Trustwell’s admission to the commissioners that the project had already "been in development for about three years" reveals that Trustwell and its corporate entity, Helix Ventures LLC, began assembling, surveying, and planning the trajectory of these specific tax parcels as early as late 2022.
b. That this 430-acre property was being strategically master-planned, packaged, and pitched to data center site-locators throughout 2023 and 2024 is supported by standard commercial real estate practices, specific infrastructural indicators, and direct admissions on the public record.
c. Land speculators do not quietly spend years assembling a massive 430-acre block of contiguous rural land without a precise end-user sector in mind.
d. Data centers require massive amounts of power, fiber-optic connectivity, and high-voltage grid stability. When Trustwell defended the location to the public and the board, they did not pitch it like a standard retail warehouse. They specifically highlighted features that are non-negotiable for hyper-scale data operations:
1. The site was uniquely positioned near critical power corridors capable of feeding a massive industrial load.
2. Data center site-selection teams use strict parameters when searching for land. They hunt for a convergence of infrastructure, which Trustwell spent 2023 and 2024 packaging.
e. Trustwell emphasized the active rail line running directly through the property. While they pitched this as a "logistics benefit" for product assembly shipping, rail right-of-ways are heavily coveted by tech companies because major interstate fiber-optic trunk lines are almost universally buried directly alongside them.
f. Residents believe that Central Electric Membership Corporation (CEMC) formally initiated the construction pipeline for a critical electric substation on Lower Moncure Road under Special Use Permit Case 2024-1101, which was reviewed and greenlit on November 12, 2024. On November 12, the Lee County Board of Adjustment formally approved a Special Use Permit for CEMC to develop an electric substation on an 11-acre portion of the 136-acre tract located at 4079 Lower Moncure Road.1 Power configurations and substation allocations of this size require years of engineering requests and load-capacity studies with utility providers before a shovel ever hits the dirt. Were non-disclosure agreements signed?
4. In late June 2025, the original 2025 rezoning application was not just filed by Trustwell. It was a joint filing with HV Vector Park LLC.
In institutional venture capital and real estate funds, the term “Vector” is a common industry naming convention used by digital infrastructure funds.
These funds pool capital to purchase raw land near massive energy corridors with the sole intent of holding and prepping the dirt for hyper-scale farms, semiconductor facilities, or advanced manufacturing plants.
The Planning Board Vote to Deny Rezoning our Countryside land
5. Following a highly contested, four-hour joint meeting on August 18, 2025, the Lee County Planning Board retired into a separate session and voted 4-to-3 to recommend denial of Trustwell’s rezoning request. The board voted it down because the industrial designation directly conflicted with the Plan SanLee Land Use Plan, which officially classified the 430 acres off Lower Moncure Road as protected "countryside."
6. Because the Planning Board only holds advisory power, the final, binding legislative vote still belonged to the Lee County Board of Commissioners, scheduled for September 15. Recognizing that an outright denial recommendation put his project in serious jeopardy, Trustwell offered concessions, which included:
Mandatory, enhanced landscaped buffers and specialized fencing to shield nearby homes.
Strict limits on future site lighting and specific roadway traffic controls.
A pledge that certain heavy, high-impact chemical or traditional industrial uses would be explicitly banned from the property.
September 2025 Vote to rezone by Lee County Board of Commissioners
7. A member of the Lee County planning board who lives on Lower Moncure Road voted in the majority to deny the rezoning request. After the August 18 meeting, he canvassed some of his neighbors, and they agreed that a Light Industrial Park was better than a residential park for the County, and that they believed Trustwell would move forward to seek annexation by the city. On September 15, 2025, the matter came before the Lee County Board of Commissioners for the final vote. Although he previously voted against the rezoning request, at the September 15 commissioners meeting, this planning board member informed the Commissioners that he was now in favor of the Light Industrial Park along with a number of other residents given the facts of city annexation. This shift in position was based on all the representations that Trustwell would construct a business park instead of a residential neighborhood. This "flip" of the stance from fierce opposition to formal support fundamentally changed the context for local leadership. This planning board member was never informed that a “data center” would be built essentially across the road from his home. Little did this planning board member know that a gigantic data center was actually being planned in the peaceful countryside across the road from his Lee County home. To allow this application to proceed without a moratorium and public hearing under these circumstances would be unfair to this good man, his family and his neighbors, many of whom are elderly.
8. The neighborhood was entirely under the belief that they were setting boundaries for a traditional manufacturing or logistics park. Because Trustwell utilized a general-use rezoning, the words "data center" were never mentioned. As a result, this reliance on this incomplete information provided to their community cleared the path for the PointOne Data Center to move in completely unchecked.
9. The good people of Lee County believe this omission or concealment was wrong, unfair and should be remedied. Under North Carolina law, when a party has a duty to speak but intentionally remains silent to induce an agreement, silence can constitute an actionable fraud.
10. The vote by the planning board and the Lee County Commission was based on incomplete and omitted material information that is harmful to our citizens. There is a serious question that the vote was induced by a material omission of the true, singular, and highly disruptive intent of the rezoning: the construction of a gigantic 90-megawatt industrial data center campus.
11. Local homeowners reasonably relied on the representation that they were rezoning for a quiet business park. Based on this reliance, the Planning Board and the Commissioners voted in favor of the rezoning at the September 15 meeting. This directly resulted in the approval of the zoning map amendment, stripping the community of its "countryside" zoning protections and potentially devastating their property values with the addition of a Data Center.
Additional Legislative Steps
12. The approval by the Lee County Board of Commissioners in September 2025 was merely the first legislative step. A major reason the entire community feels blindsided is that substantial municipal and Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) approvals remained outstanding, requiring direct action before the Sanford City Council and other joint boards.
13. Because the 430-acre Lower Moncure Road tract fell into a complex web of jurisdictions, Trustwell could not move a single piece of dirt without clearing several subsequent hurdles:
While the property sits in the county, parts of the tract and its immediate utility extensions fell within the City of Sanford's Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) or required city-controlled services.
Under the joint city-county planning agreement, the Sanford City Council had to independently vote to approve the corresponding zoning map updates and utility extension agreements for their portion of the control zone.
14. Just as before the County Commission, during these subsequent City Council sessions, the project was continuously referenced under the umbrella of a “business park” rather than a massive data center configuration that has later emerged.
The standard Light Industrial (LI) zoning approved in September allowed general manufacturing, but it did not feature specific operational rules or definitions for data centers.
Because the UDO was completely silent on data infrastructure, a text amendment to the UDO was felt needed by community leaders due to all the potential safety concerns to county citizens.
This forced the Joint Planning Commission (JPC) to spend the winter of 2025–2026 drafting what would eventually become UDO Section 5.52. This text amendment had to be voted on and passed by both the Lee County Commissioners (April 20, 2026) and the Sanford City Council (April 21, 2026) before the zoning framework was officially complete.
Because the initial 430-acre request directly violated the Plan SanLee Land Use Plan—which designated the Lower Moncure Road corridor as protected "countryside"—the local planning framework required an official amendment to the Future Land Use Map. The Sanford City Council and County Planning Board had to formally adjust their long-range growth maps to match the newly minted Light Industrial designation.
Data centers require inordinate amounts of the community’s water and extensive wastewater infrastructure. Because the City of Sanford operates the regional water filtration and distribution infrastructure, the project required separate, subsequent administrative and legislative approvals from the Sanford Public Works Department and the City Council to guarantee adequate utility capacity and line extensions out to the site.
Petitioners believe this multi-step process was critical because it clearly indicates that the "rules of the game" were actively being voted on long after the September 2025 meeting. The September vote was not the conclusion of the zoning issue.
April 21, 2026 Sanford City Council Meeting
15. When the Sanford City Council voted on the utility connections and the April 2026 UDO text amendments, they did so under the influence of the developer's original representations.
SAGA was aware that Trustwell was planning on building a data center on Lower Moncure Road as early as November 2025. Petitioners have a serious question about whether the Town Council had been informed of this information. This would have certainly affected their vote. If not, the Mayor and Sanford City Council were left in the dark about the 90-megawatt data center scale while voting on these remaining UDO pieces.
Immediate application of Huge Data Center only 48 days after UDO Amendment
16. The item that raises serious questions for the Petitioners about the history and amount of pre-planned coordination and intentional nondisclosure of a data center is the immediate emergence of Virginia-based PointOne Data Center in June 2026 with fully detailed engineering plans, 300,000-square-foot architectural blueprints, and a pre-negotiated "built-to-suit" contract with Dallas-based tech giant CyrusOne.
17. Petitioners have questions on whether such complex engineering drawings, environmental system designs (like the closed-loop cooling systems), and a 90-megawatt grid-load allocation can be drafted in a few weeks.
18. It appears that almost immediately after the Sanford City Council completed the legislative process on April 21, 2026, passing the data center Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) text amendment, PointOne Data Centers officially filed a 90-megawatt engineering master site plan on June 8, 2026. By submitting the plans on this date, the developer executed a highly tactical, sequential real estate strategy.
Serious questions remain whether such a plan could have been drafted after Lee County Commissioners voted only in September to allow the rezoning. Does the technical reality of enterprise infrastructure development make it virtually impossible to draft, engineer, and finalize plans of this magnitude within that timeline? While a developer could technically draw basic building footprints or architectural outlines in a few months, PointOne’s June 8, 2026, application was not a conceptual sketch. Isn’t it a highly specific engineering master site plan that required long-lead utility data?
Petitioners have questions whether an industrial project of this scale requires vast preparation times, ruling out a post-rezoning origin story for several key reasons:
The submitted plans detail a 90-megawatt continuous IT load infrastructure.
To secure a 90-megawatt allocation, a developer cannot simply call up a power company. They must submit a formal request to an Energy Company for a comprehensive System Impact Study to determine if the regional grid can handle the load.
These electrical studies, transmission mapping, and substation allocation designs (such as coordinating with the Moncure substation currently under construction adjacent to the site) typically take 12 to 24 months to process and finalize. Does this indicate that serious utility negotiations were active long before the April 2026 ordinance passed?
The June 2026 submittal revealed that PointOne is executing a highly specific "built-to-suit" contract with Dallas-based hyper-scale data center giant CyrusOne. The data center will be gigantic.
Petitioners believe that corporate real estate transactions involving a $900-million asset, multi-million-dollar enterprise tenants, and local landholders require exhaustive corporate due diligence, risk vetting, and legal drafting.
Serious questions remain whether these multi-party agreements actually take years, to fully execute. Would CyrusOne attach its name and corporate capital to a specific 430-acre site plan unless they had been vetting the infrastructure metrics of that exact dirt for a very long period?
19. The master application features detailed civil engineering specifications, including:
A specialized, engineered closed-loop cooling system utilizing an exact initial 250,000-gallon fill. Beyond the initial closed-loop fill, does the master application note that an average draw of 1,100 gallons of water per day from TriRiver will be required?
Detailed stormwater control and grading grids.
An official pre-construction acoustic report mapping local baseline decibel levels to ensure compliance with UDO Section 5.52.
20. Gathering local environmental metrics, hiring specialized sound-engineering firms, and drafting heavy industrial layouts takes far longer than the 48 days following the April vote. It even exceeds the few months following the September 2025 rezoning. This technical reality directly aligns with the Trustwell’s own public admission on August 18, 2025, that the land project "had already been in development for about three years."
21. PointOne waited until the final vote was cast and the rules were active. As soon as the "permitted use" status was locked into the county code, PointOne stepped forward on June 8, 2026, with fully developed master site blueprints, bypassing any need for a public vote.
The above timing questions do not prove wrongdoing by itself. But they strongly support the need for a public explanation of when the project became known to public officials, planning staff, economic development actors, utility providers, developers, and neighboring landowners.
Public Attention was diverted to a separate Data Center rumor Leading to the Effort to draft an Ordinance
In September 2025, the Lee County Commissioners approved Trustwell’s general-use rezoning of the 430 acres on Lower Moncure Road to Light Industrial. Planning Director Marshall Downey admitted that right after this happened, in October 2025, planning staff suddenly “got wind” and learned through corporate channels that a major data center project was actively looking at another location in Lee County. Public controversy centered around an area near the Lee-Chatham county line, just south of U.S. Highway 421 near the Cumnock community. Another company, “Deep River Data” sought to access Butler Well, a test well originally drilled in the late 1990s. This well sits directly above the Cumnock Formation, an underground black shale and coal deposit rich in natural gas.
From August-September through October 2025, Commissioners approved a general use light industrial zoning. They had not been informed by Trustwell (or SAGA) that planning was in progress to construct a data center in a separate part of the county at their newly rezoned land on Lower Moncure Road.
From October through December, the JPC staff rushed draft rules while the public was objecting to a potential data center involving Cumnock fracking.
By late November 2025, SAGA was aware of Trustwell’s intention to move forward on building a data center on Lower Moncure Road. The public has questions on whether Lee County Commissioners, and the Sandford City Council members were provided with this information in a timely manner.
On April 14, 2026, Marshall Downey indicated during a public Sanford City Council Work Session in the Council Chambers at the Sanford Municipal Center, that their research is “just the tip of the iceberg.” The record of the April 14, 2026, work session contains an important admission by the ordinance’s authors. Planning Director Marshall Downey explicitly stated that staff had only "touched the tip of the iceberg" and questioned if the research was exhaustive. Zoning Administrator Thomas Mierisch openly admitted he merely "gleaned what [he] could from other jurisdictions" without localized impact testing or expert consultation. A local government act unreasonably and unfairly if it adopts a high-impact heavy industrial zoning ordinance while its own administrative staff admits on the public record that the safety protections are a "work in progress," completely unvetted by environmental, acoustic, or public health experts.
On April 20-21, the Board slashed the fine to $100; and the ordinance passes. A zoning regulation must possess a real, substantial relation to the public health, safety, or welfare. By slashing the fine to $100 a day, the public has questions whether this is actually an illusory ordinance that provides no actual protection to the public, violating substantive due process. As noted on the record by City Council members Linda Rhodes and Walter Ferguson on April 21, 2026, a $100 daily fine is entirely meaningless to a multi-billion-dollar tech conglomerate like CyrusOne or PointOne. If a data center's chiller units continuously emit low-frequency noise that violates county decibel caps, a $100-per-day fine allows the developer to operate in a state of perpetual, permanent violation for just $36,500 a year. The developer can legally choose to pay the fine rather than install millions of dollars in necessary acoustic baffling.
June 8, 2026, PointOne revealed a $900 million 90-megawatt data center site plan.
On June 25, 2026, there is a scheduled TRC meeting for “administrative approval.”
III. What Residents Have Good-Faith Reason to Believe and Investigate
1. What Residents Have Good Faith Reason to Believe and Investigate
Residents were told to evaluate a “light industrial business park.” They were not plainly told, before the rezoning decision, that the site was being positioned for a large-scale data center campus with a 90-megawatt Phase One IT load.
If that use was known or reasonably anticipated before the rezoning vote, it should have been disclosed plainly because it directly affects power demand, noise, water, wastewater, stormwater, fire protection, emergency response, traffic, land-use compatibility, property values, and public infrastructure.
2. Residents have good-faith reason to believe the utility/substation records were material to the public-interest analysis.
The January 2025 CEMC records and temporary construction easement suggest that utility infrastructure was not incidental background. It appears to have been part of the practical framework that made the site viable for a large-load user.
Residents therefore request disclosure of when CEMC, Duke Energy, Lee County, Sanford, SAGA, Trustwell, Helix, PointOne, CyrusOne, HV Vector Park, and AJP Vector Park first discussed the site’s power requirements, substation needs, utility capacity, or large-load service.
3. Residents have good-faith reason to believe the public was deprived of meaningful notice.
Even if the legal notice technically identified the rezoning as RA to LI, the question is whether the public received meaningful notice of what was actually being enabled.
A general-use rezoning may allow many uses, but the Board’s reasonableness and public-interest analysis depends on the actual facts known at the time, including the size, physical conditions, community impacts, public-interest consequences, and relationship between existing and proposed permissible development.
If the data center use was known or planned but not plainly disclosed, the public process was materially incomplete.
4. Residents have good-faith reason to believe further administrative action should pause until the record is complete.
If TRC or staff approval can move the project forward without another public vote, then the public hearing and disclosure must occur now.
Once administrative approval is granted, residents may be told the project is already too far along to stop. That is precisely why a temporary moratorium hearing is necessary before the matter advances further.
5. Residents have good-faith reason to believe UDO Section 5.52 requires further review.
The data center ordinance should be reviewed for adequacy before it is used to approve a project of this scale.
The review should include independent expert analysis of:
• continuous and low-frequency noise;
• residential setbacks;
• water and wastewater demand;
• stormwater and floodplain impacts;
• fire suppression;
• emergency response;
• grid reliability;
• backup power;
• heat rejection;
• enforcement tools;
• penalty levels;
• environmental impacts;
• cumulative impacts of future phases.
A $100-per-day penalty may be inadequate to deter noncompliance by a large data center operator if violations become cheaper than mitigation. The Board should review whether the ordinance contains meaningful enforcement mechanisms.
6. Residents have good-faith reason to request review of prior statements, omissions, and approvals.
Residents are not asking the Board to declare fraud tonight.
Residents are asking the Board to determine whether any prior or pending development approval was sought, obtained, or advanced through materially incomplete statements, misleading descriptions, omissions, or public-facing representations that did not match the project’s known intended use.
N.C.G.S. § 160D-403(f) recognizes that development approvals may be revoked where appropriate for false statements, misrepresentations, substantial departures from approved plans, failure to comply with applicable law, or mistaken issuance in violation of law.
The Board should therefore preserve the record and investigate before the project advances.
IV. Questions of Legislative Insufficiency
Petitioners have serious questions based on the following official quotes and representations from the public record indicating that UDO Section 5.52 lacks legislative and scientific validity:
Superficial Planning & Lack of Due Diligence: At the April 14, 2026, Sanford City Council Work Session, Planning Director Marshall Downey explicitly asked his own Zoning Administrator, "Do you feel like you’ve done an exhaustive study of the information that exists? Have we only touched the tip of the iceberg?" Zoning Administrator Thomas Mierisch openly responded that he had simply written the standards by “gleaning what I could from other jurisdictions... and some don’t approach them well.”
Total Absence of Expert Input: When asked by City Council Member Linda Rhodes if any environmental, acoustic, or hydrological experts were consulted to vet the draft, Thomas Mierisch explicitly stated, "No."
Surrender of Utility Oversight: Director Marshall Downey admitted that the county conducted no independent grid or resource planning, stating on the record that “utility companies must decide what they are comfortable with,” completely deferring public infrastructure safety to corporate providers.
Acknowledgement of Meaningless Enforcement: During the April 21, 2026, City Council meeting, after the Commissioners slashed the daily non-compliance fine from $10,000 to a standard $100, Council Members Linda Rhodes and Walter Ferguson strongly objected, stating on the public record: "Do you really think [the developers] care about $100 a day?"
22. Under North Carolina land-use law, local planning staff are tasked with executing due diligence to craft ordinances that protect public health, safety, and general welfare under the county's police powers (N.C.G.S. § 160D-701). The Sanford-Lee County Planning Department recognized that the distinct, continuous acoustic footprint of high-density data center cooling infrastructure required a highly specialized enforcement mechanism to ensure ongoing compliance. To achieve this, staff calculated and proposed a $10,000 per day non-compliance fine. This fine was not arbitrary; it was specifically scaled to create a meaningful deterrent against multi-billion-dollar enterprise technology entities, ensuring they would continuously operate within local decibel caps rather than treating code violations as a negligible overhead cost.
On April 20, 2026, the county’s legal team overrode the safety-oriented fine structure, recommending a reduction to a standard zoning fine of $100 per day.
This intervention appears to the petitioners to have been predicated on generalized, non-expert discomfort with high penalty structures, rather than land-use data, acoustics analysis, or engineering inputs.
By reducing the penalty by 99%, the county effectively dismantled the entire regulatory mechanism designed by its own planning experts to protect adjacent residential property rights.
V. Requested Moratorium Scope
Petitioners request that the Board consider a temporary moratorium, within each governing body’s lawful jurisdiction, on:
1. New data center applications.
2. Pending data center site plan approvals.
3. TRC approvals or recommendations for data center projects.
4. Administrative development approvals for data center use.
5. Building permits for data center structures.
6. Grading permits tied specifically to data center development.
7. Utility extension approvals or capacity commitments tied specifically to data center development.
8. Any permit, approval, or sign-off that would materially advance construction of a large-scale data center campus.
The moratorium should last only as long as reasonably necessary to:
• disclose public records;
• conduct independent expert review;
• determine vested/exemption status;
• review whether prior approvals were materially incomplete;
• amend UDO Section 5.52 if needed;
• protect the public before irreversible approvals are granted.
Petitioners suggest an initial period of 90 to 180 days, or another reasonable duration supported by findings of fact.
The Lee County Board of Commissioners has legal authority to enact a moratorium. Under North Carolina General Statute § 160D-107, local governments hold the explicit legislative power to adopt temporary development moratoria to protect public health, safety, and welfare while they rewrite or fix flawed zoning laws. The governing board must hold a public hearing before putting a moratorium in place. Notice of the hearing must be published at least seven days in advance. The local government must formally state the specific problems necessitating the moratorium, explain why other alternatives weren't viable, and provide a clear timeline for when the moratorium will end.
Serious questions remain on whether the UDO is inchoate
Although the UDO was adopted, there are serious questions raised in the public record that indicate it was inchoate, a “work in progress," incomplete, defective. A county commission can impose a temporary draft while they revise local laws that need to be revised. Moratoriums are frequently utilized as interim legal tools to pause development approvals or project activities while a government agency finalizes its regulations. See Ashe County v, Ashe County Planning Board, LLC, 386 N.C. 15, (2025). They usually require proper public notice, written findings justifying the pause, and a dedicated public hearing. The public record from the hearings and questions from commissioners, council persons and JPC staffers raises serious questions that more research is needed for the UDO, and that a significant number of questions and concerns for the public safety and enforcement remain and need to be addressed, and the UDO amended. A moratorium to address serious questions about a large-scale proposal is reasonable and necessary for the public safety.
Other North Carolina towns like Apex, Durham, and Wendell successfully enacted data center moratoria in early 2026 specifically because their ordinances were not equipped to handle the noise and power demands of AI data infrastructure.
Material omissions/misrepresentations can be Cause for Moratoria and Repeal
If a developer uses material omissions/misrepresentations to secure a rezoning, the local government has powerful legal mechanisms to undo the approval. Under North Carolina land-use law, developers do not get a free pass just because they checked the initial bureaucratic boxes through material omissions.
The county or city can immediately halt the project and require the developer to go through an entirely new public rezoning process. Local leaders are fully within their rights to deny the new request.
The local government can pass a new ordinance to repeal or amend the prior rezoning, changing the land's designation back to its original status.
In addition, North Carolina General Statute NCGS § 160D-403(f) states that a local government can revoke a development approval by notifying the holder in writing with the specific reason. The revocation process must strictly mirror the same review and approval procedures required to issue the original permit.
According to NCGS § 160D-403(f), revocation is required for:
Material violations. Substantial departures from approved plans, non-compliance with regulations, or misrepresentations in the application process.
Errors. Approvals issued in violation of local or state law.
Can the Lee County Board of Commissioners call for a Public Hearing?
Yes, now that the secret has been revealed that a huge data center will be constructed in a neighborhood where owners had no notice that their lives could be disrupted forever, it would restore public confidence if the Commissioners instantly pass a resolution scheduling a Moratorium Hearing.
We respectfully request:
1. A public hearing before any further material administrative approval, TRC approval, site plan approval, building permit, utility approval, or other governmental action that would advance the proposed data center project.
2. A temporary moratorium hearing under N.C.G.S. § 160D-107 to determine whether a temporary pause on data center development approvals is necessary to protect public health, safety, welfare, property rights, public infrastructure, and public confidence.
3. Immediate preservation of all lawful public records related to the project, including communications, meeting materials, staff notes, maps, emails, texts, utility correspondence, economic-development records, TRC records, UDO drafting records, and any releasable closed-session minutes or general accounts.
4. A public determination of whether any pending data center application is complete, incomplete, vested, exempt from a moratorium, protected by prior approval, or still subject to lawful pause, correction, review, or revocation.
5. Independent review of the project’s noise, water, wastewater, stormwater, power-grid, fire safety, emergency-response, environmental, and neighboring-property impacts before any final administrative approval is issued.
VI. WHY THE BOARD MUST ACT BEFORE ADMINISTRATIVE APPROVAL
Residents are asking Lee County to act now because timing matters.
This is not about stopping lawful development without review. It is about making sure the public process is not outrun by staff-level administrative approval before residents understand what is being approved.
Across the country, communities are learning the same lesson: once a data center project is far enough into the approval pipeline, officials may later say, “It may be too late to stop this now.” That can happen after an application is accepted as complete, after administrative or site-plan approval, after permits issue, after substantial reliance begins, or after the applicant claims vested rights.
That is why the Board should not wait.
The public was originally asked to evaluate a rezoning described as a light industrial business park. The project now before the public is a large-scale data center campus. Those are not the same thing.
A giant data center of this scale may involve major power demand, utility infrastructure, continuous operations, noise, cooling systems, stormwater impacts, emergency-response needs, fire-safety issues, and long-term effects on surrounding residents and landowners.
Before any further approval advances, the Board should require clear answers to the following questions:
Has the current application been accepted as complete?
Has TRC approved, recommended, or signed off on any part of the project?
Has any site-plan approval, development approval, zoning approval, grading permit, building permit, utility approval, driveway permit, erosion/sedimentation permit, or other development permit already been issued?
Has the applicant claimed vested rights, permit-choice protection, substantial reliance, or exemption from a moratorium?
Can staff lawfully pause final administrative action until the Board holds a public hearing and receives written legal findings?
When did Lee County, Sanford, SAGA, CEMC, Duke Energy, Trustwell, Helix, PointOne, CyrusOne, or their representatives first know this site was intended or likely to be used for a data center?
Was that information available to the Planning Board, the Board of Commissioners, neighboring landowners, and the public before the rezoning was approved?
Does the current ordinance adequately protect nearby residents from noise, power infrastructure impacts, water/wastewater issues, stormwater impacts, fire risk, emergency-response burdens, and enforcement problems?
North Carolina law gives local governments authority to adopt temporary moratoria on development approvals when the required process and findings are followed. North Carolina law also recognizes that timing matters because permit-choice and vested-rights protections may attach once certain applications or approvals reach certain stages.
That is the point.
Residents are not asking the Board to prejudge the project. Residents are asking the Board not to allow administrative approval to create a “too late” argument before the public record is complete.
The Board should immediately:
Call a public hearing on a temporary data center moratorium.
Direct staff to provide a written status report identifying the exact approval stage of the project.
Direct the county attorney to identify whether the project is complete, incomplete, vested, exempt, or still subject to lawful pause.
Direct staff, if legally permissible, not to issue final administrative approval, site-plan approval, permit approval, or vesting determination until the Board receives those findings and the public has been heard.
Require review of the existing data center ordinance before it is used to approve a project of this size.
Require independent review of noise, power, fire safety, emergency response, stormwater, water/wastewater, and neighboring-property impacts.
If the County believes it cannot pause the project, residents ask the Board to state exactly why, identify the specific statute, ordinance, permit, approval, vested-rights determination, or legal exemption that prevents action, and place that explanation in the public record.
The question tonight is simple:
Will the Board act before the administrative door closes?
Or will residents be told later that it is already too late?
That is why a public hearing and temporary moratorium are necessary now.
VII. Conclusion
This petition does not ask the Board to prejudge wrongdoing.
It asks the Board to protect the public before the record closes around them.
Lee County residents were asked to evaluate a light industrial business park. They are now facing a giant data center campus.
Those are not the same thing. If this project is lawful, complete, safe, and properly disclosed, the public record will show that.
If the public process was incomplete, misleading, or materially deficient, the public record will show that too.
Either way, the answer is not silence. The answers are disclosure, hearing, preservation, independent review, and lawful pause.
For these reasons, we respectfully request that the Lee County Board of Commissioners and, where applicable, the Sanford City Council immediately schedule a public hearing, consider a temporary moratorium under N.C.G.S. § 160D-107, preserve and disclose public records, review the adequacy of UDO Section 5.52, determine the legal status of any pending application, and prevent further material advancement of the project until the public process is repaired.
Respectfully submitted,
Concerned Residents, Landowners, Taxpayers, and Stakeholders of Lee County, North Carolina
Petition signatures are attached and incorporated herein by reference.
1,976
The Issue
PETITION FOR
PUBLIC HEARING, RECORDS DISCLOSURE,
AND TEMPORARY DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT MORATORIUM
To the Lee County Board of Commissioners and, where applicable, the Sanford City Council Submitted by concerned residents, landowners, taxpayers, and stakeholders of Lee County, North Carolina.
Date: June 15, 2026
I. Petition
We, the undersigned residents, landowners, and stakeholders of Lee County and the City of Sanford respectfully submit this petition under N.C.G.S. § 160D-107 to request the immediate enactment of an emergency, temporary development moratorium on all data center applications, site plan reviews, and administrative approvals. We also request that a public hearing be scheduled prior to any scheduled TRC meeting (which we believe may be scheduled for June 25)
This petition is not submitted as an anti-development document. It is submitted because the public record now raises serious concerns that the people of Lee County were asked to evaluate one public facing project description while a materially different and more consequential project was being assembled beneath it.
II. Timeline
This section is limited to facts, records, public materials, or official/project statements presently known to the petitioners. We offer the information below as a starting point for your inquiry, believing that the public record indicates the following:
August 18, 2025 Lee County Commissioners Meeting
1. On August 18, at the Lee County Board of Commissioners Meeting, the Trustwell Property Group, LLC Representative (Trustwell) presented a “Business Park” with assembly/logistics jobs proposal for Lower Moncure Road to the Lee County Commissioners and the Lee County Planning Board. The core of the vision was to transform the "countryside" agricultural acreage on Lower Moncure Road into a modern business hub. Officials were informed that the Light Industrial (LI) designation would specifically be used to court firms specializing in light manufacturing assembly, commercial packaging, logistics, and professional office spaces.
2. When Trustwell presented their vision to a packed house in 2025, they explicitly claimed overdevelopment fears by pitching low-impact traditional commerce. They explicitly named light manufacturing assembly, logistics hubs, and packaging facilities as the intended tenants. They never used the words "data center" or "industrial server farm." They stated that there would be zero residential housing or subdivisions built on the 430+ acres. A major selling point of his presentation was the property's natural logistics advantage—specifically, an active rail track that runs directly through the site. They emphasized that utilizing the rail infrastructure would pull logistics burden off local roads while remaining highly attractive to major commercial tenants. They shared that the project had already been quietly in the works and under refinement for approximately three years before they officially brought it forward to Lee County leadership. They did not provide any information on an end-user. They did not mention the fact that non-disclosure agreements were being signed.
3. Trustwell used the words "light industrial business park", the specific parameters and strategic infrastructure, he pitched actually serve as the clear architectural footprint of a data center:
a. Trustwell’s admission to the commissioners that the project had already "been in development for about three years" reveals that Trustwell and its corporate entity, Helix Ventures LLC, began assembling, surveying, and planning the trajectory of these specific tax parcels as early as late 2022.
b. That this 430-acre property was being strategically master-planned, packaged, and pitched to data center site-locators throughout 2023 and 2024 is supported by standard commercial real estate practices, specific infrastructural indicators, and direct admissions on the public record.
c. Land speculators do not quietly spend years assembling a massive 430-acre block of contiguous rural land without a precise end-user sector in mind.
d. Data centers require massive amounts of power, fiber-optic connectivity, and high-voltage grid stability. When Trustwell defended the location to the public and the board, they did not pitch it like a standard retail warehouse. They specifically highlighted features that are non-negotiable for hyper-scale data operations:
1. The site was uniquely positioned near critical power corridors capable of feeding a massive industrial load.
2. Data center site-selection teams use strict parameters when searching for land. They hunt for a convergence of infrastructure, which Trustwell spent 2023 and 2024 packaging.
e. Trustwell emphasized the active rail line running directly through the property. While they pitched this as a "logistics benefit" for product assembly shipping, rail right-of-ways are heavily coveted by tech companies because major interstate fiber-optic trunk lines are almost universally buried directly alongside them.
f. Residents believe that Central Electric Membership Corporation (CEMC) formally initiated the construction pipeline for a critical electric substation on Lower Moncure Road under Special Use Permit Case 2024-1101, which was reviewed and greenlit on November 12, 2024. On November 12, the Lee County Board of Adjustment formally approved a Special Use Permit for CEMC to develop an electric substation on an 11-acre portion of the 136-acre tract located at 4079 Lower Moncure Road.1 Power configurations and substation allocations of this size require years of engineering requests and load-capacity studies with utility providers before a shovel ever hits the dirt. Were non-disclosure agreements signed?
4. In late June 2025, the original 2025 rezoning application was not just filed by Trustwell. It was a joint filing with HV Vector Park LLC.
In institutional venture capital and real estate funds, the term “Vector” is a common industry naming convention used by digital infrastructure funds.
These funds pool capital to purchase raw land near massive energy corridors with the sole intent of holding and prepping the dirt for hyper-scale farms, semiconductor facilities, or advanced manufacturing plants.
The Planning Board Vote to Deny Rezoning our Countryside land
5. Following a highly contested, four-hour joint meeting on August 18, 2025, the Lee County Planning Board retired into a separate session and voted 4-to-3 to recommend denial of Trustwell’s rezoning request. The board voted it down because the industrial designation directly conflicted with the Plan SanLee Land Use Plan, which officially classified the 430 acres off Lower Moncure Road as protected "countryside."
6. Because the Planning Board only holds advisory power, the final, binding legislative vote still belonged to the Lee County Board of Commissioners, scheduled for September 15. Recognizing that an outright denial recommendation put his project in serious jeopardy, Trustwell offered concessions, which included:
Mandatory, enhanced landscaped buffers and specialized fencing to shield nearby homes.
Strict limits on future site lighting and specific roadway traffic controls.
A pledge that certain heavy, high-impact chemical or traditional industrial uses would be explicitly banned from the property.
September 2025 Vote to rezone by Lee County Board of Commissioners
7. A member of the Lee County planning board who lives on Lower Moncure Road voted in the majority to deny the rezoning request. After the August 18 meeting, he canvassed some of his neighbors, and they agreed that a Light Industrial Park was better than a residential park for the County, and that they believed Trustwell would move forward to seek annexation by the city. On September 15, 2025, the matter came before the Lee County Board of Commissioners for the final vote. Although he previously voted against the rezoning request, at the September 15 commissioners meeting, this planning board member informed the Commissioners that he was now in favor of the Light Industrial Park along with a number of other residents given the facts of city annexation. This shift in position was based on all the representations that Trustwell would construct a business park instead of a residential neighborhood. This "flip" of the stance from fierce opposition to formal support fundamentally changed the context for local leadership. This planning board member was never informed that a “data center” would be built essentially across the road from his home. Little did this planning board member know that a gigantic data center was actually being planned in the peaceful countryside across the road from his Lee County home. To allow this application to proceed without a moratorium and public hearing under these circumstances would be unfair to this good man, his family and his neighbors, many of whom are elderly.
8. The neighborhood was entirely under the belief that they were setting boundaries for a traditional manufacturing or logistics park. Because Trustwell utilized a general-use rezoning, the words "data center" were never mentioned. As a result, this reliance on this incomplete information provided to their community cleared the path for the PointOne Data Center to move in completely unchecked.
9. The good people of Lee County believe this omission or concealment was wrong, unfair and should be remedied. Under North Carolina law, when a party has a duty to speak but intentionally remains silent to induce an agreement, silence can constitute an actionable fraud.
10. The vote by the planning board and the Lee County Commission was based on incomplete and omitted material information that is harmful to our citizens. There is a serious question that the vote was induced by a material omission of the true, singular, and highly disruptive intent of the rezoning: the construction of a gigantic 90-megawatt industrial data center campus.
11. Local homeowners reasonably relied on the representation that they were rezoning for a quiet business park. Based on this reliance, the Planning Board and the Commissioners voted in favor of the rezoning at the September 15 meeting. This directly resulted in the approval of the zoning map amendment, stripping the community of its "countryside" zoning protections and potentially devastating their property values with the addition of a Data Center.
Additional Legislative Steps
12. The approval by the Lee County Board of Commissioners in September 2025 was merely the first legislative step. A major reason the entire community feels blindsided is that substantial municipal and Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) approvals remained outstanding, requiring direct action before the Sanford City Council and other joint boards.
13. Because the 430-acre Lower Moncure Road tract fell into a complex web of jurisdictions, Trustwell could not move a single piece of dirt without clearing several subsequent hurdles:
While the property sits in the county, parts of the tract and its immediate utility extensions fell within the City of Sanford's Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) or required city-controlled services.
Under the joint city-county planning agreement, the Sanford City Council had to independently vote to approve the corresponding zoning map updates and utility extension agreements for their portion of the control zone.
14. Just as before the County Commission, during these subsequent City Council sessions, the project was continuously referenced under the umbrella of a “business park” rather than a massive data center configuration that has later emerged.
The standard Light Industrial (LI) zoning approved in September allowed general manufacturing, but it did not feature specific operational rules or definitions for data centers.
Because the UDO was completely silent on data infrastructure, a text amendment to the UDO was felt needed by community leaders due to all the potential safety concerns to county citizens.
This forced the Joint Planning Commission (JPC) to spend the winter of 2025–2026 drafting what would eventually become UDO Section 5.52. This text amendment had to be voted on and passed by both the Lee County Commissioners (April 20, 2026) and the Sanford City Council (April 21, 2026) before the zoning framework was officially complete.
Because the initial 430-acre request directly violated the Plan SanLee Land Use Plan—which designated the Lower Moncure Road corridor as protected "countryside"—the local planning framework required an official amendment to the Future Land Use Map. The Sanford City Council and County Planning Board had to formally adjust their long-range growth maps to match the newly minted Light Industrial designation.
Data centers require inordinate amounts of the community’s water and extensive wastewater infrastructure. Because the City of Sanford operates the regional water filtration and distribution infrastructure, the project required separate, subsequent administrative and legislative approvals from the Sanford Public Works Department and the City Council to guarantee adequate utility capacity and line extensions out to the site.
Petitioners believe this multi-step process was critical because it clearly indicates that the "rules of the game" were actively being voted on long after the September 2025 meeting. The September vote was not the conclusion of the zoning issue.
April 21, 2026 Sanford City Council Meeting
15. When the Sanford City Council voted on the utility connections and the April 2026 UDO text amendments, they did so under the influence of the developer's original representations.
SAGA was aware that Trustwell was planning on building a data center on Lower Moncure Road as early as November 2025. Petitioners have a serious question about whether the Town Council had been informed of this information. This would have certainly affected their vote. If not, the Mayor and Sanford City Council were left in the dark about the 90-megawatt data center scale while voting on these remaining UDO pieces.
Immediate application of Huge Data Center only 48 days after UDO Amendment
16. The item that raises serious questions for the Petitioners about the history and amount of pre-planned coordination and intentional nondisclosure of a data center is the immediate emergence of Virginia-based PointOne Data Center in June 2026 with fully detailed engineering plans, 300,000-square-foot architectural blueprints, and a pre-negotiated "built-to-suit" contract with Dallas-based tech giant CyrusOne.
17. Petitioners have questions on whether such complex engineering drawings, environmental system designs (like the closed-loop cooling systems), and a 90-megawatt grid-load allocation can be drafted in a few weeks.
18. It appears that almost immediately after the Sanford City Council completed the legislative process on April 21, 2026, passing the data center Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) text amendment, PointOne Data Centers officially filed a 90-megawatt engineering master site plan on June 8, 2026. By submitting the plans on this date, the developer executed a highly tactical, sequential real estate strategy.
Serious questions remain whether such a plan could have been drafted after Lee County Commissioners voted only in September to allow the rezoning. Does the technical reality of enterprise infrastructure development make it virtually impossible to draft, engineer, and finalize plans of this magnitude within that timeline? While a developer could technically draw basic building footprints or architectural outlines in a few months, PointOne’s June 8, 2026, application was not a conceptual sketch. Isn’t it a highly specific engineering master site plan that required long-lead utility data?
Petitioners have questions whether an industrial project of this scale requires vast preparation times, ruling out a post-rezoning origin story for several key reasons:
The submitted plans detail a 90-megawatt continuous IT load infrastructure.
To secure a 90-megawatt allocation, a developer cannot simply call up a power company. They must submit a formal request to an Energy Company for a comprehensive System Impact Study to determine if the regional grid can handle the load.
These electrical studies, transmission mapping, and substation allocation designs (such as coordinating with the Moncure substation currently under construction adjacent to the site) typically take 12 to 24 months to process and finalize. Does this indicate that serious utility negotiations were active long before the April 2026 ordinance passed?
The June 2026 submittal revealed that PointOne is executing a highly specific "built-to-suit" contract with Dallas-based hyper-scale data center giant CyrusOne. The data center will be gigantic.
Petitioners believe that corporate real estate transactions involving a $900-million asset, multi-million-dollar enterprise tenants, and local landholders require exhaustive corporate due diligence, risk vetting, and legal drafting.
Serious questions remain whether these multi-party agreements actually take years, to fully execute. Would CyrusOne attach its name and corporate capital to a specific 430-acre site plan unless they had been vetting the infrastructure metrics of that exact dirt for a very long period?
19. The master application features detailed civil engineering specifications, including:
A specialized, engineered closed-loop cooling system utilizing an exact initial 250,000-gallon fill. Beyond the initial closed-loop fill, does the master application note that an average draw of 1,100 gallons of water per day from TriRiver will be required?
Detailed stormwater control and grading grids.
An official pre-construction acoustic report mapping local baseline decibel levels to ensure compliance with UDO Section 5.52.
20. Gathering local environmental metrics, hiring specialized sound-engineering firms, and drafting heavy industrial layouts takes far longer than the 48 days following the April vote. It even exceeds the few months following the September 2025 rezoning. This technical reality directly aligns with the Trustwell’s own public admission on August 18, 2025, that the land project "had already been in development for about three years."
21. PointOne waited until the final vote was cast and the rules were active. As soon as the "permitted use" status was locked into the county code, PointOne stepped forward on June 8, 2026, with fully developed master site blueprints, bypassing any need for a public vote.
The above timing questions do not prove wrongdoing by itself. But they strongly support the need for a public explanation of when the project became known to public officials, planning staff, economic development actors, utility providers, developers, and neighboring landowners.
Public Attention was diverted to a separate Data Center rumor Leading to the Effort to draft an Ordinance
In September 2025, the Lee County Commissioners approved Trustwell’s general-use rezoning of the 430 acres on Lower Moncure Road to Light Industrial. Planning Director Marshall Downey admitted that right after this happened, in October 2025, planning staff suddenly “got wind” and learned through corporate channels that a major data center project was actively looking at another location in Lee County. Public controversy centered around an area near the Lee-Chatham county line, just south of U.S. Highway 421 near the Cumnock community. Another company, “Deep River Data” sought to access Butler Well, a test well originally drilled in the late 1990s. This well sits directly above the Cumnock Formation, an underground black shale and coal deposit rich in natural gas.
From August-September through October 2025, Commissioners approved a general use light industrial zoning. They had not been informed by Trustwell (or SAGA) that planning was in progress to construct a data center in a separate part of the county at their newly rezoned land on Lower Moncure Road.
From October through December, the JPC staff rushed draft rules while the public was objecting to a potential data center involving Cumnock fracking.
By late November 2025, SAGA was aware of Trustwell’s intention to move forward on building a data center on Lower Moncure Road. The public has questions on whether Lee County Commissioners, and the Sandford City Council members were provided with this information in a timely manner.
On April 14, 2026, Marshall Downey indicated during a public Sanford City Council Work Session in the Council Chambers at the Sanford Municipal Center, that their research is “just the tip of the iceberg.” The record of the April 14, 2026, work session contains an important admission by the ordinance’s authors. Planning Director Marshall Downey explicitly stated that staff had only "touched the tip of the iceberg" and questioned if the research was exhaustive. Zoning Administrator Thomas Mierisch openly admitted he merely "gleaned what [he] could from other jurisdictions" without localized impact testing or expert consultation. A local government act unreasonably and unfairly if it adopts a high-impact heavy industrial zoning ordinance while its own administrative staff admits on the public record that the safety protections are a "work in progress," completely unvetted by environmental, acoustic, or public health experts.
On April 20-21, the Board slashed the fine to $100; and the ordinance passes. A zoning regulation must possess a real, substantial relation to the public health, safety, or welfare. By slashing the fine to $100 a day, the public has questions whether this is actually an illusory ordinance that provides no actual protection to the public, violating substantive due process. As noted on the record by City Council members Linda Rhodes and Walter Ferguson on April 21, 2026, a $100 daily fine is entirely meaningless to a multi-billion-dollar tech conglomerate like CyrusOne or PointOne. If a data center's chiller units continuously emit low-frequency noise that violates county decibel caps, a $100-per-day fine allows the developer to operate in a state of perpetual, permanent violation for just $36,500 a year. The developer can legally choose to pay the fine rather than install millions of dollars in necessary acoustic baffling.
June 8, 2026, PointOne revealed a $900 million 90-megawatt data center site plan.
On June 25, 2026, there is a scheduled TRC meeting for “administrative approval.”
III. What Residents Have Good-Faith Reason to Believe and Investigate
1. What Residents Have Good Faith Reason to Believe and Investigate
Residents were told to evaluate a “light industrial business park.” They were not plainly told, before the rezoning decision, that the site was being positioned for a large-scale data center campus with a 90-megawatt Phase One IT load.
If that use was known or reasonably anticipated before the rezoning vote, it should have been disclosed plainly because it directly affects power demand, noise, water, wastewater, stormwater, fire protection, emergency response, traffic, land-use compatibility, property values, and public infrastructure.
2. Residents have good-faith reason to believe the utility/substation records were material to the public-interest analysis.
The January 2025 CEMC records and temporary construction easement suggest that utility infrastructure was not incidental background. It appears to have been part of the practical framework that made the site viable for a large-load user.
Residents therefore request disclosure of when CEMC, Duke Energy, Lee County, Sanford, SAGA, Trustwell, Helix, PointOne, CyrusOne, HV Vector Park, and AJP Vector Park first discussed the site’s power requirements, substation needs, utility capacity, or large-load service.
3. Residents have good-faith reason to believe the public was deprived of meaningful notice.
Even if the legal notice technically identified the rezoning as RA to LI, the question is whether the public received meaningful notice of what was actually being enabled.
A general-use rezoning may allow many uses, but the Board’s reasonableness and public-interest analysis depends on the actual facts known at the time, including the size, physical conditions, community impacts, public-interest consequences, and relationship between existing and proposed permissible development.
If the data center use was known or planned but not plainly disclosed, the public process was materially incomplete.
4. Residents have good-faith reason to believe further administrative action should pause until the record is complete.
If TRC or staff approval can move the project forward without another public vote, then the public hearing and disclosure must occur now.
Once administrative approval is granted, residents may be told the project is already too far along to stop. That is precisely why a temporary moratorium hearing is necessary before the matter advances further.
5. Residents have good-faith reason to believe UDO Section 5.52 requires further review.
The data center ordinance should be reviewed for adequacy before it is used to approve a project of this scale.
The review should include independent expert analysis of:
• continuous and low-frequency noise;
• residential setbacks;
• water and wastewater demand;
• stormwater and floodplain impacts;
• fire suppression;
• emergency response;
• grid reliability;
• backup power;
• heat rejection;
• enforcement tools;
• penalty levels;
• environmental impacts;
• cumulative impacts of future phases.
A $100-per-day penalty may be inadequate to deter noncompliance by a large data center operator if violations become cheaper than mitigation. The Board should review whether the ordinance contains meaningful enforcement mechanisms.
6. Residents have good-faith reason to request review of prior statements, omissions, and approvals.
Residents are not asking the Board to declare fraud tonight.
Residents are asking the Board to determine whether any prior or pending development approval was sought, obtained, or advanced through materially incomplete statements, misleading descriptions, omissions, or public-facing representations that did not match the project’s known intended use.
N.C.G.S. § 160D-403(f) recognizes that development approvals may be revoked where appropriate for false statements, misrepresentations, substantial departures from approved plans, failure to comply with applicable law, or mistaken issuance in violation of law.
The Board should therefore preserve the record and investigate before the project advances.
IV. Questions of Legislative Insufficiency
Petitioners have serious questions based on the following official quotes and representations from the public record indicating that UDO Section 5.52 lacks legislative and scientific validity:
Superficial Planning & Lack of Due Diligence: At the April 14, 2026, Sanford City Council Work Session, Planning Director Marshall Downey explicitly asked his own Zoning Administrator, "Do you feel like you’ve done an exhaustive study of the information that exists? Have we only touched the tip of the iceberg?" Zoning Administrator Thomas Mierisch openly responded that he had simply written the standards by “gleaning what I could from other jurisdictions... and some don’t approach them well.”
Total Absence of Expert Input: When asked by City Council Member Linda Rhodes if any environmental, acoustic, or hydrological experts were consulted to vet the draft, Thomas Mierisch explicitly stated, "No."
Surrender of Utility Oversight: Director Marshall Downey admitted that the county conducted no independent grid or resource planning, stating on the record that “utility companies must decide what they are comfortable with,” completely deferring public infrastructure safety to corporate providers.
Acknowledgement of Meaningless Enforcement: During the April 21, 2026, City Council meeting, after the Commissioners slashed the daily non-compliance fine from $10,000 to a standard $100, Council Members Linda Rhodes and Walter Ferguson strongly objected, stating on the public record: "Do you really think [the developers] care about $100 a day?"
22. Under North Carolina land-use law, local planning staff are tasked with executing due diligence to craft ordinances that protect public health, safety, and general welfare under the county's police powers (N.C.G.S. § 160D-701). The Sanford-Lee County Planning Department recognized that the distinct, continuous acoustic footprint of high-density data center cooling infrastructure required a highly specialized enforcement mechanism to ensure ongoing compliance. To achieve this, staff calculated and proposed a $10,000 per day non-compliance fine. This fine was not arbitrary; it was specifically scaled to create a meaningful deterrent against multi-billion-dollar enterprise technology entities, ensuring they would continuously operate within local decibel caps rather than treating code violations as a negligible overhead cost.
On April 20, 2026, the county’s legal team overrode the safety-oriented fine structure, recommending a reduction to a standard zoning fine of $100 per day.
This intervention appears to the petitioners to have been predicated on generalized, non-expert discomfort with high penalty structures, rather than land-use data, acoustics analysis, or engineering inputs.
By reducing the penalty by 99%, the county effectively dismantled the entire regulatory mechanism designed by its own planning experts to protect adjacent residential property rights.
V. Requested Moratorium Scope
Petitioners request that the Board consider a temporary moratorium, within each governing body’s lawful jurisdiction, on:
1. New data center applications.
2. Pending data center site plan approvals.
3. TRC approvals or recommendations for data center projects.
4. Administrative development approvals for data center use.
5. Building permits for data center structures.
6. Grading permits tied specifically to data center development.
7. Utility extension approvals or capacity commitments tied specifically to data center development.
8. Any permit, approval, or sign-off that would materially advance construction of a large-scale data center campus.
The moratorium should last only as long as reasonably necessary to:
• disclose public records;
• conduct independent expert review;
• determine vested/exemption status;
• review whether prior approvals were materially incomplete;
• amend UDO Section 5.52 if needed;
• protect the public before irreversible approvals are granted.
Petitioners suggest an initial period of 90 to 180 days, or another reasonable duration supported by findings of fact.
The Lee County Board of Commissioners has legal authority to enact a moratorium. Under North Carolina General Statute § 160D-107, local governments hold the explicit legislative power to adopt temporary development moratoria to protect public health, safety, and welfare while they rewrite or fix flawed zoning laws. The governing board must hold a public hearing before putting a moratorium in place. Notice of the hearing must be published at least seven days in advance. The local government must formally state the specific problems necessitating the moratorium, explain why other alternatives weren't viable, and provide a clear timeline for when the moratorium will end.
Serious questions remain on whether the UDO is inchoate
Although the UDO was adopted, there are serious questions raised in the public record that indicate it was inchoate, a “work in progress," incomplete, defective. A county commission can impose a temporary draft while they revise local laws that need to be revised. Moratoriums are frequently utilized as interim legal tools to pause development approvals or project activities while a government agency finalizes its regulations. See Ashe County v, Ashe County Planning Board, LLC, 386 N.C. 15, (2025). They usually require proper public notice, written findings justifying the pause, and a dedicated public hearing. The public record from the hearings and questions from commissioners, council persons and JPC staffers raises serious questions that more research is needed for the UDO, and that a significant number of questions and concerns for the public safety and enforcement remain and need to be addressed, and the UDO amended. A moratorium to address serious questions about a large-scale proposal is reasonable and necessary for the public safety.
Other North Carolina towns like Apex, Durham, and Wendell successfully enacted data center moratoria in early 2026 specifically because their ordinances were not equipped to handle the noise and power demands of AI data infrastructure.
Material omissions/misrepresentations can be Cause for Moratoria and Repeal
If a developer uses material omissions/misrepresentations to secure a rezoning, the local government has powerful legal mechanisms to undo the approval. Under North Carolina land-use law, developers do not get a free pass just because they checked the initial bureaucratic boxes through material omissions.
The county or city can immediately halt the project and require the developer to go through an entirely new public rezoning process. Local leaders are fully within their rights to deny the new request.
The local government can pass a new ordinance to repeal or amend the prior rezoning, changing the land's designation back to its original status.
In addition, North Carolina General Statute NCGS § 160D-403(f) states that a local government can revoke a development approval by notifying the holder in writing with the specific reason. The revocation process must strictly mirror the same review and approval procedures required to issue the original permit.
According to NCGS § 160D-403(f), revocation is required for:
Material violations. Substantial departures from approved plans, non-compliance with regulations, or misrepresentations in the application process.
Errors. Approvals issued in violation of local or state law.
Can the Lee County Board of Commissioners call for a Public Hearing?
Yes, now that the secret has been revealed that a huge data center will be constructed in a neighborhood where owners had no notice that their lives could be disrupted forever, it would restore public confidence if the Commissioners instantly pass a resolution scheduling a Moratorium Hearing.
We respectfully request:
1. A public hearing before any further material administrative approval, TRC approval, site plan approval, building permit, utility approval, or other governmental action that would advance the proposed data center project.
2. A temporary moratorium hearing under N.C.G.S. § 160D-107 to determine whether a temporary pause on data center development approvals is necessary to protect public health, safety, welfare, property rights, public infrastructure, and public confidence.
3. Immediate preservation of all lawful public records related to the project, including communications, meeting materials, staff notes, maps, emails, texts, utility correspondence, economic-development records, TRC records, UDO drafting records, and any releasable closed-session minutes or general accounts.
4. A public determination of whether any pending data center application is complete, incomplete, vested, exempt from a moratorium, protected by prior approval, or still subject to lawful pause, correction, review, or revocation.
5. Independent review of the project’s noise, water, wastewater, stormwater, power-grid, fire safety, emergency-response, environmental, and neighboring-property impacts before any final administrative approval is issued.
VI. WHY THE BOARD MUST ACT BEFORE ADMINISTRATIVE APPROVAL
Residents are asking Lee County to act now because timing matters.
This is not about stopping lawful development without review. It is about making sure the public process is not outrun by staff-level administrative approval before residents understand what is being approved.
Across the country, communities are learning the same lesson: once a data center project is far enough into the approval pipeline, officials may later say, “It may be too late to stop this now.” That can happen after an application is accepted as complete, after administrative or site-plan approval, after permits issue, after substantial reliance begins, or after the applicant claims vested rights.
That is why the Board should not wait.
The public was originally asked to evaluate a rezoning described as a light industrial business park. The project now before the public is a large-scale data center campus. Those are not the same thing.
A giant data center of this scale may involve major power demand, utility infrastructure, continuous operations, noise, cooling systems, stormwater impacts, emergency-response needs, fire-safety issues, and long-term effects on surrounding residents and landowners.
Before any further approval advances, the Board should require clear answers to the following questions:
Has the current application been accepted as complete?
Has TRC approved, recommended, or signed off on any part of the project?
Has any site-plan approval, development approval, zoning approval, grading permit, building permit, utility approval, driveway permit, erosion/sedimentation permit, or other development permit already been issued?
Has the applicant claimed vested rights, permit-choice protection, substantial reliance, or exemption from a moratorium?
Can staff lawfully pause final administrative action until the Board holds a public hearing and receives written legal findings?
When did Lee County, Sanford, SAGA, CEMC, Duke Energy, Trustwell, Helix, PointOne, CyrusOne, or their representatives first know this site was intended or likely to be used for a data center?
Was that information available to the Planning Board, the Board of Commissioners, neighboring landowners, and the public before the rezoning was approved?
Does the current ordinance adequately protect nearby residents from noise, power infrastructure impacts, water/wastewater issues, stormwater impacts, fire risk, emergency-response burdens, and enforcement problems?
North Carolina law gives local governments authority to adopt temporary moratoria on development approvals when the required process and findings are followed. North Carolina law also recognizes that timing matters because permit-choice and vested-rights protections may attach once certain applications or approvals reach certain stages.
That is the point.
Residents are not asking the Board to prejudge the project. Residents are asking the Board not to allow administrative approval to create a “too late” argument before the public record is complete.
The Board should immediately:
Call a public hearing on a temporary data center moratorium.
Direct staff to provide a written status report identifying the exact approval stage of the project.
Direct the county attorney to identify whether the project is complete, incomplete, vested, exempt, or still subject to lawful pause.
Direct staff, if legally permissible, not to issue final administrative approval, site-plan approval, permit approval, or vesting determination until the Board receives those findings and the public has been heard.
Require review of the existing data center ordinance before it is used to approve a project of this size.
Require independent review of noise, power, fire safety, emergency response, stormwater, water/wastewater, and neighboring-property impacts.
If the County believes it cannot pause the project, residents ask the Board to state exactly why, identify the specific statute, ordinance, permit, approval, vested-rights determination, or legal exemption that prevents action, and place that explanation in the public record.
The question tonight is simple:
Will the Board act before the administrative door closes?
Or will residents be told later that it is already too late?
That is why a public hearing and temporary moratorium are necessary now.
VII. Conclusion
This petition does not ask the Board to prejudge wrongdoing.
It asks the Board to protect the public before the record closes around them.
Lee County residents were asked to evaluate a light industrial business park. They are now facing a giant data center campus.
Those are not the same thing. If this project is lawful, complete, safe, and properly disclosed, the public record will show that.
If the public process was incomplete, misleading, or materially deficient, the public record will show that too.
Either way, the answer is not silence. The answers are disclosure, hearing, preservation, independent review, and lawful pause.
For these reasons, we respectfully request that the Lee County Board of Commissioners and, where applicable, the Sanford City Council immediately schedule a public hearing, consider a temporary moratorium under N.C.G.S. § 160D-107, preserve and disclose public records, review the adequacy of UDO Section 5.52, determine the legal status of any pending application, and prevent further material advancement of the project until the public process is repaired.
Respectfully submitted,
Concerned Residents, Landowners, Taxpayers, and Stakeholders of Lee County, North Carolina
Petition signatures are attached and incorporated herein by reference.
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Petition created on June 15, 2026