H1 - Charlie James discusses Spartanburg data center controversies, local election eligibility, and societal changes.

What this episode covers

Transcript Charlie James: And welcome to the program on your Monday afternoon. So tickled to have you along with us. I appreciate it. Hope you had a great weekend. Um, watching the U.S. Open, watching the, the World Cup soccer, it was all good. It was a hot weekend, though. All right, um, let's just jump right into it today because it is becoming, uh, more and more obvious that the people of Spartanburg just don't want this data center. They just do not like it. And this, this thing is become a pretty darn big deal because it was actually on the Theo Von podcast with Erin Brockovich. Listen to this. Let me look at this. Theo Von (Audio Clip): Spartanburg County data center lawsuit. Residents say $2.8 billion project was wrong. Erin Brockovich (Audio Clip): There you go. Theo Von (Audio Clip): Was wrongly classified as minor development. Um, a group of residents, um, suing Spartanburg County and Valera Holdings LLC, the company behind a nearly $3 billion data center under construction along South Pine Street. Uh, public records show Valera submitted an application to redevelop about 905,000 square feet of the former Kohler industrial plant as a minor land development. The county approved it. Weeks later, the company submitted a second application for Phase 2 improvements, including four proposed buildings totaling about 494,000 square feet, along with a power yard, internal roadways, electrical equipment, a metering station, mechanical cooling systems, and stormwater ponds. The app... Charlie James: Does that sound... there is absolutely nothing minor about any of that. That, I would put that, I, you know, I'm no expert here, but, but I would kind of put that over in the major category. Minor category? Well, that would be something like a new QT on the corner. Maybe they're putting up a new Spinx. That would be a minor development. This thing? Sounds like a massive, massive project. So now they're going to be talking about it this afternoon in chambers at, in, in Spartanburg County. Um, let me just bring this to you. Spartanburg County Council members are going to meet this afternoon to privately discuss a lawsuit over a local data center project and to give another reading of a moratorium on future data center projects. This is from WYFF. According to an agenda shared by Spartanburg County, members of the Spartanburg County Council are scheduled to meet at 4:00. They're going to be in executive session. They're going to be getting legal advice. And this is like, that part is not going to be open to the public because they're going to be, you know, some things are attorney-client privilege, right? During the executive sessions, the, uh, members will also, uh, receive legal advice regarding the acquisition of a right-of-way related to an intersection improvement project project. Like I said, that is not open to the public. However, after the executive session, Spartanburg County Council will have its regularly scheduled public meeting around 5:15. According to the agenda, today's meeting will include public hearings related to the development of Joint Industrial Park, US Rare Earth Inc., between, uh, Spartanburg and Cherokee counties, and the proposed ordinance to impose a one-year pause on data center projects in Spartanburg County. This moratorium passed its first reading back in June. So they're going to be doing this again. But it, I, I just... one of the problems that a lot of people are having with this right now is a, a huge lack of transparency between county leadership and the public. Now listen, all, this stuff should be as transparent as it gets. Because again, this is a major development. This is huge. If you got a development that needs its own roads inside the development, that's a big deal. That's, that's a real big deal. The public should know more. Also, they need to, they, we need, we need more studies on the harmful impacts of data centers of this size that it would have on the health and the qualit ...

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