Within five minutes of the Hall County Board of Commissioners meeting starting on Thursday, multiple residents filed out after the Project Turbo, LLC data center was tabled.
Despite that, nearly 100 residents stayed with only Hall County resident Jodi White giving comments since she was the only one signed up for public comment.
“Since we’re adjourned and we didn’t get to speak, how many people here are opposed to Project Turbo, say I,” one resident said shortly after the meeting ended.
It was met with a resounded “I” from the dozens of residents that stayed.
District 3 Commissioner Gregg Poole made the motion to table it, with District 4 Commissioner Jeff Stowe giving a second with a unanimous vote to table until the Dec. 11 meeting.
“So that we can get a site visit set up,” Poole told AccessWDUN after the meeting adjourned. “We’re trying to find one that is similar size, similar type facilities, similar type with the closed-loop cooling system and all, something that will consume the same resources that we’re dealing with here.”
The data center
The proposed data center is 900,000-square-feet data center on roughly 119-acres of land off of O’Kelly Road.
The centers would actually be three buildings at roughly 300,000-square-feet each. There is no word yet on who would occupy the centers once completed.
The vote comes one day after a town hall was held by developers Chris Hoag and Cameron Grogan, where residents raised concerns about power and water usage.
Hoag told citizens that the expected power capacity of the project is between 400 and 500 megawatts, while the project is allocated for 225,000 gallons of water per-day.
“That’s a zero water use design,” Hoag said. “It’s a closed-loop marginal evaporative loss.”
AccessWDUN spoke to multiple residents prior to the town hall about their concerns.
“I think it’s going to mess with the water supply and create pollution,” a concerned citizen told AccessWDUN before the town hall. “I don’t even know who’s profiting off of this or how it will benefit the City of Gainesville.”
Non-profit and advocates speak out
AccessWDUN was also able to speak with Executive Director of non-profit Science for Georgia Amy Sharma as well as Georgia 12th District Congressional candidate and social media advocate Bri Woodson, or “The Controversial Blonde” about the data center before the meeting.
“In general, data centers take up an enormous amount of power and water,” Sharma said. “AI is not going anywhere and the internet is not going anywhere … what we’re really pushing for is making them be good neighbors.”
Sharma mentioned that although the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a rule earlier this year that allows Georgia Power to charge new data centers for any upgrades to infrastructure that they need to protect ratepayers, there are still a lot of unknowns.
“Who’s the arbiter … it’s too unknown and too nebulous to be of any comfort to anyone,” Sharma said.
Woodson said that the data center would be harmful to the Hall County community.
“We are an area with a lot of livestock, this is harmful to livestock,” Woodson said. “If something was truly good for the public … why do we have to be so secretive about it?”
Sharma added that the water usage of the proposed data center would be the equivalent of 2,000 to 11,000 people depending on the scale.
“Tabling isn’t a ‘no,’ it’s just ‘we’ll put this on the backburner until it calms down,’” Woodson added.
December’s meeting
The meeting on Dec. 11 will be preceded by a work session meeting on Dec. 9 at the Hall County Government Center.
The proposal being heard then still hinges on a site visit to a comparable data center.
The post Hall Co. Commission tables proposed data center until December appeared first on AccessWdun.
This Article was originally published on this site
