All right.

Okay.

How about now?

Okay.

All right.

Won't touch it.

So lots of different things that we would work directly with the developer, the contractors.

A lot of the big companies that we're seeing like Amazon or another blue chip, they're going to have a lot of independent consultants and engineers that are going to work with them.

Another thing that we can see is that a lot of times people will try to take an avoidance, we call that, sort of set their emissions at a cap that prevents a higher level of permitting.

Sometimes you'll call that a synthetic miner, sometimes you'll call that any number of things, but it's essentially saying I'm going to put in some scrubbers or I'm going to set my hours at a limited number, so I'm not crossing over and emitting certain chemicals and particulates into the air that are going to trigger an additional layer of permitting, again, Title V or PSD.

That's when you start to see developers and applicants need to have a public hearing or a public comment period just because the level of new emissions is so great that you know the Clean Air Act mandates that.

You might have seen recently we had our hearing in Richmond County for the Amazon facility.

That was a requirement of both the Clean Air Act for the public comment period, and then by the discretion of the division of air quality director to hold a public hearing so that the community could come and make its thoughts known.

So we carried that out last week.

Additionally, what we would say about air permitting is that if gas fire generation is necessary, sometimes we've seen proposals for gas-powered facilities or hybrid power facilities that bring in some gas.

It can also mean a new pipeline or compressor station to get that gas to the facility.

And each of those pieces of hardware can have its own permitting workflows and can take some time to get through and approve the plans.

Some of those may also have their own air permits.

So these can quickly become complicated regulatory frameworks and workflows.

However, these are also things that we are no strangers to.

So between the Fayetteville office and the Raleigh Central Office, this is something that can be pretty uh pretty easily navigated with the right advanced conversation with the right relationships.

Again, we like to begin conversations early and often to avoid surprises.

So again, you'll hear me say this a lot tonight.

If you have a development in mind, please send them our way, just so everybody is avoiding surprises, and we can talk with them about the required permits.

Another question that we like to ask is Is water actually involved?

Chances are there is going to be some level of water involved.

Um, but as my colleague from NC State was saying, not everybody uses a lot of water for cooling if they use cooling at all.

Some are fully air-cooled, and he was able to speak pretty fluently about the the interplay between water and and electricity use and how one rate would go up and how one rate would go down, depending on the technology applied.

Of course, the evaporative cooling, we also call that open loop, uses a lot more water.

And I'll tell you anecdotally, um, for what it's worth, the proposals that we have seen for the most part over the past six to eight months, um, just about all of them are proposing closed loop systems.

And so again, there are additives, you know, put in that water.

There are different things that some facilities are able to do to reclaim and reuse that water.

Um again, local utilities are going to be the front line in receiving that discharge if in fact it is discharged.

And so again, we go back to PWC and their permits to the plant.

And then, of course, you know, we as the permitters of those sewer plants would have some involvement in reviewing a draft permit, but our ability to directly regulate those discharges is limited unless they become a discharge to surface waters.

And so if we talk about the Cape Fear or any other basin, a lake or a river throughout the state, there's gonna be what we typically call loading limits.

Um if that water is impaired and there's been a rulemaking process that says you can't add any more of this chemical or this nutrient, that's gonna be much more difficult for us to write a permit for that discharger to the surface waters.

Because to discharge to a river or a lake, you're essentially getting the same level of permitting, an MPDES permit or national pollutant discharge elimination system permit that we would write to a sewer plant to do the same for their own treated water.

So with a private user, that's gonna be just as difficult to do because there's modeling and things like that.

It can take a couple of years to write those and gather all the data that we need to make a good decision.

Um but again, those are very rare proposals.

I've only seen one in North Carolina over the past two years, and that project was withdrawn as a proposal.

Um so again, we talk about uh, you know, the cooling water, but we also know that a lot of these are going to use sanitary sewer.

There's gonna be staff, there may be toilets, kitchens, things like that that are gonna have some type of discharge.

Um I have seen several proposals statewide, you know, they're gonna need some new uh new lines run, you know, new sanitary sewer lines run and things like that.

We obviously permit those, but we're not seeing the level of of major impact on the wastewater side as we would if somebody was using you know a major open loop cooling system.

Uh and again, I'll I'll skip a little bit of the particulars on the cooling system types.

Again, my colleague from NC State did a great job on that.

So we talk about you know what's in the water, things to prevent corrosion and rust, uh, things to prevent legionnaires disease as well.

We see viruses and things become a uh consideration, although that's obviously more of a health department thing at the local level to regulate.

Um top line here, our main concern is just ensuring that folks uh understand that at some point this water more than likely has to leave the facility somehow if it's if it's been drained for uh for system repair or if it's part of a regular blowdown and it needs to be filled back up from time to time.

So there's always going to be something to think about in that regard.

Um the other question that we see a lot of people ask is where's the water itself coming from?

Um getting a lot of questions lately about on-site wells.

We're seeing an uptick in facilities uh being proposed inside of abandoned industrial sites or decommissioned industrial sites.

Uh we're seeing several companies whose business model is to find old industrial facilities that already have power run to them.

They already have water and wastewater lines in.

Some of them are chosen because they have on-site wells.

Uh so a lot of the old textile mills, for instance, that we're seeing, particularly around the triad, for instance, a lot of companies are very attracted to those because they can just go in and fill up those closed loop systems.

They don't have to uh ink an agreement with the local water supply authorities, they can just get that out of the ground.