At Spartanburg County Council’s specially called Election Day meeting, a local business owner spoke from the podium, and a council member spoke from the dais. Both were describing the same company. But their accounts of what they could trust differed sharply.
Lee Lancaster, who owns LEL International and supplies power-generation equipment to NorthMark, spoke about what the proposed data center has meant for his business. He said the project had helped him hire more than sixty employees and expand his facility. After seventeen years of doing business in Spartanburg, Lancaster said his experience with NorthMark gave him confidence in the company and its commitments.
Councilman Monier Abusaft reached a different conclusion. He said NorthMark had previously discussed environmental protections with county officials that weren’t adequately carried into the development agreement presented for approval. According to Christian Boschult’s November 5 reporting in The Post and Courier, Abusaft also described threats of litigation accompanying a revised agreement after council members refused to move an earlier version forward.
Abusaft’s conclusion was pretty direct: “If I can’t trust you, I can’t trust you.”
By the end of the November 3 meeting, County Council had approved NorthMark’s agreement on second reading, three votes to two. Abusaft and Grant DeShields opposed it. Agreements for two other data centers, one at Tyger River Industrial Park and another on Jones Road, also advanced. All three are expected to return for final reading on November 16.¹
The meeting took place at one o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, while people across Spartanburg County were voting. Residents spoke both for and against the developments, raising questions about economic benefits, noise, pollution, and missing documents. Some also objected to holding the meeting on Election Day, when people had other civic responsibilities and might have difficulty attending. Public hearings are intended to give residents a meaningful opportunity to participate in decisions that affect their communities, and the timing of those hearings is part of that responsibility.
I’ve been writing about the NorthMark development on South Pine Street for several months, particularly its changing water-use projections, environmental permitting, and the county’s efforts to establish the conditions under which the facility will operate.
On October 25, I published What the Drafts Let Us See, comparing the October 19 and October 22 versions of NorthMark’s development agreement. I found changes in environmental enforcement provisions, a proposed Community Benefit Fund that disappeared, and additional language concerning the county’s authority to adopt future regulations. Some changes strengthened the written obligations. Others raised questions about what the county had agreed to leave unresolved.
The documents showed what had changed. They couldn’t tell us everything that happened during the negotiations.
Boschult’s reporting gives us another part of that story, including Abusaft’s allegation that NorthMark threatened legal action. The company did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment on those allegations.²
I keep coming back, though, to the disagreement between Lancaster and Abusaft.
Lancaster knows NorthMark through the work it has brought to his business, including employees and suppliers whose livelihoods depend on that relationship. Abusaft knows the company through negotiations over public protections and commitments he says the agreement didn’t adequately preserve. Those are different relationships to the same proposed development, and they produce different kinds of knowledge.
Neither perspective can be dismissed because the other exists. Neither can establish, on its own, what the facility will mean for the people living around South Pine Street, the surrounding watershed, or the county in the years ahead.
We’re being asked to judge a development whose consequences will reach far beyond the immediate relationships through which most of us have come to understand it.
What would allow us to know whether those judgments are warranted?
What the County Has Already Declared Satisfactory
NorthMark’s project was already under construction when the county began working through its data center moratorium. The company had obtained one of the two development permits required for the facility, while the moratorium ordinance required a development agreement for certain projects to proceed.
That background matters when considering Abusaft’s account of the negotiations. NorthMark had existing investments and permits, and the county had to consider its legal authority. A disagreement over what the county could lawfully require could have substantial consequences for both parties.
We don’t know the particular legal claims involved in the alleged threats, whether they were made in writing, or how county attorneys evaluated them. Those facts remain to be established.
But the agreement that emerged from those discussions is public, and its provisions can be examined.
The November 3 version concerns approximately 294 acres at the former Kohler property, an anticipated investment exceeding $2.75 billion, and a proposed 457-megawatt facility with on-site power generation. Article III establishes an initial term of ten years, with the possibility of extension by mutual agreement.³
After reading Boschult’s report, I went back through the county’s entire November 3 packet. Some of the language that concerned me in October remains unchanged.
Article V describes the lighting, noise, and landscaping plans that NorthMark was supposed to submit for county review. It also describes a noise study intended to establish existing conditions and model the facility’s operating noise after construction.
The agreement repeatedly records the county’s determination that the submitted materials meet the applicable requirements. In several places, the language is:
The County acknowledges that this requirement is satisfied.
Yet the dates on which those materials were submitted remain blank.
The agreement states that the noise study has been reviewed and found sufficient, but the submission date isn’t filled in. The same is true of the lighting, noise, and landscaping plans. Exhibit B, the Site Master Plan, contains only “[To Be Inserted],” as does Exhibit C, the Development Schedule.⁴
These are the provisions in the November 3 packet, not necessarily the form the agreement will take at final reading.
The missing exhibits weren’t confined to NorthMark. Boschult reported that attachments were missing from all three development agreements, and County Administrator Cole Alverson said they would add them and make them publicly available before the regular November meeting.
That commitment matters because residents need the opportunity to examine the documents before the council considers final approval.
The blank dates don’t establish that the county failed to review the materials. The studies and plans may already exist and may have been reviewed as the agreement states. But the county is determining environmental conditions without providing the public the underlying documentation needed to evaluate that determination.
I’d particularly like to read the noise study (as I’ve read so many of them from various locales using the same data center buildout vocabulary we’re being presented with here in Spartanburg County)!
The agreement requires a study demonstrating that operating noise after construction won’t increase by more than ten decibels at specified measurement locations. That isn’t an absolute limit of ten decibels, nor does the agreement’s wording establish that measurements will be taken at every neighboring property line.
Where were the baseline measurements taken? How were the measurement locations selected? What assumptions went into the model of the facility at full operation? How will changes in low-frequency sound be evaluated, and how will actual conditions be measured against the model once the equipment is running?
Those questions aren’t answered by a statement that a study was found satisfactory.
The agreement does contain ongoing obligations, including maintenance of noise-mitigation equipment and a mechanism for county enforcement of specified lighting, noise, and landscaping requirements. Those provisions matter. They also make the underlying studies more consequential, because we need to understand the conditions being enforced.
We’ve already encountered a related problem in the project’s air permitting.
In October, the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services responded to a request from the Southern Environmental Law Center for another public-comment period concerning revised estimates of formaldehyde emissions from NorthMark’s natural-gas turbines. SCDES said comments received during the original public review prompted reconsideration of the emission factors used in those estimates.
The agency declined to reopen public comment, explaining that the revised calculations didn’t change the permit’s classification or emissions limits. It also noted that the permit requires site-specific formaldehyde testing within 180 days of turbine startup, with those measurements providing a basis for evaluating actual emissions and compliance.⁵
Two days later, on October 16, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a Request for Contested Case Hearing in the South Carolina Administrative Law Court on behalf of Concerned Citizens of Spartanburg County and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. The filing challenges the department’s decision to issue the permit without another opportunity for public comment on the revised formaldehyde estimates and raises concerns about the permit’s assessment of public-health risks.
SELC is asking the court to return the permit to SCDES for reconsideration and to prohibit further construction of the gas turbines until a corrected permit has received the required public review. Those are the challengers’ legal claims and requested remedies, not findings the court has made.⁶
The disagreement concerns more than whether the estimates are technically adequate. It also concerns the public’s opportunity to examine the information on which an environmental decision rests.
A study can establish what is expected under particular assumptions. Measurements obtained after a facility begins operating may confirm those expectations or require reconsideration. And the procedures through which those estimates are developed and challenged determine whose concerns have an opportunity to influence the result.
The county’s determination that a plan is satisfactory is a necessary part of public administration. It shouldn’t end public inquiry for our county council.
The Commitments That Survived
The two other agreements approved on November 3 offer a revealing comparison.
The AIB project at Tyger River Industrial Park includes at least $12.6 million in scheduled community-benefit payments during its initial term. The Jones Road project includes $9 million.
Both agreements also require the companies to engage environmental monitoring firms, provide their findings to the county at least annually, and make those reports publicly available. The companies select the firms, so the requirement doesn’t establish environmental oversight independent of the companies. But both agreements include an obligation to produce and publish monitoring findings.
I looked through NorthMark’s November 3 agreement for a comparable provision. It includes annual reporting requirements, county compliance reviews, and environmental enforcement mechanisms, but no equivalent commitment to obtain and publish annual findings from an environmental monitoring firm.
NorthMark’s agreement also contains no scheduled Community Benefit Fund payments. Instead, its reporting provisions require the company to report community or charitable contributions, “if applicable.”⁷
The comparison becomes more consequential when we consider how the projects are structured.
According to Boschult’s reporting, AIB and Jones Road aren’t receiving tax incentives and will purchase their electricity from the grid. NorthMark, by contrast, has an existing fee-in-lieu-of-tax arrangement and plans extensive on-site power generation.
The two projects without tax incentives have scheduled community-benefit payments and annual environmental-monitoring reports. NorthMark, with its different tax arrangement and considerably larger proposed facility, has neither obligation in the same form.
These aren’t identical projects. Their permitting histories, financial structures, and power requirements differ. But those differences make it more important to understand how the county negotiated their respective public commitments.
In my October essay, I documented the disappearance of a proposed Community Benefit Fund from NorthMark’s agreement between October 19 and October 22. The earlier draft established a framework for ten years of payments and included a possible enforcement mechanism if agreed contributions went unpaid. The amounts, however, were left blank, and the company would have retained considerable influence over allocation of the funds.
I couldn’t establish that the county had lost a particular sum of money when that framework disappeared. The draft included no agreed amount.
Now we’re looking at three agreements considered by the same council on the same afternoon, with different commitments concerning both community contributions and environmental monitoring.
Why did the county obtain specified payments and reporting requirements from two companies but not the third? Did the NorthMark negotiations address comparable obligations? Did the legal concerns described by Abusaft affect the terms that survived?
Councilwoman Jessica Coker opposed the AIB and Jones Road agreements because she regarded their required community-benefit payments as an additional tax. The agreements describe those payments as voluntary charitable commitments rather than taxes or fees. There’s a public debate worth having about whether such arrangements belong in development agreements, how the money should be administered, and how much control companies should retain over its eventual use.⁸
But whatever position we take on those questions, the difference between a scheduled contractual commitment and a charitable contribution that may or may not occur remains significant.
The same issue appears in the economic promises surrounding NorthMark.
Article VII establishes a target of twenty-seven full-time jobs, while expressly stating that falling short of that target won’t constitute a contractual default. Lancaster’s account of expanding his own business reminds us that a project’s economic effects can extend beyond its direct employees. His testimony describes employment and commercial relationships that a direct-job count wouldn’t capture.
That makes the difference between projected benefits and enforceable obligations more important, not less.
Some benefits can be demonstrated through records of employment and investment. Others are anticipated consequences of economic relationships that may develop over time. Still others involve conditions the county is agreeing to maintain or enforce.
We need to understand which promises belong to which category.
What Happens When Our Understanding Changes?
Another provision in NorthMark’s agreement has stayed with me since October.
Article XVII, under No Third-Party Beneficiaries, states that residents, taxpayers, neighboring property owners, environmental organizations, and other members of the public aren’t entitled to enforce the development agreement as third-party beneficiaries.⁹
That’s a contractual limitation, not a removal of rights residents may possess under other laws. Similar language appears in the other two agreements. But consider it alongside Article VII, titled Public Benefits.
The agreement describes benefits intended for the community, while the parties that negotiated it enforce its contractual commitments. The public can review records, raise concerns with officials, and use whatever other legal processes remain available. The public isn’t a party to the agreement itself.
That places considerable responsibility on the county, particularly when the project begins operating, and its effects become more apparent.
It also brings me back to the disagreement between Lancaster and Abusaft.
Both men were describing their encounters with NorthMark. Lancaster’s confidence came through a business relationship in which he’d seen commitments fulfilled. Abusaft’s distrust came through negotiations in which, he said, the company hadn’t adequately preserved environmental commitments discussed earlier.
A neighboring resident may encounter the facility in another way entirely, through nighttime lighting, persistent noise, altered traffic, or changes in the surrounding landscape. An environmental researcher may understand it through measurements that reveal conditions nobody can identify through ordinary observation alone.
These relationships don’t make every judgment equally adequate. Some accounts will be better supported than others. But understanding the place requires more than collecting individual opinions and deciding which people seem most trustworthy.
Edith Stein’s account of empathy has helped me think about how we encounter experiences that aren’t our own. Another person’s experience can become genuinely available to us without becoming our experience in the same way. We can learn something about another person’s encounter with the world while recognizing that our access to it remains different from theirs, shaped by our own situation and the relationships through which we encounter that person.¹⁰
A business owner can disclose something about economic life that a council member may not know through reading an agreement. A resident can describe conditions that an environmental model hasn’t adequately captured. A technical study can reveal processes that aren’t directly available to either person.
The work of public judgment is to bring these forms of evidence into conversation, test them against one another, and remain ready to revise conclusions when something new becomes apparent.
There’s a further difficulty, though. Correcting our understanding of a place doesn’t mean we’ve learned how to respond adequately to everything our actions are changing.
I had to confront something like that in my own writing about NorthMark’s projected water use. Earlier this fall, I realized that the figure of approximately 459,000 gallons per day I’d carried into a sermon described a more limited portion of the project than I’d understood. The projected full-buildout average was considerably larger, approximately 1.2 million gallons per day.
I corrected my account. But the correction also left me asking how the smaller number had circulated, what information public officials had, and what else residents might have difficulty discovering about the project’s relationship to our watershed.
Recognizing a mistaken judgment is one responsibility. Understanding how to respond to its consequences is another.
That has become an important question in my research on ecological intentionality, and it matters well beyond the university.
Spartanburg County will have to exercise judgment about conditions that haven’t yet occurred. Environmental testing, public records, compliance reviews, and enforcement procedures can help the county revise those judgments as evidence develops.
But that requires more than trusting that the right decisions were made at the beginning. It requires institutions willing and able to examine whether those decisions continue to describe the place as it is.
The Welfare of the City, the Peace of the Land
There’s a biblical passage I’ve been returning to as I consider what these agreements mean for Spartanburg. In Jeremiah 29, the prophet addresses the people of Judah who have been carried into exile in Babylon. They’re told to build houses, plant gardens, raise families, and seek the welfare of the place where they now live.
The instruction comes from a difficult history of displacement and empire. The exiles haven’t chosen the circumstances they find themselves in, and the passage doesn’t ask them to pretend that everything about those circumstances is just.
It does insist that their lives have become bound up with the welfare of a place they now inhabit.
Verse 7 is familiar to many Christians, especially those of us who’ve spent time thinking about congregations' responsibilities toward their communities. But an interesting difference appears when we read the Hebrew and Greek traditions alongside one another.
The Hebrew text uses the phrase shalom ha’ir, שְׁלוֹם הָעִיר, the peace or welfare of the city.
The Greek Septuagint, in the passage numbered Jeremiah 36:7, reads eirēnēn tēs gēs, or εἰρήνην τῆς γῆς, the peace of the land.¹¹
The difference may reflect a different Hebrew textual tradition rather than a deliberate theological decision by the Greek translator. We can’t assume the change was intended to communicate an ecological understanding of the passage.
But reading the two traditions alongside one another raises a question I find difficult to set aside.
What would it mean to seek the welfare of a city without attending to the welfare of the land through which that city exists?
The Hebrew shalom and Greek eirēnē involve more than an absence of conflict. They concern peace and well-being, the conditions under which life can continue and flourish. In the passage, the exiles' welfare is bound to the welfare of the place where they live.
That connection doesn’t establish that every inhabitant shares identical interests or benefits equally from every decision. A company can prosper while neighboring households bear the burden. An industrial project can provide employment while changing a watershed's conditions. The benefits and consequences may develop over different periods of time and fall on different people.
The passage asks us to consider how our welfare is entangled with the welfare of a place and its inhabitants, even when those relationships aren’t entirely harmonious.
That seems especially important for congregations and communities like ours in Spartanburg. We can be grateful for economic opportunity and still ask what responsibilities accompany it. We can support the people whose livelihoods depend on new industries while attending to neighbors whose experiences may tell us something different about those same developments.
Seeking the welfare of a place doesn’t mean declaring that every interest has been reconciled. It means remaining responsible to the relationships through which that place continues to exist, including those we haven’t adequately understood.
I’ve been thinking about the Greek text’s reference to the land as I consider how much our understanding of Spartanburg has changed through successive generations of industry, settlement, and development.
The old mills along Lawson’s Fork brought work, built communities, and altered the water and landscape around them. Their buildings and machinery belonged to particular economic arrangements that eventually changed or disappeared. The creek continued through those changes, carrying the history of what had been built around it.
We’re making another set of decisions now, with technologies and forms of infrastructure whose scale would have been difficult to imagine even a generation ago. Their economic benefits may be substantial, but the relationships they establish with the surrounding land, water, air, and communities won’t be exhausted by the terms of the agreements that authorize them.
The welfare of the city and the peace of the land aren’t necessarily competing interests. Neither can be taken for granted as a consequence of securing the other.
Both require our attention.
Before November 16
Spartanburg County Council is expected to consider the three development agreements for third and final reading on November 16.
Before then, the county has an opportunity to make the environmental plans and studies underlying NorthMark’s agreement available for public examination, complete the submission dates, and provide the missing exhibits promised after the November 3 meeting. Residents should have a meaningful opportunity to understand those materials before the council votes on the third reading (and passage).
The county can also explain, insofar as legitimate legal confidentiality permits, what it understands about the reported litigation threats and whether legal concerns affected particular provisions during negotiations.
The differences among the three agreements also deserve explanation, especially their community-benefit payments and environmental-monitoring requirements. So does the process for evaluating NorthMark’s actual operating conditions after construction, including who will have access to the results and how the county will respond if those results warrant further action.
These are matters that can be addressed through public records, council deliberation, and the documents themselves.
When I wrote about the October drafts, I focused on what the language of the agreements could establish and what remained outside their terms. The November 3 vote and the reporting that followed have brought another concern into focus.
The county can determine that a plan satisfies the applicable requirements. A company can describe the investments it intends to make and the commitments it believes it can fulfill. Residents can offer accounts of what they’ve experienced and what they anticipate.
None of those accounts, taken alone, can establish everything that will happen when the facility begins operating.
We’ll need measurements, records, and public processes that allow new information to change what we think we know. We’ll need county officials prepared to act when that information warrants a different response, and residents who can participate in examining the commitments made in their names.
The council has one more reading before the agreement becomes final. There will be many more occasions when the people of Spartanburg County will have to determine what its commitments mean, whether they’ve been fulfilled, and what needs to change when our understanding of the place changes.
Public trust isn’t established once, when an agreement is approved. It develops through what happens afterward, when commitments are tested against the conditions they were supposed to address.
Sources and notes
1. November 3 meeting and testimony. Christian Boschult, “Spartanburg County Council approves NorthMark data center agreement, amid alleged legal threat,” The Post and Courier, November 5, 2026; Spartanburg County, Data Center Information & Resources; and Jada Washington, “Spartanburg OKs three data center deals at election day meeting,” South Carolina Public Radio, November 5, 2026. These documents cover the second-reading votes, testimony, objections to the meeting’s timing, and the anticipated November 16 final reading. Good read, and Christian does a great job of reporting here. Support local news outlets (even if they are owned by USA Today or whatever has become of our local coverage).
2. Alleged legal threats and negotiations. Boschult, The Post and Courier, November 5, 2026. Abusaft alleged that a revised agreement arrived amid threats of litigation after council declined to advance an earlier proposal. NorthMark did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment (hmm?). The precise legal claims, communications, and negotiating consequences haven’t been independently established here.
3. Project scope, construction, and agreement term. Spartanburg County Council, November 3, 2026, agenda packet, NorthMark agreement, Articles II–IV, PDF pp. 75–77. Article III establishes a ten-year initial term, extendable by mutual agreement. The project covers approximately 293.637 acres, with anticipated capital investment exceeding $2.75 billion. See also FOX Carolina, “Spartanburg County leaders question pollution monitoring as Valara data center adds more turbines,” September 22, 2026, describing the project as already under construction.
4. Environmental submissions and noise provisions. November 3 county agenda packet, NorthMark agreement, Article V, PDF pp. 77–79, and Exhibits B and C, PDF pp. 94–95. Article V records the county’s acknowledgment that the lighting, noise, noise-study, and landscaping requirements have been satisfied, but the submission dates are unfilled. The noise study provision calls for a modeled post-construction increase of no more than ten decibels at determined locations. The publicly circulated agreement does not itself include the study’s underlying measurement locations and methodology. The Site Master Plan and Development Schedule are marked for insertion, evidently.
5. SCDES air permitting and post-operation testing. South Carolina Department of Environmental Services, “Valara Holdings High Performance Compute Center,” updated October 14, 2026. SCDES explains the revised formaldehyde emission factors, its decision not to reopen public comment, the unchanged permit classification and limits, and the requirement for site-specific formaldehyde testing within 180 days of turbine startup. This one is eye-opening if you live in the Spartanburg area, as we do.
6. Legal challenge to the air permit. Southern Environmental Law Center, “SELC appeals Valara air permit approval,” October 16, 2026. SELC announced its Request for Contested Case Hearing on behalf of Concerned Citizens of Spartanburg County and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Its filing challenges the public-comment process and the permit’s assessment of formaldehyde-related health risks, requesting reconsideration and a prohibition on continued turbine construction pending a corrected permit. These are the challengers’ allegations and requested remedies.
7. Differences among the three development agreements. November 3 county agenda packet, NorthMark agreement, Article VII, PDF pp. 80–81; AIB CLT1 LLC agreement, Article VII, PDF pp. 106–108; and 300 Jones Road Associates LLC agreement, Article VII, PDF pp. 136–138. AIB and Jones Road contain specified community-benefit payment schedules and requirements for annual reporting by environmental monitoring firms engaged by the companies. The NorthMark agreement does not contain equivalent provisions, although it establishes other reporting and compliance obligations. For the different tax and electricity arrangements, see Boschult, The Post and Courier, November 5. I’m not sure why I enjoy reading through these so much late at night after the kids have gone to bed, but I do. Weird.
8. Community-benefit payments and employment commitments. Washington, “Spartanburg OKs three data center deals,” November 5, 2026; and the November 3 county packet, Article VII of each agreement. The NorthMark agreement sets a twenty-seven-job target, and its shortfall does not constitute default. AIB’s initial-term community-benefit commitment totals at least $12.6 million, and Jones Road’s totals $9 million. Compare Sam Harrelson, “What the Drafts Let Us See,” Carolina Ecology, October 25, 2026, discussing the proposed NorthMark Community Benefit Fund removed between the October 19 and October 22 drafts.
9. Third-party beneficiaries and contractual enforcement. November 3 county agenda packet, NorthMark agreement, Article XVII, “No Third-Party Beneficiaries,” and Article XII, “Default and Remedies.” The provision limits enforcement of the development agreement by parties outside the contract. It does not independently eliminate rights or remedies available under other applicable laws.
10. Edith Stein and the experience of others. Please go read more Edith. She’s incredible. Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, translated by Waltraut Stein, 3rd revised edition (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989), especially Parts II–III concerning the essence of empathy and the constitution of the psychophysical individual. Stein’s distinction between another’s original lived experience and our non-primordial access to it informs the discussion of testimony and situated knowledge. The application to public deliberation and environmental accountability is a constructive extension, not a claim made by Stein herself. For related contemporary questions about data center development and regulatory revision, see Charlotte’s October 2026 extension of its moratorium and Loudoun County’s changes to data center land-use regulations.
11. Jeremiah 29:7 in the Hebrew and Greek traditions. I apologize, but I really do like to nerd out on this stuff with Hebrew and Greek (much to the chagrin of my PhD committee and comprehensive exams guidance). Jeremiah 29:4–7, especially the Masoretic Hebrew שְׁלוֹם הָעִיר (shalom ha’ir, “the welfare of the city”). The Greek Septuagint, Jeremiah 36:7, reads εἰρήνην τῆς γῆς (eirēnēn tēs gēs, “the peace of the land”). See A New English Translation of the Septuagint, “Ieremias,” p. 913; the Greek Septuagint text of Jeremiah 36; and A. W. Streane, The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, Together with the Lamentations, commentary on Jeremiah 29:7. The Greek also reads προσεύξασθε περὶ αὐτῶν, “pray for them,” where the Hebrew refers to praying on the city’s behalf. Brenton understands the Greek pronoun as referring to the people. These textual differences suggest considering land and inhabitants together, but their origin and intended theological meaning remain questions of textual interpretation.
Beneficial article. Well written. Thank you