Water: our wells, the wetlands, and the runoff

Where our water comes from

Statesboro doesn't use a river or a lake for tap water. The City pumps it from the Floridan aquifer, a huge layer of underground limestone that holds water under the whole county and much of south Georgia. The City's own water report says the water comes up through six active deep wells.

The City's data center ordinance says every data center "must connect to the public water and sewer systems." So whatever this building uses comes out of the same wells as your kitchen sink.

We've asked Ogeechee Riverkeeper for help understanding how this project, along with all the others coming to our region, could affect the Floridan aquifer. Their staff are in touch with us.

The wells around us

This has already happened here. To get water to the Hyundai Metaplant, Bulloch and Bryan counties drilled four big wells, all in Bulloch County. Together they're allowed to pump up to 6.625 million gallons a day from the Floridan aquifer.

Georgia's Environmental Protection Division (EPD) said the closest wells could lose "up to 19 feet in a worst case scenario." That's why the state made the counties set up a $1 million fund to fix or replace private wells that lose pressure or go dry within five miles of I-16 and Highway 119. About 1,039 private parcels sit in Bulloch County's part of that circle.

Got a private well near I-16 and Highway 119 that's losing pressure? The well hotline is 1-888-353-0820.

EPD also promised: "there will be no saltwater encroachment into any wells in Bryan or Bulloch counties." We want that to stay true.

The University of Georgia warns that "heavy pumping can lower groundwater levels, particularly in drought-prone or heavily developed regions," which can threaten drinking water and private wells.

Why this matters for Burkhalter: on paper, this one building uses little water. But it isn't alone. Our Georgia Data Center Watch tracks 29 data center sites, crypto mines and local rules across Georgia, many of them in our region, plus giant projects like Hyundai. Every one of them draws on the same aquifer, or on power plants that also need water. And more are coming: Pew Research counts 141 data centers planned in Georgia, most of them headed for rural areas like ours (Pew, April 2026). Nobody is adding it all up. And data centers bring other problems when they cluster together: see what happened to the air in Virginia.

What the builder's water plan says

The City requires a "Water Feasibility and Management Plan." The builder's engineer, Thomas & Hutton, wrote one on July 8, 2026. Read the water plan (PDF, 3 pages). Here's what it says, in plain words:

• Workers: about 12 people, at 25 gallons each a day. That's 300 gallons a day.
• Cooling: a sealed loop that holds 6,000 to 10,000 gallons of water mixed with a chemical called glycol. It just goes around and around. It loses a little each day, so it needs 30 to 100 gallons a day to top it off.
• Total: about 330 to 400 gallons on a normal day, up to 1,000 on a peak day.
• A year: about 156,000 gallons, counting a refill of the cooling loop once a year.
• No wells on the site. All water would come from the City.

The catches

1. It's a paper number. The plan says its numbers are "conceptual in nature and will be confirmed upon final engineering design and end-user operating conditions." There's no end user yet. So nobody knows the real number. See Who will run it?

2. Saving water uses more power, and power uses water. The University of Georgia puts it simply: "Saving water often means using more electricity for cooling and vice versa." And "electricity generation often requires water," at the power plants. So the water doesn't disappear. Some of it just moves to somewhere we can't see. That ties back to the 99 megawatt question.

3. The comparison was stretched. The plan says apartments on this land would use about 170 times more water than the data center. It compares the data center to 240 apartments. But the plan the City approved for this land in 2024 was about 87 cottage homes. Using the plan's own number (300 gallons per home a day), 87 homes would use about 26,100 gallons a day. On paper, homes still use more City water. But the gap is much smaller than the plan makes it look, and the data center's number isn't final.

4. The City's own words don't match. The ordinance was written because data centers have "extraordinary electrical and water demands." The builder's plan says about as much water as one or two homes.

5. Thousands of gallons of chemical. The plan says about a quarter of the cooling loop is glycol: roughly 1,500 to 2,500 gallons. It would be drained every 12 to 18 months and trucked away. The plan says handling "will comply with applicable local, state, and federal regulations," but there's no spill plan in it, on a property with wetlands.

6. Water use can't tell if it shuts down. The ordinance says the permit ends 12 months after the data center stops running, "as determined by the lack of use (i.e., utility consumption)." A sealed loop uses so little water that the City's water meter couldn't tell a running data center from an empty one.

7. The builder's own papers don't agree. The rezoning application says the building's peak water use is 400 gallons a day, and that 250 apartments would use 25,000 gallons, "approximately sixty times greater." The water plan says 400 is the average, the peak is 1,000, and 240 apartments would use 72,000 gallons, about 170 times more. Same builder, same land, two different sets of numbers.

One small thing: the plan lists the address as "6439 Burkhalter Road." The site is 6539.

The wetlands

Wetlands work like big natural sponges. They soak up rain, clean it, and help stop flooding on the land around them.

The City's own report says there are wetlands on this property, and describes them as under review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that decides whether wetlands can be filled in.

The builder signed off on it too. Its rezoning application says the wetlands were "delineated by Resource and Land Consultants, and are currently under review for permitting with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for proposed on-site impacts" (page 3). The builder then signed that the application is "true and accurate to the best of my/our knowledge" (page 6). (Read the rezoning application.)

We checked. We asked the Army Corps' Savannah District for its records under the federal Freedom of Information Act. On September 29, 2026, it told us it has no records for this site: no wetland map, no request for a decision, no pre-application meeting, and no permit application. It searched the address, the developer, its engineer and its owners, from January 2024 through August 31, 2026. (Read the Army Corps letter.) Georgia EPD's Watershed Protection Branch also told us, on August 31, that it found no records (W2026-3003).

So what Army Corps review is the City's report talking about?

On September 2, 2026, Mayor Jonathan McCollar answered us quickly and directly: Council will not wait for the Army Corps' final wetland decision before considering a Special Use Permit. We appreciate the straight answer.

There's one more reason this matters. The ordinance lets a builder count preserved wetlands toward half of the tree cover it's required to keep. If the wetlands get filled in instead, something has to make up for that.

Where the rain goes

A big roof and parking lot means rain can't soak into the ground. It runs off instead.

The concept plan puts a detention pond, a big basin that catches runoff from the roof and pavement, near the homes side of the property. The ordinance says stormwater has to follow the City's code, which "may require" engineering under Georgia's stormwater manual. It also says facilities "should be designed" with soak-in surfaces on at least 20% of parking spaces.

It's still not public where that pond would drain, or whose land would get the overflow in a big storm.