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Coweta County seeks tight zoning and utility safeguards in draft data‑center ordinance; staff told to refine definitions, water and power language
Summary
Commissioners directed staff to revise the draft data center ordinance to exclude crypto mining, treat data centers as conditional uses in LM (campuses permitted in M), require community meetings for rezonings, require environmental pre‑assessments, favor closed‑ or hybrid‑loop cooling over open‑loop, and to work with utilities on 'will‑serve' verification and utility capacity language.
Coweta County commissioners spent the bulk of the meeting reviewing a detailed draft data center ordinance, asking staff to tighten definitions and siting conditions and to work with utility partners and emergency services before the next draft.
Staff (Mister Fouts) recapped the process: the county enacted a moratorium in May that expires in early November, ran multiple public hearings and collected extensive public feedback via a website and written comments. He framed several foundational questions for the board: whether to explicitly exclude cryptocurrency mining, how to define the size/scale of a data center or campus, whether data centers should be allowed by right or require conditional use approval in light industrial (LM) or heavy industrial (M) zoning, and how to address utilities, water use and decommissioning.
On definitions and scale, commissioners agreed they want cryptocurrency mining excluded from the ordinance’s data‑center definition. Staff presented one example threshold — single buildings up to 500,000 square feet and below 50…
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