A ‘wave’ of data center ordinances sweep through GA counties. How strict are they?

Caption

An aerial view of Meta’s Stanton Springs Data Center on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025, in Newton County, Georgia.

Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph

Throughout several counties in and around Atlanta, contractors are grading soil and importing building materials, and construction crews are hammering away to build warehouses with cooling equipment that will house massive, hyper-scale computing servers.

These server centers, colloquially known as data centers, are used for big tech companies, and modern amenities such as Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft, Google, and AI.

The facilities are quickly sprouting within 60 miles of Atlanta, where 26 data centers currently are under construction in the area, and another 52 planned, according to Baxtel, a data center information website.

As construction workers weld away in Bartow, Clayton, DeKalb, Troup and Fayette counties and beyond, busily working to bring promises of millions of dollars in state and local tax revenue and high-paying jobs, county commissioners and city council members who once openly welcomed many of these facilities are working to develop new laws that put limits on them.

Since March, eight counties and cities in Georgia have passed moratoriums, temporarily halting any data center development. Concerns over gargantuan amounts of water and energy use (and where it’s sourced), and a general lack of understanding of how to fit data centers into a place that doesn’t have building codes and zoning ordinances meant for these facilities, raised commissioners’ eyebrows.

“People just don’t understand (data centers), yet,” said Pike County Commissioner James Jenkins. “And I motioned a moratorium because it would create a better understanding of how to accommodate (data centers).”

Pike County was one of four counties to create a data center moratorium in September. Other moratoriums passed in September include Lamar, Troup, and Clayton counties, and the city of LaGrange.

Lamar County planning and zoning director, Anita Buice, said the commissioners didn’t specifically create the moratorium to update the code for data centers. The reason was more that industrial and commercial zoning needed updating. The county of 20,000 people learned in July that Amazon Web Services purchased a 985-acre development site for $270 million.

“Our code does not currently have the term ‘data center’ in it,” Buice said. “Our commercial and industrial zoning codes have not been updated since 2010, so we’ll look at data centers too while we clean up our code book.”

In Clayton County, two data centers have been approved in the last year. TA Realty has a small data center called Ellenwood on a 35-acre lot, and Digital Reality is operating another data center in Forest Park at 97 acres, spanning nearly 2 million square feet.

On Sept. 3, the Clayton County Board of Commissioners voted to impose a 120-day moratorium on data centers until Dec. 31.

Clayton County Vice Chair Alaina Reaves sponsored the moratorium and told the Ledger-Enquirer that people came to her with concerns about electromagnetic fields and water supplies.

Reaves said the Ellenwood data center is using a closed-loop process. According to Reaves, that means the water processed to cool the servers within the data center is recycled, so there isn’t a draw on Clayton County’s water.

The Clayton County Board of Commissioners “intends to study the effects of data centers on health, safety, and welfare of the County’s residents and businesses,” the Commission Sept. 3 news release said.

Assistant professor Brian Connolly at the University of Michigan researches and teaches real estate, land use and development law. He suggested moratoriums signal local areas aren’t ready for data centers.

“A jurisdiction would usually adopt a moratorium because it’s not ready for a data center to come,” Connolly said. “It’s a land use type that a lot of cities and local governments have not had to deal with, historically.”

Moratoriums allow governments to update codes or create an ordinance without new projects in development. It’s natural for an ordinance to follow after a moratorium.

Ahead of the counties that are now pausing data centers to evaluate and rewrite law in city and county code, half a dozen cities and counties have created data center ordinances since September 2024.

Connolly said it’s common for ordinances to come in “waves of adoptions.”

The spectrum of ‘protection’ on data center ordinances

The ordinances involving data centers in Georgia are varied in their priorities and rigor.

Some, such as Bartow County, still allow data centers with restrictions on noise and new buffer zone, a neutral zone between two different types of areas. Others, such as Jones County, require using closed-loop water. DeKalb County created a first-of-its-kind ordinance with different categories based on square footage and power demand.

“DeKalb would be the first I have seen that would create different data center categories based on square footage and/or power demand,” Water Policy Director Chris Manganiello of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper said.

The latest version of DeKalb County’s drafted data center ordinance outlines where data centers can be located, how large they can be, how far apart they must be from each other and from transit stops, and how they manage noise, power demand and water use.

Going on offense against data center overgrowth

“Lumpkin and Forsyth (ordinances) put significant guardrails that may effectively eliminate any data center or crypto operation from setting up shop in the community,” Manganiello said.

Lumpkin County Commission Chairman Chris Dockery said a utility provider called about a subdivision that would require a massive amount of electricity, which required the county to revisit its code book with “a sense of urgency.”

The county’s ordinance was proactive about setting rules on data centers before they ever arrived, rather than other communities which are trying to create ordinances while data centers are being built, such as in Troup County.

“They aren’t a good fit in Lumpkin County, they don’t produce a lot of jobs and the topography of the land isn’t conducive to big data centers,” Dockery said. “We don’t have a lot of public water and the water after it’s used to cool data centers is warm, and we have designated cold-water trout streams in half of the county.”

Their ordinance uses an all-inclusive definition, “compute center,” with crypto mines and data centers in the definition. It requires water from compute centers to not be more than 41 degrees for cold-water fisheries or 37.4 degrees for warm-water fisheries.

Forsyth County’s ordinance does not allow the cooling system for data centers to use the county water system.

Coweta County created a 180-day moratorium on data centers in May to “gather input from stakeholders, study how other counties are managing the issue and develop a well-informed ordinance,” Coweta spokesperson Cathy Wickey, said in an email on behalf of the county’s board of commissioners.

The Coweta County Board of Commissioners is actively working on a draft ordinance as the moratorium expires on Nov. 3. Their latest draft allows data centers in light industrial and industrial zoning districts, but with strict requirements on location, buffering, design standards, noise, lighting, traffic and utility capacity.

Zooming into Georgia’s metropolis, Atlanta council members decided in May 2024 to review zoning regulations around data centers. By September 2024, data centers were prohibited within the 22 miles radius of the Beltline overlay district.

The council members cited the significant growth in development in the region, skyrocketing 211% the year before and, using upwards of 730 MW of energy and data center’s impact to exacerbate water scarcity.

Efforts to make data centers more efficient

Dan Dioro, the vice president of state policy for the member-based Data Center Coalition, said the industry is significantly innovating when it comes to water use.

“Data centers are very motivated to squeeze every electron of the building as efficiently as possible,” Dioro said. “If there’s access to recycled water or infrastructure or reclaimed water, data centers are utilizing that.”

Dioro said data centers are part of a new set of demand on the system and the companies only build where they are legally allowed to build, working closely with local governments.

“(Data centers) work very closely with local governments and especially economic development directors on ensuring that they achieve the economic development goals of that community and that they are of course a right fit for that,” he said.

Against data centers? ‘We’ll take them,’ says one GA official

On the northern side of Atlanta, Bartow County, home to a myriad of billion dollar 21st-century industrial manufacturing facilities such as QCells solar manufacturing and a Hyundai battery plant, welcomed a data center with open arms. The facility is owned by Switch, near Cartersville, and there is a second on the way.

“We’re pro data center here in Bartow,” said Bartow County Administrator Peter Olsen.

That county’s ordinance, finalized back in January this year, focuses on creating a 200-foot buffer from the property boundary to development, focused on noise that would be compatible to “protect neighbors,” Olsen explained.

The county code doesn’t allow sound of 65 decibels or more over any 30-minute period from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., or 55 decibels over any 30-minute period from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m.

“Northwest Georgia is almost a subtropical rainforest,” he said, defending the significant amount of water for data centers in Georgia. “QCells and Hyundai Battery are absorbing 5 million gallons per day.”

Switch is powered by Georgia EMC, according to Olsen, with a 1,200 megawatt commitment.

Olsen said data centers are$20-30 billion investments in Bartow, and said they will bring $36 million dollars in tax revenue, reducing tax burdens on residents.

“If you’re against data centers, I can respect that, we’ll take them,” he said.

Reporter Margaret Walker contributed reporting for this story.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.