Residents in other GA cities fighting data centers for water use
The ongoing battle between residents who want to maintain farmland and mega data centers that need storage for increased technology isn’t solely a Bartow County problem. Residents in Social Circle in Walton County and Mansfield in Newton County face similar issues.
Since Meta started building its center in 2022, Mansfield residents have complained of water pressure and quality issues. A couple who owns a farm nearby talked about their water woes to the liberal media group More Perfect Union. That video can be found here.
According to the couple, water pressure has been almost non-existent since Meta started constructing its data center. Water coming through their pipes has mud and brown elements to it, according to the couple.
Bartow County has been in the news lately regarding data centers because of the three proposed. One is by the historic Etowah Indian Mounds off Bates Road while another proposal is for land across from Barnsley Resort in Adairsville. A third proposal is in the works for Taylorsville farmland in the Stilesboro area.
The Bartow Planning and Zoning Commission will hear the rezoning request for the Adairsville project tonight at 6 p.m. in Courtroom D at the courthouse at 135 W. Cherokee Ave. Developers want to rezone the land from agricultural to industrial to build the complex. More about the meeting can be found here.
The meeting of Commissioner Steve Taylor to consider the planning commission recommendations was rescheduled for May 14 at 10 a.m.
The Stilesboro project is an 8.8 million-square-foot data center campus, according to plans filed by engineering services firm Kimbley-Horn. A zoning meeting has been set to discuss that project on May 19th at 6 p.m.
Social Circle, Georgia, a city in Walton County once known as the setting for the first episodes of the television show The Dukes of Hazzard, is facing a similar issue with a proposed data center.
Its planning commission voted in late April with a 3-2 vote to recommend rezoning to the city council. The company seeking it is Atlanta-based SC Infrastructure LLC. Another Atlanta group, TPA is involved in the project. They are a real estate investment and development firm. That 453-acre land tract is owned by Cumming Investments Inc. in Duluth. Plans are for 338 acres to be used for a 2.5-million-square-foot data center.
The tech company Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, owns the Mansfield data center known as the Stanton Springs Campus. That campus is below I-20, south of Social Circle.
Meta finalized the deal in late 2021 with Phase 1 to be completed by the end of 2025 for $750 million. While news reports tout that Mansfield and Social Circle are in Atlanta, both are around 45 miles from the city, just as Bartow County.
Social Circle and Mansfield have small towns and farms now competing with the data centers for water and utilities. A petition is up on Change.org to prohibit data centers in Bartow County. You can find that petition
Melody Dareing is a freelance writer for publications in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Germany. She is a former news director for Adelphia Channel 4 and WBHF Radio.