Editor’s Note: This story has been updated twice with comment and subsequent clarification from Effingham County.
OpenAI’s hyperscale data center site plan review has been removed from the agenda for the Effingham County Commission’s regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting.
The move comes as county leaders try to tamp public outrage about the data center plans, which were negotiated in secret and announced in late July.
The county requested more time to review the site plan so the company agreed to a short postponement that should not delay the project timeline, an OpenAI spokesperson said in an e-mail to The Current GA on Monday.
A county spokesperson, via email, confirmed OpenAI’s statement about the postponement. The county’s own announcement on Facebook a few hours earlier attributed the delay to a request from Octans Georgia, OpenAI’s local affiliate. That Octans request was simply a formality done at the county’s request so the item could be removed from the agenda ahead of time, the spokesperson wrote.
Browse Data Centers & Coastal Georgia
Stories on projects, policy, legislation
The county’s development authority hired a public relations company in the wake of public backlash, spending $77,000 from mid-April through July to try to answer questions and concerns about the planned data center.
County leaders say that according to their projections, the OpenAI facility will become the largest taxpayer in the county when it reaches capacity, bringing in bring in an estimated $870 million in property tax revenue alone over 15 years, even with the tax discount the company is getting. In recent days, OpenAI has promised to pay the county school district more than $4.8 million to cover school meals for public school students for one year.
Questions will be raised about the whole project tonight at a data center town hall hosted by Georgia Conservation Voters and One Hundred Miles in Springfield. Panelists include environmentalists as well as the two Democrats who sit on Georgia’s utility regulation board, Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard.
Effingham residents have posted on multiple Facebook pages about their concerns with the design of the data center, the water usage and potential to damage the environment. In the wake of Tuesday’s changed meeting agenda, speculation grew about the appearance of the delay. Some people commented on alleged changes in site sketches noted between earlier and more current drawings, others noted the bigger political picture.
The commission meeting coincides with the scheduled arrival of the “AI Data Center Revolt” bus, a project chaired by January 6 co-organizer and Tea Party co-founder Amy Kremer.
