Kimberly Owens
speaker
582 appearances
8 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 24 Aug
Kimberly Owens’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
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Yes.
However, the map of existing and proposed data centers in Charlotte falls on an old pattern of crescent and wedge social and environmental inequalities that our research tracks, histories of redlining, segregation, urban renewal, and gentrification created, histories to take heed of.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Kibri Hutchison Everett.
I'm an environmental scientist and doctoral researcher at UNC Charlotte, where my work focuses on studying the impacts of data centers.
On behalf of the Charlotte Mecklenburg climate leaders, I'm here tonight to urge you to adopt a temporary moratorium on new data center approvals so the city can develop a comprehensive regulatory framework.
Through years of working in the environmental field, I've seen environmental injustices arise when the burdens associated with major infrastructure systems
are concentrated in or near communities that are already experiencing disproportionate environmental, economic, and public health stressors.
As we already know, Charlotte already contains communities dealing with cumulative burdens tied to industrial activity, air pollution exposure, extreme heat, energy burden, and historic underinvestment.
In West Charlotte, for example, there are nearly 40 facilities listed in EPA's toxic release inventory that have toxic chemicals being held on site.
Through a spatial analysis I conducted for the proposed digital realty data center in Morris Chapel Road, I identified that within a two-mile radius of that site, there already are facilities emitting formaldehyde, mercury, and heavy metals.
The proposed site is also located approximately half a mile from the Catawba River, as well as Interstate 85, which contributes significant air pollution and chronic noise exposure, as it is already.
These types of spatial analyses should be standard components of the review process before data center projects are approved.
A temporary moratorium is not anti-development.
It is a reasonable planning tool that would allow the city to establish clear standards, evaluate cumulative impacts, determine appropriate siting and buffer requirements, and develop environmental justice safeguards before irreversible land use and infrastructure decisions are made.
I respectfully urge the council to support a moratorium so that Charlotte can develop a transparent, evidence-based framework that protects residents and ensures that future decisions are made with adequate public safeguards in place.
Thank you.
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