Testimony on S902 centers on water reporting, ratepayer protections and whether DES or PSC should lead siting reviews

Witnesses and committee members spent the bulk of the hearing on S902, a bill to regulate data-center siting and related infrastructure costs, focusing on three questions: protecting residential ratepayers from subsidizing data centers, making site-level water use transparent, and determining the right regulatory home for siting and environmental review (DES or the Public Service Commission).

Lynn Teague of the League of Women Voters testified that "data centers pay a lot of property taxes but don't create a lot of jobs," and warned that nationally data centers’ electricity costs are often subsidized by other users. Teague urged guardrails so that directly attributable infrastructure costs and generation are not borne by nonparticipating customers, and she argued that siting and environmental regulation would be better placed at the Department of Environmental Services (DES) than at the PSC because DES has stronger environmental expertise.

John Roof, a volunteer with AARP South Carolina, urged long-term financial safeguards to protect taxpayers from stranded costs if a developer or operator fails and recommended requirements such as multiyear collateral or other surety to cover potential obligations.

Ben Townsend, Google’s head of infrastructure strategy and sustainability, described the company’s long-term investments in South Carolina and emphasized Google’s site-level water reporting. Townsend said Google began publicly reporting site-level water use in 2022 and, referencing the Berkeley County (Moncks Corner) campus, gave a 2024 water-withdrawal figure of roughly 850,000,000 gallons with approximately 776,000,000 gallons estimated as evaporative loss/consumption. Townsend also said Google structures energy contracts so it covers the costs of generation and transmission attributable to its operations and argued that transparency and earlier community engagement reduce local opposition.

Committee members raised three recurring concerns: how to balance NDAs and commercially sensitive engineering data with the public’s need for footprint information, how to ensure utilities and developers bear direct infrastructure costs (including via bonds or collateral), and how to prevent environmental harms such as excessive water draws near sensitive areas (Colleton County and the ACE Basin were cited). Senators described local controversies in Spartanburg and Kershaw counties that fed public mistrust and stressed that any final statute should include clear delivery of data, funding responsibilities and interagency coordination.

No formal vote on S902 occurred in this hearing; senators and staff indicated follow-up testimony from utilities and possibly additional technical experts would be needed before the measure advanced. The subcommittee adjourned after inviting Google and other witnesses to provide follow-up materials and potential technical briefings.