Ashley Bell

North Carolina is one of the top data center destinations in the country right now, and Duke Energy has been asking regulators for double-digit rate hikes — as high as 18% at one point — while projecting billions in new grid investment driven largely by data center demand. Families in this district are being asked to subsidize infrastructure for companies that can well afford to pay their own way. Complicating the issue is that we don’t fully understand the long term impacts to the health of those living in the vicinity of data centers, but the possibilities - which include impacts on cardiac health, breathing issues, cognitive difficulties and more - are too extreme to be acceptable. Finally, we are fortunate to live in a beautiful state, but data centers pose real threats to our water systems, our air quality, our wildlife and our land.

Any new data center permitted should have to clear three tests: What’s the water impact on local systems, especially in counties already managing supply constraints? What’s the actual net job and tax benefit to the community versus the infrastructure and health costs it imposes? So far, data center developers have had trouble accurately and in some cases honestly answering those questions, and I think individual counties should impose strict requirements for these answers before even considering a data center proposal. I also support moratoriums on new data center construction as needed in order to prevent corners from being cut and to allow local residents to voice concerns.

North Carolina’s biotech and life sciences growth is real, but it doesn’t do our communities much good if the workforce pipeline doesn’t reach past the Research Triangle. As someone who spent eight years in PA program leadership and national accreditation work, I’ve seen firsthand what it takes to build a credible STEM-to-career pipeline — and what it takes is investment at the K–12 and community college level, not just at flagship universities.

Concretely: fully funding STEM and lab-based coursework in public schools, including in districts like ours where school funding disparities are already a live issue; expanding dual-enrollment and early-college partnerships between high schools and community colleges so students can earn credentials before they graduate; and treating community colleges as the workforce backbone they are, with direct federal support for biotech, lab tech, and advanced manufacturing certificate programs tied to real regional employer demand.

Government has a basic obligation to protect public health, and that includes making sure people have access to vaccines without cost or misinformation being the barrier, and making sure environmental health risks are actually regulated rather than negotiated away.

On PFAS specifically — this is not hypothetical for North Carolina; we’ve already lived through a statewide PFAS contamination crisis. I support enforceable federal drinking water standards, funded remediation for affected communities, and real accountability for the industrial polluters, not the taxpayers, footing the cleanup bill. On emergency preparedness, rural hospital closures are a public health emergency in slow motion in this district. You cannot have community disaster response, let alone routine emergency care, without a functioning hospital within a reasonable drive. I’ll fight federal policy that lets private equity strip rural hospitals for parts, and I’ll push for funding models that keep rural facilities open rather than subsidizing their closure.

As a clinician, I don’t get to hide behind jargon with a patient who’s scared; I have to explain what’s actually going on, including the parts I’m not sure about. Elected officials should be doing the same thing: showing up in communities, not just issuing statements: local town halls with actual scientists and clinicians, funding science communication and public health literacy at the community level rather than only at the federal messaging level, and being honest when the evidence changes instead of pretending it never does. Trust is rebuilt person to person and question by question, not with a slogan. That’s the only way I know how to do it, and it’s how I intend to represent this district.