Published 1:10 am Thursday, March 19, 2026
The Rowan County Commission meeting included a rare sight, County Chair Greg Edds standing in front of the dais addressing the audience after public comment. The meeting room was filled with people concerned about the potential for an artificial intelligence data center on Long Ferry Road.
A petition was circling online last week protesting a potential data center on a 400-acre lot off Long Ferry Road east of I-85. Reporting from the Salisbury Post, published on March 17, found that the lot has been bought by a company called EDC Charlotte LLC which specializes in data centers; however, there have been no permits through Rowan County with site plans for a data center on the lot.
The Commission did adjust the zoning of the lot in June 2024 to include “data centers,” but that was before the lot had sold to a company and was still under the Red Rocks Development company. However, there was no mention of a potential data center on the agenda for Monday’s meeting.
The Monday County Commissioner meeting started with regular public comment from concerned citizens who live on Long Ferry Road and others that wanted clarity. There were concerns about water and electricity hikes because of the property along with its impacts on the environment and health of surrounding citizens.
“We’re doing this American thing, this thing that you guys taught me coming up, pushing me to care about. We’re trying to do that. I feel like if this goes through, you’re tossing that. That, like has been said before, that’s gonna be your legacy,” Anthony Collins, a farmer on Long Ferry Road, said.
After the initial wave of questions, Edds took the floor, something in his 12 years of serving he has not done. He started by addressing the crowd but after 10 to 15 minutes of address, the people started asking questions back, initiating more of a tense conversation rather than address.
He started by acknowledging that his family lives on Long Ferry Road. He has been experiencing the troubles with water that some residents talked about in the area, but he expects that to get better soon. The line that runs on that road is owned by Rowan County which has required extra maintenance, but they are hoping to sell it to Salisbury-Rowan Utilities.
Two residents on Long Ferry Road said they are being charged for thousands of gallons of water per month when they are only using water for daily tasks. Edds gave them his card to communicate about the issue further.
However, after the clarification, he started his main argument, that there was no data center deal actively happening.
“I want to be clear about this, so watch my lips. There is no data center deal,” Edds said. “We have made no offers on any data centers. No data centers have made any offers to us. We are not speaking to any data centers.”
He then went into a long list of companies that use data centers to store information because he wanted to illustrate that a potential data center could be disconnected from AI.
That raised some confusion and clarification from the audience. Samantha Ring, who spoke during public comment about the effects of constant high frequency noises from data centers on surrounding people, clarified the difference. She pointed out that AI data centers have higher water and electricity needs than a regular data center, so the people here are concerned about an AI center in particular.
Shannon Solomon, who started the petition against the data center, pushed back on the denial of a data center project underway by citing the site plans and deeds that she has seen for the potential site.
Edds reaffirmed that there was not a data center project underway to Rowan County’s knowledge. However, he addressed that data center conversations across the country have been centered around water consumption. He said that in Rowan County there is a more stable water source than in areas like Phoenix, Arizona, or others that are facing similar dilemmas.
However, this sparked questions about the type of system that would be included in a data center. Water could either be stored and funneled back into the system in a closed loop or in an open loop where it is taken from a body of water, used, filtered and then redistributed into the body of water. Edds did not have the answer on what kind of system would be used for a hypothetical data center project.
After this back and forth, Edds and County Manager Aaron Church addressed the claims that this has been happening without public notice. According to Church, there were four public hearings in 2024 about the rezoning and possibility of a “data center” on this lot. Church said the staff would post the timeline of the lot on the Rowan County website.
Some people in the audience then started asking if they could zone the lot back to not include “data centers.” Maegan Mack from Down Home Rowan County chapter chimed in that some regions have put moratoriums on AI data centers until there is greater understanding of their impacts.
Edds along with input from the audience started listing questions that were still unanswered including the water consumption, energy consumption and noise output. However, the people in attendance still were concerned about other impacts that may not yet be understood about AI data centers, which invigorated the call for a moratorium.
As the conversation wound down, there was a question about what could be done next. Solomon brought up the permits and Edds questioned which specific permits she was referencing. At this point, Chief Information Officer and Assistant County Manager Randy Cress clarified that there was only an “erosion control” permit to clear the land currently, which could explain current work happening on the road. There is no other active permit with Rowan County about the lot.
The almost two-hour back-and-forth ended with more questions about the future of the lot, but Edds handed out business cards to the attendees with a promise of continued dialogue.