The Greene County Board of Commissioners had a brief agenda for its second monthly meeting on Feb. 10.
During the 20-minute regular session, the commissioners discussed the possibility of placing an emergency moratorium on data centers due to one expected to be built within the county.
According to the agenda report, the county’s zoning ordinance has “multiple provisions addressing light and heavy industrial use.” The statement included that staff would like to modify the ordinance requirements to be “unique” for data centers.
The moratorium was requested due to an increase in data centers being established across the country, as well as to allow local governments time to make the necessary ordinance adjustments.
During the meeting, John Shrupe, a Greene County resident, spoke to the commissioners about why he supports the moratorium and believes the resource would make a positive impact on the county. He mentioned that he has a career background in IT, specifically in data centers.
“[The Data Center] could be a good thing for Greene County,” Shrupe said. “I did some research, and a data center has 20-50 times the valuation of a warehouse, so think about that in the same size footprint. In terms of property tax value potential for Greene County, that’s huge, and at the same time, these are high-skilled jobs.”
Shrupe noted to the commissioners that, based on his research, the data center would be more of a “tax generator” than a “job generator.”
“Those jobs are typically for IT technicians, and so that’s a good kind of job to bring to the county,” Shrupe said. “It’s low-traffic, unlike a warehouse or factory, and you don’t have regular deliveries, or have many trucks going on-and-off the road, so you get a high tax value.”
In another point, Shrupe mentioned that implementing a data center sounds like a good deal, if the company paid for their own “local infrastructure.” Regardless, he says that cooling and water are a slight concern due to possible excessive use.
“We don’t need somebody to run millions of gallons of water; there are closed-loop water systems, and closed-loop CO2 cooling systems,” Shrupe said. “Both Monroe and DeKalb counties are looking at regulations to have forced closed-loop systems and CO2 systems; so there’s probably some regulations in the works around Georgia that you could tap into.”
The Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to place an emergency moratorium on data centers. Upon the decision’s enactment, the moratorium takes effect until March 11, meaning that during that time, any applications or proposals related to the data center will be denied.