The data center fight in Stokes County, North Carolina
Stokes County has a rejected data center moratorium on this tracker. Status is derived, not stored — a pause with a documented end date flips to Expired on its own — and the source is right next to the claim.
Status today
Commissioners rejected the six-month moratorium their own planning board had recommended, after months of organised opposition; Commissioner Sonya Cox said a formal pause was not necessary. The county instead added data centers as an allowed use in M-2 Heavy Manufacturing conditional zoning. A separate Aug 13 planning board vote denied a data center rezoning in Walnut Cove 5-2. Sources disagree on the vote date (reported as both Mon Jul 14 — a Tuesday — and Jul 15), so only the month is recorded. Listed because neighbouring counties' coverage has repeatedly described Stokes as having passed a pause; it did not
Source
read 2026-08-23
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
What to do next
- Questions to ask at the hearing — force specific answers onto the record.
- Estimate the impact — electricity, water, and rate pressure for any facility size in North Carolina.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- North Carolina briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Elsewhere in North Carolina
- Gates County — Enactedexpires 2026-12-17
- Brevard — Expiredterm ran to 2026-06-23
- Clay County — Enactedno end date — permanent
- Canton — Enactedexpires 2027-02-11
- Chatham County — Enactedexpires 2027-02-11
- Kings Mountain — Enactedexpires soon — 2026-08-25
- Boone — Enactedexpires 2027-03-23
- Apex — Enactedexpires 2027-04-27
- Orange County — Enactedexpires 2027-04-21
- Rowan County — Enactedexpires 2027-05-04
- Swain County — Enactedexpires 2027-04-21
- Watauga County — Enactedexpires 2027-04-21
- Madison County — Expiredterm ran to 2024-06-13
- Clyde — Enactedno end date — permanent
- Holly Springs — Enactedexpires 2027-06-16
- Charlotte — Proposedterm not documented
- Durham — Enactedexpires 2027-06-15
- Harnett County — Enactedexpires 2027-05-03
- Cumberland County — Enactedexpires 2026-12-15
- Fayetteville — Rejectedterm not documented
- Greensboro — Proposedterm not documented
- Farmville — Enactedexpires 2027-08-03
- Waxhaw — Enactedexpires 2027-08-11
- Statesville — Proposedterm not documented
- Asheville — Enactedexpires 2027-06-17
- Wendell — Enactedexpires 2026-12-31
- Davie County — Enactedexpires 2027-07-07
- Alamance County — Enactedexpires 2027-08-17
- Yadkin County — Enactedexpires 2028-08-17
As of August 2026 · changes weekly — re-check before citing
Illustrative rather than exhaustive — dozens of localities churn weekly, and this tracks the ones we have read a source for. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to the ordinance, the enacting body's own page, or a datable report of the vote, and were read on that date. Rows marked *unverified* came from bulk compilation and have not been checked against a primary source — the locality, the year, and the status may all be off. Verify one of those with the town clerk before citing it as precedent. **Expiry is derived, not asserted.** A row with a documented end date flips to *Expired* on its own once that date passes. A time-limited moratorium whose start date was never documented keeps showing as enacted — that is a known gap, not a claim that it is still in force. Moratoriums are also routinely extended, so an expiry date is the earliest it could have ended, not proof that it did.
Part of the U.S. data center moratorium tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0.