u/benjaminwharton

Kingsboro is a historically Black community in eastern North Carolina, the same part of the state that's carried the industrial hog industry for decades. In 1995, residents organized as Citizens for Responsible Zoning and stopped an IBP slaughterhouse that would have processed 20,000 hogs a day. IBP was later absorbed into Tyson.

Thirty years later, the same community is up against a proposed hyperscale data center on the same site. The data center could use up to 2 million gallons of water per day. The county commissioners are being pressured by the community to block the sale of the land to the data center developer. Local activists describe their region as a sacrifice zone. The industries are unrelated, but the parallels are there.