Mitchell County group fights NextEra Energy project

CAMILLA – On June 29, the Mitchell County Board of Commissioners voted to approve a rezoning request that would change 300 acres in the northern part of the county from Agriculture to Industrial.

That vote has sparked an outrage that has citizens in the county seeking signatures on a recall petition that would remove the members of the commission and force another vote on the rezoning request that a citizens group says is a thinly veiled attempt to bring a data center to the county.

“Nobody with the county has used the term ‘data center,’ and when I posted a complaint saying that was the purpose of the vote, I was told to take it down because data centers hadn’t been mentioned,” Lauren Dorminey, who has become the de facto leader of a group of Mitchell County citizens that is fighting to keep a data center from being built on property that is surrounded by residential neighborhoods and farmland.

“But I did my due diligence, and the company that wants to build on that newly rezoned property – NextEra – is a data center giant. They might not have said ‘data center,’ but that’s what they do.”

NextEra Energy, headquartered in Juno Beach, Fla., is the world’s largest electric utility holding company. Its portfolio includes more than 40,000 megawatts of generating capacity.

Dorminey, an environmentalist who earns her living off the land in the neighborhood where NextEra plans to build, said the Mitchell Commission did not give a clear explanation about use of the land before voting to approve the rezoning request.

“They were required to run information about the meeting in two editions of the local newspaper, and while they did, they didn’t put anything about their plans in the paper that ran just before the vote,” she said. “So not a lot of people showed up to find out what this was about.

“That made us late to the game.”

Since the commission’s vote to approve the rezoning request, Dorminey and a growing band of Mitchell County citizens have been busy trying to use any legal means necessary to have the request rescinded.

In materials obtained through an Open Records request, Mitchell County Administrator Gary Rice apparently offered an easier way to get approval for use of the land. In an email to members of the Mitchell County Development Authority, Rice said the authority could “leave (the land) as ag and request special use (to grant Nextera’s purchase request,” adding, “with the wide range of things that can go into an industrial zone, you may get more push back from the community.”)

James Eubanks, the executive director of the Development Authority, in an email to authority members, wrote, “We should not spread this information throughout the community until NextEra is prepared to hold an open house.”

Messages left seeking comment from Eubanks and Mitchell County Commission Chairman Benjamin Hayward were not returned by press time. Officials at the county’s commission office said Rice was out of town until Monday.

The email exchanges and other information gathered have led the group to put together a recall petition to “get new commissioners in office” and “stop plans to build this data center.”

Though she says her leadership in the group came about organically, Dorminey certainly has the bona fides to lead the opposition in this matter. She and her fiance, Geoff Hatcher are partners in the local Wild Herbs and Co. farmstead that sells botanicals such as cut flowers, medicinal plants, vegetables, landscaping and floral designs for events like weddings. She is also a content provider offering gardening tips for a large online company.

“I’m deeply connected to this land,” Dorminey said. “My great-grandmother and grandfather gave birth to my grandfather on this land. But my roots run deeper. While at Valdosta State (University, where she earned a degree in cultural anthropology), I was part of an environmental group that fought the building of a coal-fired biomass plant in Mitchell County.

“I moved to North Carolina for seven years, where I was exposed to a culture of people who live off the land. That just enhanced everything I’d learned in my adult life.” 

Since the commission vote, the group seeking to halt the rezoning have started collecting signatures on a petition to have the current board of commissioners recalled. They are holding events throughout the county in an attempt to get the required number of signatures.

“We want a recall election,” Dorminey said. “We’re going to need between 3,000 and 4,000 (signatures of registered voters who voted in the last election), but we think we can do that. There’s really a groundswell of growing excitement around what we’re doing.”

Dorminey said the now closed coal-fired plant that was opened in the ‘90s is nowhere near as dangerous as the 1,500 megawatt plant planned by NextEra. She notes issues that she said make such a facility a danger to surrounding land: 

– “Turbines that use natural gas emit nitrous oxide into the air, and those emissions are particularly harmful to children and the elderly, leading to higher instances of respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses;

– “They can’t answer questions about water usage, which is crucial in a community like ours. They say 80% of the water used will evaporate as steam, while the other 20% will be runoff. They don’t know where that runoff will go, but the chemicals in it will impact fishing, hunting, recreation and wildlife all the way to the Gulf of Mexico;

– “People who live near the plant will be plagued by noise 24-7 as the plant struggles to keep up with the appetite;

– “The steam in the air will release chemicals that will be absorbed into the soil when rainfall releases it;

– And while the commissioners talk about the tax money that the plant will bring in, they don’t take into account the impact on our property values. They say things like ‘we may be able to eliminate property taxes,’ but our response is that when our property values plummet, there will be no future industry, no farms or no families moving in.”

Dorminey said her rapidly growing group opposed to the data center proposal has grown close in the three weeks since the commission voted to approve the rezoning request. She also notes that the movement is spreading beyond the county.

“This doesn’t just impact the people in north Mitchell County,” she said. “We’re talking about the aquifers that provide water all over the Southeast.

“Seeing people unite for this cause is a beautiful thing. Three weeks ago, we were all just folks living our separate lives. Now, things are like they were when I was a kid, when my mom was a kid. We’re there together, taking care of each other. We were betrayed by our commissioners. And now we’re fighting back. And the beautiful thing is that no one is trying to get the credit; there’s no ego involved. We’re all in this together.”