No Data Centers in Statesboro.
A transparent view of community support for denying final approval of the proposed Burkhalter Road data center and protecting Statesboro neighborhoods from future data center development.
New · Georgia Data Center Watch
29 sites and local rules across the state: 7 data centers filed or approved, 4 suspected sites, 11 crypto mines, and 7 moratoriums or local rules. Built from open records requests, state filings and news reports. Tap any dot for the details and the source.
Open the WatchAttention
Join the fight to stop the coordinated attack on our region from big tech. Let's show them we won't allow corporate takeover of our land and pillaging of our resources to build facilities that will be obsolete in a few years and litter our landscape for decades.
Together we can all make a stand against a single corporation. No matter your race, creed, nationality, political affiliation, identity, who you love, how you love, or what you love, we all agree. Let's show them exactly how many of us don't want to placate corporate interests anymore.
New Map: every data center site we are tracking in Georgia In the news WSAV, Oct. 6: "'Protect Statesboro' leads resistance against local data center" Statesboro Herald, Oct. 2: "Group called Protect Statesboro plans petition for election to repeal data center ordinance" WTOC, Sept. 22: "Candler County commissioners hear public comment on data centers"
Active signatures verified inside city limits
City-limit and council-district totals include addresses verified to date. Address review is ongoing, while all active signatures remain included in the overall petition total. Districts are assigned only after an address is verified inside Statesboro city limits.
02 Proposed Site
6539 Burkhalter Road · Statesboro, Georgia · City Council District 5
03 Before Final Approval
The rezoning did not give final approval. Before Council votes on the Special Use Permit, residents should be able to see who will run it, how it will run, and what it will cost us. Here are six things we still don't know. Tap one to learn more.
The builder asked Georgia Power for up to 99 megawatts, one under the 100 megawatt line where Georgia's strongest protections for regular customers start. Under 100, the deal is private until it's signed. Whether this deal covers the grid upgrades is in a private contract nobody here can check. We're asking Council to review the contract, confidentially, before voting.
Read more →The money study was paid for by the developer, using the developer's numbers. Almost all the promised money is property tax, and the state auditor says these deals get oversold.
Read more →No operator has been named. The City's noise, water and gas rules measure real machines, and nobody has picked the machines yet.
Read more →Nobody has said how many diesel backup generators there would be, how big, or where they'd sit. The City's testing rules and the state's air permit both depend on knowing.
Read more →The builder's own noise test found the land already over the City's low-rumble limit, at every spot tested, before anything was built.
Read more →Our tap water comes from the Floridan aquifer. The builder's water number is "conceptual," and the Army Corps has no record of the wetland review the City described.
Read more →Council should not vote to approve the Special Use Permit without first receiving these material details.
A letter to Statesboro City Council
Dear Mayor and Council,
We love our community and ask for a seat at the table. Please vote no on the Special Use Permit for this data center so we can amend the ordinance together to establish stronger protections that keep us safe and benefit residents.
This process has moved faster than the speed of trust. While council and staff have had nearly a year of research, discussions, developer input, and a data center tour in Atlanta, most citizens lacked those opportunities. At the August 18 rezoning hearing, those of us who were there watched the council chambers fill 30 minutes before the meeting started, and the atrium fill with just as many people who couldn't get in. Many didn't get to speak. The Mayor called for "one more individual," then the hearing closed, and one resident asked that her objection be noted because she "felt the Council was not adequately hearing from its constituents" (August 18 minutes, page 8). Even now, residents are still learning how data centers impact our homes, water, and power bills.
Most residents are unfamiliar with local government processes like annexation and rezoning. Many feel notice was insufficient to participate in a decision with such vast community impacts, leaving us unable to trust the process at this time.
The current ordinance protections are insufficient. Key information is lacking regarding regulatory differences between a 99MW and 100MW contract, and how the city can enforce its ordinance without reviewing contracts before execution. A brief filed with the PSC, citing testimony at a PSC hearing, highlights significant loopholes in the PSC's own regulations, showing that when a company ends its contract early, Georgia Power's big-customer contracts only require minimum bill payments for two years, potentially leaving residents to pay over a decade of costs on a 15 year contract.
Why do we say "experiment"? There is still so much nobody knows about data centers: how loud they get at night, how much power and water they really use, and what happens when they shut down. Some health effects are already known, like the air pollution from backup generators and the lost sleep that comes with constant noise. Others are still being studied, like the low vibration that people living near data centers say makes them sick. And this is new technology that keeps changing, so new health risks could show up years from now. If neighbors get sick, the cost doesn't stop with them. It could raise health costs for the City's own employees, for the Board of Education, and for every family paying its own medical bills. And nothing in the ordinance makes the company pay for health costs or damages like these. This data center would sit right next to our homes. The builder's own application points to the big Georgia Power lines, 230kV and 115kV, that already cross this land. We believe that's why this spot was picked: it's cheaper to plug into power lines that are already there than to build new ones somewhere else. That makes the people of Statesboro, including the retired professionals who chose these neighborhoods to settle down in, a corporate guinea pig.
Statesboro should not be an experiment. Please vote no on this permit and work with us to fix the ordinance.
Your neighbors,
Protect Statesboro
Neighboring fight · Candler County
Next door in Metter, a developer has filed to build five data center buildings on about 470 acres next to the Metter-Candler Airport. Candler commissioners dropped their moratorium on October 5, and the rezoning application is now officially filed. Across I-16, Metter is taking in another 100 acres. Read the public records behind it.
Public record
Every open records request we've made and what came back, every letter we've sent to the PSC, the City and our senators, and how this project got here, step by step.
Self-reported affiliations among active petition signers
Community-connection categories overlap because a signer may select more than one. The Bulloch County resident total counts each active signer once, even when both residency options were selected. Self-reported residency is distinct from address-verified city-limit status.