Nearly 1,000 Georgia residents confronted OpenAI and Effingham County officials Thursday about a $20 billion data center project that had been negotiated in secret for months before being announced earlier this week without public input.
The Current reports that the AI startup best known for developing ChatGPT held a community listening session at Effingham College and Career Academy to educate residents about the planned development, but the more than three-hour event featured more shouting than listening. Attendees from all walks of life expressed concerns about environmental consequences and fears of increasing electricity costs.
Many residents were particularly upset about the secretive nature of the deal, which promises OpenAI significant tax abatements while county officials claim it will bring millions of dollars to local government coffers. Larry Holloway, a retired paper mill worker who has lived in Effingham County for 50 years, criticized the process. “It stinks,” Holloway said. “That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.”
OpenAI selected Effingham County after considering multiple sites around the country due to available utility infrastructure and existing zoning permits at the industrial zone where the data center will be built, according to OpenAI Vice President for Communications Aaron McLear. The company will receive short-term tax abatements during construction of the 2,600-acre project, but will become the county’s largest taxpayer after it goes online in 2028.
“It’s a done deal,” McLear said. “It was the right fit for everyone.”
McLear acknowledged concerns about the project among local officials during negotiations. The company paid for a delegation, including Effingham County commissioners, to travel to OpenAI’s data center in Abilene, Texas, earlier this year to address those fears. Despite the public backlash, McLear promised local residents would soon see positive results, including $80 million in community benefits such as sports fields and free training for school students on OpenAI products.
Effingham County Commissioner Roger Burdette confirmed he was part of the Texas delegation. Before the visit, he said he was skeptical about data centers, fearing noise pollution and lack of job creation. However, the Abilene facility changed his perspective. “I changed my mind,” Burdette said as he fielded dozens of questions from irate voters. “You should trust us on this.”
Brandt Herndon, CEO of the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority, told reporters the county was initially approached about the data center around fall 2025. As people approached him with questions and frustrations, Herndon encouraged them to have an open mind and direct tough questions to OpenAI employees manning dozens of tables with educational material about the planned data center design, engineering and water use.
“I think if everybody leaves with some additional information, they truly can make an educated decision as to how they feel about the project,” Herndon said.
The positive engagement with data centers by Effingham County officials contrasts with other area municipalities. Camden County became the first county in Coastal Georgia to vote for a data center moratorium. Bulloch County, to the north of Effingham, is discussing a moratorium. Residents in Port Wentworth, in neighboring Chatham County, are petitioning for a moratorium after city council rejected their concerns and passed a pro-data center ordinance last year.
Savannah resident Bill Wright considers himself a data center refugee, having moved from Northern Virginia nine months ago to escape similar facilities. “I’ve seen the industry blueprint before,” Wright said. “I can tell you what they’re going to do: they’re going to accentuate the positive. They’re not going to talk anything about the impacts. They make promises with no guarantees, and this is something people here are going to regret.”
Breitbart News previously reported that environmental activist Erin Brockovich is now leading a campaign against AI data centers:
“I woke up on day three going, ‘Oh my God, it’s not one town and one aquifer and one data center. It’s the entire country,’” the consumer advocate, perhaps best known for building a 1993 case against PG&E for groundwater contamination in Hinkley, California, said.
Brockovich added the reports she has received involving data centers all seem to have something in common: residents said they were not made aware of the new facilities in their area, and oftentimes woke up to find that construction was already underway.
“They had no idea,” she said. “They woke up to this construction. ‘We weren’t informed. City Council didn’t tell us anything’ — because these big tech group came in and put these City Council members under a nondisclosure.”
Brockovich also claimed that this has happened “in every state.”
AI data centers have become a political battlefield without clear sides — conservatives and leftists both oppose them when these resource hogs are built in their back yards. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at the Current here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.