A massive data center has been proposed in Butts County, raising concerns about the Ocmulgee River Basin’s capacity to support this and other planned data centers in the region. Pictured are paddlers on the Ocmulgee River in Butts County. Georgia Rivers/Joe Cook
A massive data center project backed by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and his family could be coming to Butts County, but many of the project’s details are still unknown.
Jones, a Republican, is running to be Georgia’s next governor.
The Highway 16 Interstate Health Development near Interstate 75 owned by Jones’ father is set to include a 450,000 square-foot hospital, 1.2 million square feet of medical office space and 11 million square feet of data centers – making it one of the biggest data centers currently planned in Georgia and placing it among the largest ever built by today’s standard.
The estimated $10 billion project is expected to go through more than 4.5 million gallons of water per day, more than tripling Butts County’s current water usage, and generate nearly $92 million per year in annual tax revenues when it is completed by 2040.
That’s just about all the information publicly available on the project, and those details come from a two-page development of regional impact filing that was submitted to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
The lack of information is a problem for environmental advocates like Fletcher Sams, executive director of the Altamaha Riverkeeper.
“Here’s what I don’t know: I don’t know how many megawatts it is. I also don’t know the cooling technology that they will use to cool the chips,” he said. “Those things are very important for me to know because the concern that I have for the location of it is that it’s in the upper Ocmulgee basin, and I’ve got 24 other data centers projected to come into that basin. The issue that I have with that basin is that between now and 2060, that region is going to see approximately 740,000 new residents.”
Decision-making on data centers left to local officials
The Georgia Department of Community Affairs recently approved new rules to bring large-scale data center developments under official state review, but critics say the rules fail to fully account for the cumulative burden the facilities have on the state’s energy and water supplies.
The amendments to its “developments of regional impact” process, for the first time, explicitly list “technological facilities (including data centers).” This comes after a self-imposed pause in processing regional impact reviews for data centers that was meant to give the department time to clarify the rules, DCA Commissioner Christopher Nunn said during a legislative subcommittee meeting in August. Some local governments began applying previous rules for impact reviews not intended for data centers since the projects did not fit under any of the previously specified development types, leading to a lack of consistency across the state.
Hwy 16 Interstate Health Base File-00 (1)
While other proposals for data centers moved forward without a state review during the months-long pause, the Butts County development includes a hospital and commercial areas, which was enough to trigger a regional review.
Yet, the main issue, according to environmental advocates and community organizers, is the limitations of the process itself: The state’s impact review process is designed to be a communication tool, not a regulatory one.
“This simply ensures that neighbors are talking to neighbors, that cities are talking to counties, that other stakeholders are engaged in a process,” Nunn said to the legislative subcommittee at the time, stressing that his state agency serves merely as a “repository” for data, and the final regional impact report is purely advisory. The local government “maintains the authority to make the final decision on whether a proposed development will or will not go forward.”
The reliance on local government autonomy and information sharing leaves the state’s natural resources vulnerable to depletion, environmental advocates say.
But for Butts County, proponents of the mega project say the tax revenue would allow the county to advance and compete with neighboring metro areas. Residents often have to travel out of the county for many amenities, which is “not conducive to a good community,” said county manager Brad Johnson. He said that the development – called River Park – would diversify the county’s tax base, which currently largely comes from residents.
“We’re looking forward for some commercial or industrial tax generation to help take the burden off of our citizens, so I think not just Butts County, I think the entire region will benefit by the proposed project,” Johnson said.
Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy at the Data Center Coalition, a national association for the data center industry, said in a letter submitted during the public comment period on the revised regional review process that any new rules should consider the economic benefits data centers may bring. Attempts to reach the coalition for a comment for this story were unsuccessful.
“These tax revenues support investments in community priorities like education, transportation, and public safety that help enhance the quality of life for Georgians,” Diorio said.
Butts County’s planning commission is set to hear the developer’s application to rezone the property to mixed-use development in December, Johnson said, and the county commission can consider the application beginning in January, starting with a public hearing. Once rezoned, developers can begin construction.
Concerns about water usage
If you’ve ever sat down to watch a movie with your laptop on your lap and felt your legs start to become uncomfortable from the warmth, you know that computer components heat up when they’re doing their jobs. Data centers contain a lot more hardware than your laptop and perform complex calculations, generating massive temperature increases.
Keeping everything cool enough to function requires a lot of water – hundreds of thousands or millions of gallons per day – and Sams said it’s just not clear whether Georgia’s rivers can provide for all the planned data centers plus population growth and the power needs that come with that.
“Of the 25 data centers that I am tracking in the Ocmulgee, only nine have DRI information available,” Sams said, referring to the state impact review. “Of those nine, they’re going to withdraw close to 10 million gallons on top of the other withdrawals.”
Sams said Georgia has seen concerns over water usage surrounding large projects in recent years, pointing to the Bryan County Hyundai plant that has sparked concerns over water use.
“I’m worried about us over issuing withdrawal permits in the Ocmulgee basin for these data centers and for the power generation for the data centers when there is no backup,” Sams said.
For years, Georgia allowed the data center boom to expand without clear, statewide metrics, leading to what advocates call a “data vacuum,” a term Kristen Stampfer, director of Coastal Communities United, a nonprofit working to preserve rural communities, used in a letter submitted to DCA during a recent public comment period.
“These projects, collectively, represent an immense and largely unaccounted-for draw on Georgia’s finite resources … The proposed Project Sail in Coweta County alone demonstrates the scale of the challenge: its daily water use could reach 9 million gallons and its energy demand of 900 MW rivals that of a small city, yet it falls outside a rigorous review,” Stampfer said.
‘It’s not sustainable’
It’s not just water that has advocates concerned about the spike in data centers. All that new digital number crunching needs a lot of electricity – Georgia Power has claimed that data centers will consume about 80% of the new power generated in Georgia through 2031.
But like the water draw numbers, projecting exactly how much of Georgia’s juice will be squeezed out by data centers is a tough job, says Amy Sharma, executive director of Science for Georgia, a science advocacy nonprofit.
“If all the planned ones that we have found – which by the way all of these numbers are estimates based on publicly available information like newspaper articles and like DRI reports and stuff like that. So who knows? We’re not getting exact numbers from the data center developers themselves – there’s about 40 plans for the state that would take up 14 gigawatts,” Sharma said.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 14 gigawatts is enough energy to power 1.4 billion LED lightbulbs.
“It’s just bonkers,” Sharma said. “There’s no other word for this besides bananas, right? Like it’s just off the rails. It’s not sustainable.”
Utility rates have been rising in Georgia and were a major issue for Democrats, who flipped two seats currently held by Republicans on the five-seat Georgia Public Service Commission running on energy affordability. The two incumbents had voted to approve six rate increases over the last two years, resulting in an estimated average annual increase of about $500 for the average household.
The politics
The Butts County property has been at the center of a political battle over hospital regulations and alleged self-dealing in the past.
Jones came under criticism in 2023 for a push to rewrite rules for new hospitals in a way critics said was catered to allow for a hospital to be built on property owned by Jones’ father.
That effort fell short, but Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill easing those hospital regulations last year.
Jones’ push toward loosening those restrictions has already become campaign fodder in the Republican gubernatorial primary.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, who is also jockeying to be the Republican candidate for governor next year, accused Jones of using his office to line his family’s pockets.
“If you honor me by allowing me to be your next Governor, unlike the Lt. Governor, I will promise you this: I will not change the rules or rig the system to enrich myself or my family on your backs or the backs of our fellow Georgians,” Carr said on social media in October.
A billboard standing over the Butts County site reads “Burt Jones’ $10 billion family project, Rewritten laws. Family profits. That’s Burt Jones’ family payday.”
The billboard was paid for by Keep Georgia Strong Action Inc., an independent campaign group that supports Carr.
Jones’ spokesperson Kayla Lott dismissed the issue.
“This is a simple rezoning application by a private company,” she said. “It’s a nonstory.”
“As for Chris Carr, he’s not a serious candidate. He’s grasping at straws because he’s stuck in a distant third place, his fundraising has collapsed, and the only people paying attention to him at this point are the ones on his payroll,” she added.
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