A county in the US state of Georgia is facing opposition to the construction of a massive hyperscale datacenter campus, reflecting the growing concerns of communities in America and elsewhere over the rush to build more cloud and AI infrastructure.

Controversy highlights the growing conflict between an industry that wants to take advantage of the ballooning demand for compute ... and local communities that are alarmed by the prospect of these giant IT warehouses popping up in their backyard

A spokesperson for Coweta County in Newnan, near Atlanta, told The Reg that the county had decided to institute a moratorium on datacenters while it gathers input from various stakeholders to develop informed guidelines.

The move comes after concerns around the $17 billion datacenter development were voiced by locals.

Residents packed into a meeting of the Coweta County Board of Commissioners this week to express their opposition to "Project Sail," the name given to a proposed $17 billion bit barn development in the region, according to climate change website [1]DeSmog .

According to DeSmog, lobbyists for the datacenter sector had made various efforts to weaken provisions in the proposed planning regulations, such as those relating to environmental impact assessments, which were later removed.

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Residents, meanwhile, are asking for stricter controls on noise levels and air pollution, plus restrictions to ringfence rural areas from development.

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A spokesperson for Coweta County told us that its Board of Commissioners has been working diligently to develop a draft ordinance relating to bit barn planning, and sent us the following statement:

Datacenters are still a relatively new land use and are not explicitly addressed in most zoning codes. As interest in siting datacenters in our county grows, we want to ensure that any future development supports economic growth while also protecting the long-term interests of our community. The moratorium provides us the necessary time to gather input from stakeholders, study how other counties are managing this issue, and develop a well-informed ordinance.

A public hearing regarding the rezoning petition for Project Sail will be held at a future date, but a moratorium on datacenters is currently in place.

We also asked Prologis for comment, but it had not responded by the time of publication.

A local citizens' action group, [5]Stop Project Sail , claims on its website that the development will be one of the top four largest datacenter sites on the planet if it is allowed to proceed, encompassing 831 acres (over 3.3 million square meters) and featuring 13 massive data hall buildings.

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The group cites concerns about the proposed project's energy and water consumption, claiming it would require over 900 megawatts of electricity and could consume as much as 9 million gallons of water per day. The power needs would require major upgrades to the local energy infrastructure, which the residents fear they would end up paying for through higher bills or increased taxes.

The site has been acquired for development by global industrial real estate giant Prologis, which has been expanding into the fast-growing datacenter sector.

On a [7]website promoting the development , the firm claims that the number of buildings has now been reduced from 13 to nine, and that this location was chosen because of its proximity to existing power lines. It also claims, as many such developers do, that it will create economic opportunities including skilled jobs and consistent revenue to fund amenities like roads, emergency services, and public schools.

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The controversy highlights the growing conflict between an industry that wants to take advantage of the ballooning demand for compute while the AI bubble lasts, and local communities that are alarmed by the prospect of these giant IT warehouses popping up in their backyard.

[9]How low can colo go, asks JLL, as datacenter vacancy rates near zero

[10]Molten salt nuclear reactors slated to power Google datacenters in 2030

[11]Boy riding bubble realizes what he's on, asks for more air

[12]Equinix signs deals for nukes and fuel cells to power its AI bit barns

The industry is aware of this, as it was one of the [13]first topics up for discussion at the Datacloud Global Congress in Cannes earlier this summer.

"We have communities that don't want us there," complained Val Walsh, Microsoft's VP for Cloud Operations & Innovation. "We still have this lack of alignment from the general public as to why datacenters are needed, because they don't quite connect the fact that their entire life runs through datacenters."

Andy Buss, IDC's Senior Research Director for European Enterprise Infrastructure, said that the sheer scale of some of the recent developments, like Project Sail, seem to be a part of the problem.

"Most datacenters don't have PR issues, but hyperscale-level DCs and the new AI Factory datacenters certainly do," he told The Reg , adding that these are eating up additional power, often taking the new renewable capacity that has been added to the grid.

In Ireland, for example, which has a lot of datacenters for its size, these facilities now account for [14]nearly a quarter of all electricity consumption , more than rural and urban households in the country.

There is also the fact that datacenters generally lead to few local job opportunities, once construction has finished and the site is up and running. According to [15]some sources , even the largest bit barns typically employ fewer than 150 permanent workers, and some have as few as 25. ®

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[1] https://www.desmog.com/2025/08/20/georgia-county-puts-off-key-data-center-vote-after-public-backlash/

[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aKiUHoKBSEbwgfM-heC34QAAAQA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aKiUHoKBSEbwgfM-heC34QAAAQA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aKiUHoKBSEbwgfM-heC34QAAAQA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://stopsail.com/

[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aKiUHoKBSEbwgfM-heC34QAAAQA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.cowetaprojectsail.com/coweta-lp/

[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aKiUHoKBSEbwgfM-heC34QAAAQA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/19/jll_vacancy_rate/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/18/google_smr_datacenters/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/15/boy_riding_bubble_realizes_what/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/14/equinix_signs_deals_for_nukes/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/05/datacenters_have_a_public_image/

[14] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2024/

[15] https://goodjobsfirst.org/big-tech-promised-jobs-cities-gave-millions-where-are-the-workers/

[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/