Hall County tables vote on massive data center project after residents raise concerns

Proposed data center tabled by Hall County for now

A proposal to build a 900,000-square-foot data center in Hall County has been delayed after residents and planning officials raised concerns about its impact on power and water supplies.

GAINESVILLE, Ga. - A proposal to build a 900,000-square-foot data center in Hall County has been delayed after residents and planning officials raised concerns about its impact on power and water supplies.

At a Hall County Planning and Zoning meeting Monday, Williams Brothers Development outlined plans for a 145-acre project on O’Kelly Road, named 'Project Turbo,' that would include three buildings, each about 300,000 square feet. The developer said the facility would create about 150 jobs and generate millions in tax revenue.

What they're saying:

Neighbors voiced frustration over what they called a lack of clear answers about how the energy-intensive project would affect their homes.

"They’re not giving us answers," said Jody White, who lives in Hall County. "We don’t want to end up, you know our lights are out, but we have a data center that’s up here running! We don’t have any water but these servers are being cooled!"

The developer said it has already arranged for its own power supply through Georgia Power. "While it’s using the same grid network that we use to draw our electricity from home, it’s not taking away from, in any stretch of the imagination, any of the power we consume today in the community," a representative said.

They also argued water demand would not undercut residents’ needs. "It can only consume what additional capacity that the municipal utility has available, so we’re not pulling from any existing load that we use for our cooking, our showers, our cleaning and what not," the developer said.

However, the developer acknowledged The City of Gainesville, which provides the water, has said it would not have enough water capacity if the data center reached the high end of its estimated usage. That possibility alarmed residents like Mandy Harris.

"It wasn’t that long ago we had a drought, and we were thirty feet down [at Lake Lanier] and we here in Hall County were in desperate shape where water is concerned so what’s going to happen then?" Harris asked.

Planning Commission member Shannon Davidson shared those concerns. "What kind of issues are we gonna have in the County if the City is saying they can’t do it? We don’t have letters of intent for any of these things and that was a concern of mine," he said.

Some Hall County taxpayers are concerned about a potential conflict of interest concerning Planning Commission Chair, Chris Braswell. Braswell works for Norton Commercial, which is selling the land to the developer. 

"They’re connected, personally connected, and it’s wrong," said resident Jill Cooper.

Braswell recused himself from the portion of the meeting regarding the data center. 

When FOX 5 asked Braswell about this after the meeting, he did not reply. 

The other side:

The developers left the meeting before speaking with reporters.

What's next:

Davidson made a motion to table the vote, which is now scheduled for Oct. 6. But he and the residents who attended Monday's meeting want the vote to be postponed even longer. "I hope we could push it out. I’m sure they don’t want to do that but we need more answers and we definitely don’t have those," he said.

Commissioner Stan Hunt, who led the discussion, declined an interview, saying he would wait for the October hearing.