With an amended economic development agreement with Quiet Data Centers Halifax now approved, Halifax County will be focusing its attention on a legislative hearing next month that could lead to a moratorium on data centers.

“With this particular project we are going forward,” County Attorney Glynn Rollins said during a special commissioners meeting Monday night. “There’s going to be plenty of opportunities over the next several months if you choose to invoke a moratorium. There’s going to be plenty of opportunity to have all kinds of input about what we ought to do, what we can do, what we might not want to do. All those things have to be discussed before you start saying, ‘Well, let’s do this.’”

Rollins said Pennsylvania, which was referenced by Commissioner Gary Redding during the meeting, is not North Carolina. “It’s not New York. It’s not Texas. Things differ from state to state. That’s not to say we can’t do anything to address these problems. I’m sure we can.”

Halifax County is not alone in the data center issue, he said. “Every county around us — Edgecombe, Nash, and Northampton — they’re all looking at this. We should be looking at it too. We just don’t have the benefit of that with this property.”

Commissioner Jimmie Silver said there were many things the county should have negotiated with QDCH, which will build on 251 acres of land the county owns in the Enfield Industrial Site.

“But we’ve passed that point,” Silver said. “We should have asked these things up front.”

Silver said what the county has now is an opportunity “to get more than we had.”

Silver admitted that when the county signed the EDA, it lost most of its bargaining power. “But what they’re doing now is extra, but encouraged.”

He encouraged Enfield Mayor Mondale Robinson to continue bargaining with the company. “I’ve been for Enfield getting involved in this and for the communities that live close to this.”

Rollins said the next time a data center comes up, the county won’t be “negotiating anything with anybody” because “we’re only in a situation where we’re negotiating because this was an economic development project.”

The next time, he said, “It’ll be what you have put in place in your land-use regulations or in your other ordinances about this kind of activity in the county. They won’t be negotiating anything unless you're going to do another ED project involving a data center.”

Another project could surface, he said, although, “I don’t think we have that much heavy industrial land left.”

Commissioner Chenoa Davis said the Enfield site is probably one of the last pieces of land the county owns. “Looking ahead, more than likely, the next time a company comes here who may want to do a private deal, we won’t have any say. Is that correct?”

Rollins said the county wouldn’t be a party to that transaction. “What I do think we’ll have in place is a very robust, detailed, and lawful series of land-use regulations and other ordinances that have to do with data centers and other similar facilities on where and how they operate in the county.”