What’s changed since Memorial Day — and why it matters for our region’s
future
Opening: Memorial Day
to Today
(September 9, 2025) - Back on May 25, 2025, our News
and Views feature compared how Charlotte and Hickory frame the Catawba
River’s challenges. The piece underscored a central tension: Charlotte’s scale
versus Hickory’s sustainability. Charlotte draws more than 120 million
gallons a day from the river, driven by rapid growth and urban sprawl.
Hickory, by contrast, uses just 12 million gallons a day but feels
downstream risks more acutely — sediment, pollution, and equity concerns when
big-city withdrawals rise.
That original article argued that
without regional fairness, the Catawba would become less a shared lifeline than
a contested resource. This update looks at what’s changed in the three months
since Memorial Day, and why the stakes for Hickory have only sharpened.
What’s New Since May
1. Statewide
Moratorium on Interbasin Transfers
In June, the North Carolina General
Assembly passed H850 (Session Law 2025-74), placing a moratorium on new
interbasin transfers (IBTs). A companion bill, H694 (Session Law
2025-77), ordered a statewide water-transfer study. This action effectively
pauses Charlotte Water’s IBT application to move 30 MGD to the
Yadkin-Pee Dee Basin.
What it means for Hickory: The pause buys time.
Upper-basin communities now have a window to press for conservation benchmarks,
return-flow accounting, and drought safeguards before any IBT proceeds.
2. Water Quality
Warnings
This summer, Mecklenburg County
issued a harmful algal bloom advisory on Lake Norman, upstream in the
Catawba chain. While not Lake Hickory itself, the event underscored nutrient
stress across the system.
Meanwhile, Catawba Riverkeeper’s
Swim Guide reported a patchwork of safe swimming sites alongside
intermittent bacteria spikes. For Hickory families, that means weekly data
checks remain essential to know which creeks and coves are safe.
What it means for Hickory: Upper-basin
stormwater management, septic upkeep, and tributary monitoring are no longer
“nice-to-haves.” They’re frontline defenses for safe recreation and affordable
water treatment.
3. PFAS Rule Rollback
In mid-May, the EPA revised its 2024
PFAS drinking-water rule. Strict limits remain for PFOA and PFOS,
but compliance deadlines for other PFAS compounds have been extended to 2031.
What it means for Hickory: Utilities have
breathing room before mandatory upgrades, but residents face prolonged
uncertainty. For an upstream basin like Hickory’s, this is an opportunity to
double down on source reduction and pretreatment agreements with
industries — cheaper than end-of-pipe fixes later.
4. Regional Planning
Front and Center
Charlotte Water’s February 2025 update
stressed growth, climate variability, and regulation as drivers of its IBT
push. But with the moratorium in place, attention shifts to the Catawba-Wateree
Water Management Group and Duke Energy’s basin models. South Carolina also
issued new WaterSC guidance this summer, signaling interstate
coordination will tighten.
What it means for Hickory: The decisive moves
will come not from Charlotte City Council chambers but from multi-state
planning tables. Hickory’s voice must be heard there.
Why It Matters
For Hickory, the Catawba River is more
than a backdrop — it’s the city’s growth ceiling and identity anchor. A
hollowed middle class cannot thrive if its water base erodes. Rising housing
costs, stagnant wages, and out-migration already weigh on the region. Add water
insecurity, and the Shrinking Center theme grows sharper: when the
foundations of community life hollow out, so does opportunity.
Charlotte’s framing of the river as a
growth enabler contrasts with Hickory’s insistence on equity and
sustainability. But unless these perspectives reconcile, the result is
competition, not stewardship. For Hickory, the next decade is about defending
its upstream position while proving that conservation, reuse, and fairness
can balance growth with security.
Next Steps: What to
Watch
Over the next 12–18 months:
· State hearings: Expect NC’s DEQ and
EMC to seek basin input on IBT rules. Hickory voices must press for basin-first
accounting — conservation, return-flows, drought triggers.
· Quality monitoring: Harmful algal
blooms and bacteria spikes will return each summer. Residents should use tools
like Swim Guide and support stormwater and septic upgrades in city
budgets.
· PFAS engagement: With deadlines
extended, upstream cities should lobby for pretreatment partnerships to
cut pollutants before they reach the taps.
· Regional alignment: Keep eyes on CWWMG
and WaterSC processes. These bodies — not just Charlotte — will shape Hickory’s
water future.
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🧠Opening Reflection:
Infrastructure of the Mind
There are roads no one warns you about. Not literal ones,
but internal corridors—paths you travel when things fall apart, when silence
becomes your companion, and when you start building something without knowing
whether anyone will ever see it.
What I’ve built here—this platform, this work, this
vision—didn’t come from optimism. It came from necessity. Not just the need to
speak, but the deeper need to stay upright in a world that punishes clarity and
rewards noise. Most people think resilience is about toughness, about pushing
through. But real resilience—the kind that lasts—is mental infrastructure.
Quiet. Structured. Repetitive. Relentless.
This is what no one tells you: If you want to keep doing
meaningful work in a collapsing culture, you can’t rely on adrenaline. You
can’t rely on applause. You need something stronger than motivation. You need
systems of thought. You need conviction turned into architecture.
That’s what I’ve had to develop. Not just workflows for
publishing, or schedules for analysis, but habits of mind that don’t break
under pressure. This isn’t about self-help. This is about strategic survival.
If the work is going to last, the mind behind it has to be built to endure—not
just intellectually, but emotionally. That means knowing how to navigate
rejection without folding. It means moving forward when the metrics say it’s
not worth it. It means holding your focus when everything around you tries to
steal it.
What I see all around me—locally, nationally, everywhere—is
collapse without comprehension. People are overwhelmed not just by the facts of
decline, but by their inability to process it. They weren’t trained to think
structurally. They weren’t taught to sit with ambiguity. And so they either
shut down or get lost in reaction. They lack infrastructure of the mind.
But those of us who’ve spent years on the outside—thinking
in the margins, connecting threads, working without approval—we’ve had to build
this internal scaffolding the hard way. That’s why we’re still here. That’s why
we’re still building, even as others burn out.
I’m not here because I’m smarter or braver. I’m here because
I built a structure that could carry the weight. A structure made of pattern
recognition, disciplined reflection, and deep emotional grounding. And that
structure—quiet, often unseen—is what allows the external systems I’ve built to
exist at all.
The future we’re trying to shape won’t be carried by slogans
or saviors. It will be carried by people who have done the inner work. People
who’ve created systems inside themselves that can weather chaos without
becoming it.
So yes, I’m still here. Still writing. Still watching. Still
laying bricks no one sees. And if I’ve lasted this long, it’s not because I’ve
avoided collapse. It’s because I’ve already faced it—and I built something
inside that doesn’t.
That’s the real infrastructure. And it’s the only kind that
survives.
--------------------------------------
📤This Week: (Monday) - The Foothills Corridor - Chapters 3&4 - Globalization and Economic Extraction -explores the devastating collapse of the Foothills Corridor. Chapter 3 details the human cost of globalization—factories shuttered, families uprooted, and dignity stripped as $20-an-hour jobs became part-time warehouse shifts. Chapter 4 exposes civic breakdown: disengaged voters, hollowed institutions, media decline, and outside extraction. Together, they reveal how economic betrayal and political apathy fractured a proud region, leaving resilience to those who refused to quit.
(Tuesday) Dear Rachel: Life Is Wonderful – August 19, 2025 – Episode 4 - features Norman Harcourt in conversation with Rachel. They explore optimism and the power of planning—but also question whether hope alone can sustain a community where inequality, affordability, and civic decay are glaring. The episode balances generational wisdom with present struggles by discussing wealth, privilege, economic upheaval, and the tension between nostalgic progress and current hardship
(Thursday) - Catawba County’s Quiet Mosaic: Citizenship, Language, and the Burden of Belonging - August 21, 2025 - reveals how roughly 6.7% of residents were born abroad—many naturalized, many still navigating visa processes. It shows that around 13% of households speak a non-English language, putting elderly Hmong and Spanish-speaking families at odds with under-resourced services. Communities concentrated in low-cost neighborhoods face deeper vulnerability. The post argues that without targeted, multilingual outreach and translation, these residents remain marginalized despite their economic and civic contributions.
(Friday) - The Foothills Corridor : Chapter 5 - The Era of Loss: Jobs, Identity, Youth - August 22, 2025 - where globalization and automation erased tens of thousands of jobs, dismantled community identity, and drove young people away. Factories once tied to family pride and stability disappeared, leaving economic insecurity, cultural shame, and demographic hollowing. The chapter portrays grief in daily details—empty ballfields, shuttered diners, absent youth—while urging truth-telling as the first step toward renewal and reinvention.
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⭐️ Feature Story ⭐️
Data Centers: Time for Rules That Protect Communities
1) What Should the Development Rules Be?
If data centers are going to keep multiplying across the country, then we need to stop treating them like glamorous “tech investments” and start treating them like what they truly are: utility-scale infrastructure projects. They devour electricity and water, consume hundreds of acres, and leave behind facilities that are difficult to repurpose when companies move on.
That means rules. Strong ones.
First, new facilities should be required to build on brownfields or industrial land, not chew up farmland and forests. Second, they should be barred from using drinking water for cooling. Instead, they must rely on air-based systems, reclaimed wastewater, or other sustainable methods. Third, companies should be forced to offset their power demand with new renewable energy — if they draw the electricity of a small city, they should put equivalent clean power back into the grid.
On top of this, counties should charge impact fees based on megawatts consumed, with the revenue dedicated to schools, water and sewer systems, and broadband. Transparency should be non-negotiable: quarterly public reports on energy, water, and tax payments. And before a shovel hits the ground, companies must post a decommissioning bond to guarantee cleanup when the facility eventually shuts down.
These aren’t obstacles. They’re common-sense protections. And if a company resists them, the question practically answers itself: are they here to be good neighbors, or just to extract our resources on the cheap?
2) Why Counties Chase Data Centers
Local governments, from Hickory to Mooresville to small towns across the Piedmont, chase data centers with the same fervor they once used to court textile mills or furniture plants. The reason is simple: the promise of a big tax base and the prestige of being chosen by “Big Tech.”
A billion-dollar facility looks impressive on a balance sheet. It generates splashy headlines and gives politicians something to boast about at election time. Because these facilities don’t belch smoke or bring a parade of trucks, they’re marketed as “clean” industry — modern replacements for the factories we lost.
But the promise doesn’t match the reality. A single campus costing over a billion dollars may create fewer than 200 permanent jobs. For a county of 150,000 residents, that’s a rounding error. Worse, to land these projects, counties often hand out enormous tax breaks, which gut the actual revenue.
So what’s left? Facilities that strain power and water systems while giving back little in return. In the end, taxpayers end up subsidizing operations that were supposed to bring prosperity.
3) Growing Community Pushback
Across the country, people are beginning to see through the hype. Since 2023, more than $64 billion in data center projects have been delayed or blocked by community opposition. This resistance isn’t partisan. Republicans and Democrats alike are raising alarms about the costs and trade-offs.
In St. Charles, Missouri, residents stopped a secretive AI project after learning about its resource demands. In Indiana, citizens continue to protest a Google facility over water use and electricity consumption. In Mooresville, North Carolina, a project tied to Dale Earnhardt’s widow collapsed under public pressure. And in Virginia, the epicenter of global data center growth, backlash has become so strong that local officials who supported new facilities lost their re-election bids.
This is not an isolated trend. In the Netherlands, nitrogen emissions triggered national limits on new projects. In Chile, communities protested Google’s water use during a drought. These examples all underscore the same point: data centers are no longer seen as unquestioned blessings. They are viewed as extractive operations, and residents are demanding accountability.
4) The Risks of Building in Rural Areas
The reason rural and semi-rural counties are targeted is obvious: they have open land and leaders eager to attract investment. But the risks are far greater here than in urban cores.
Water strain: Millions of gallons a day may be pulled from local supplies, competing directly with farms and households. In drought-prone areas, this is a recipe for conflict.
Grid pressure: These facilities draw as much power as a small city, forcing expensive upgrades to substations and transmission lines. The bill for that infrastructure often lands in the laps of everyday ratepayers.
Locked land use: Once a data center goes up, hundreds of acres are locked away for decades, preventing the land from being used for housing, farming, or other industries that could employ more people.
End-of-life liability: When the company moves on — and eventually it will — communities are left with hulking, highly specialized shells that are expensive to dismantle and difficult to repurpose.
In short, the costs are local, while the profits are global.
5) The Bottom Line
Data centers are not going away. Demand for them will continue to grow as our world goes digital. But without strong rules, they risk becoming the new version of the old textile mills: facilities that extract value, leave scars, and give back far less than they take.
Counties should stop being dazzled by billion-dollar headlines and start protecting their people. If we insist on smart siting, resource protections, impact fees, and accountability, then data centers can coexist with our communities.
If we don’t, we’re simply trading one cycle of extraction for another.
We’ve all seen the reactionary, non-systems types. They are the Monday morning quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight, quick to critique but slow to build. They hold on to grievances and pull them out when they think someone else is vulnerable. They may look busy running around from fire to fire, stamping them out one at a time -- when they usually caused them -- but in the end they waste energy on symptoms, confuse motion with progress, and eventually burn out. Without structure, they collapse. At best, they survive only when someone else bails them out.
A systems person works differently. They carry macro-vision. They are critical thinkers who get to the root cause instead of being distracted by surface noise. They see complexity, design durable solutions, and value structure over chaos. Where the non-systems person reacts to the same problem over and over, the systems person breaks the cycle and begins to rebuild.
But being systems-oriented doesn’t mean being rigid. You can’t build frameworks so tight that they snap under pressure. A true systems person still has to be nimble — able to adjust, adapt, and even call an audible when circumstances demand it. The discipline is in knowing the difference between an audible that responds to new reality and one that simply repeats old mistakes.
In my life, I’ve learned that the first reaction to a problem is natural. But if the same issue surfaces again and again, you must ask whether you have the will to face the structure beneath it. Ignore it, and exhaustion is guaranteed. Address it, and you begin to move forward.
That’s the difference between reaction and renewal. One ends in burnout. The other offers the possibility of rebuilding with purpose. In a community like ours — in Hickory, in Catawba County, across the Foothills Corridor — the choice between those two paths is not abstract. It is the difference between decline and endurance.
---------------------------------
Why I Represent the Systems Person
I represent the systems person because I have built the very infrastructure of systems into my work. My output isn’t random writing; it’s structured through frameworks, methods, and feedback loops that allow me to take complexity and make it usable.
The SIFT System
I didn’t want to get lost in endless notes or scattered facts. So I designed the SIFT System — a protocol for categorizing, filtering, extracting signals, and layering metadata. That turned research from chaos into order. It’s not just a way of organizing; it’s a repeatable engine I can run on any subject.
Compendiums and Deep Research Sequences
I don’t just write articles in isolation. I build Compendiums and series with deliberate sequencing — one part establishes baseline (socioeconomic), another dissects lifelines (access and security), another unpacks demographic realities. Each body of work is interlocked, each laying groundwork for the next. That is a system — a knowledge architecture with forward planning. Two more sections of this thread are soon to follow.
Executive Summary and Cheat Sheet Format
I created Executive Summary and bullet-point cheat sheets for every Deep Research report. That wasn’t just convenience; it was a system for accessibility. A policymaker, journalist, or resident can take the full analysis or the executive-level digest. Same information, two channels. That’s design for durability and reach.
Publishing Calendar as Operating System
My weekly structure — Tuesday and Thursday articles with weekend News and Views — is not a random schedule. It’s an operating system. Each piece feeds the others, allowing for rhythm, redundancy, and audience conditioning. It turns individual articles into a sustained civic intelligence cycle.
Media Infrastructure
Even the platforms themselves — The Hickory Hound, The Hound’s Signal, YouTube — aren’t silos. I set them up as interlinked nodes in a broader Shell Cooperative intelligence framework. Blog → Substack → video → (eventually) zine → public debate. Each part is a system inside a system.
Adaptive Layer
And because no system survives if it’s brittle, I’ve built in the ability to call audibles — to spin off a new weekly themes and creative multimedia productions (like Dear Rachel), to pivot ideas into articles, videos, or messgaes on the various platforms; being able to adjust scheduling when real-world events demand it. The infrastructure isn’t rigid; it’s disciplined but nimble.
This is why I say I represent the systems person. My infrastructure proves it. I don’t just produce work — I design frameworks that can carry it forward, adapt under pressure, and hold together long after one piece fades. Where others chase output, I build systems that endure.
🕰️In Closing:
Haiku:
Silent roads within,
Patterns built to bear the weight—
Order outlasts noise.
Fortune Cookie Message distilled from these News and Views:
“Strength comes not from applause, but from systems built to
endure. Protect your community with rules that outlast the hype, and resilience
will carry you where promises cannot.”
