Joe Parfitt

Rising costs are the chief concern of nearly all of our residents. Measures to prevent these rises and promote lowering costs are the kitchen table issues that will drive voters out to the polls far more than the nebulous goal of “AI advancement,” or the desires of data center investors. With that, the deleterious effects of resource hungry data centers will have serious consequences to the people in my district with none of the benefits. It is my position that a moratorium on data centers be enacted in both the 52nd district and North Carolina as a whole for a minimum of one year, until all of the ecological studies can be completed, and the reviews of other communities outside of our state have been studied. However, I am not opposed to progress. If it can be proven that the data centers will not negatively impact the health of our residents and wildlife, the costs not be prohibitive, and iron clad protections for the residents be agreed upon when, not if, situations arise in the future that injury to persons or property are the fault of the data centers, I will consider the possibility of their installation and employment. This region has a very contentious history with big monied interests, most notably the Hamlet chicken processing plant fire, NC’s second worst industrial disaster in history resulting in 25 deaths in 1991, and the GenX pollution of the Cape Fear river basin. The people of this area are past the promises of outside organizations that inevitably make huge profits but disappear when people get sick, and their concerns lead me to err on the side of caution.

NC colleges and universities are among the best in the nation. NC public schools are the poorest funded. If we are to create a population of young people interested in progress through science, we need to adopt a more education friendly outlook in our legislature. For sixteen years the legislature has repeatedly defunded our public schools in favor of using taxes to bolster private schools with less oversight and more opportunities for discrimination against students. This must be reversed. Our community colleges are an ideal stepping stone for our young people to receive higher education, either to lead to future STEM degrees, or to meet the need of our trade professions. Further promotion and funding of these community colleges are the way to foster local higher education that pays dividends to the community.

As many as we can. It is the duty of our elected officials to protect the public. There are known health risks that currently are either not being addressed, or are sorely underfunded. In Richmond County PFAS waste from another county is dumped in the landfill. Spreading forever chemicals from Chemours from one county to the next sorely misses the mark of the idiom “dilution is the solution to pollution,”. This is but one example. The proposed Amazon Data center will have 600 diesel generators which will harm the air quality of the region, result in a severe disruption of our endemic flora and fauna species, and likely lead to health issues. This too should not be allowed. The situation is not that the residents are okay with these detriments, but with our current elected officials being complicit with these actions, and in some cases directly benefiting, financially from them. We need selfless service, especially in our leadership to make the best decisions moving forward that will create a healthy, productive environment for our children.

This is an issue that is directly linked to the misinformation spread through our various forms of media either by malign actors or monied interests. No one in our communities is a Luddite. I have yet to meet a person without a cellphone or an automobile (if they can afford it). The answer to this issue is the same as the answer to the second question asked. Through quality, well-funded education that gives students the tools to make informed decisions by eschewing logical fallacies and personal biases in order to built trust in the institutions that add to the body of knowledge through rigorous scientific processes and by emphasizing critical thinking we will be able to build a capacity in our population that is able to separate fact from fiction.