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Residents, state lawmaker raise environmental and noise concerns about data centers
Summary
Speakers at the Aug. 4 meeting warned that large, windowless data centers can damage roads, consume water and create persistent noise; residents and State Rep. David Hamrick urged the county to consider smaller footprints and alternative cooling as mitigation.
Multiple speakers used public comment time at the Clayton County Board of Commissioners meeting to object to the scale and impacts of proposed data centers. Mickey Garber said data centers are a "necessary evil" in their current form, decried their large footprints and water use, and suggested mitigation such as smaller facilities, solar power, recycled brown water for cooling and underground siting to reduce sound and visual impacts.
State Representative David Hamrick (House District 79) told the board that data-center construction can take years, "tears up the roads, pollutes the air, the water," and noted replacement cycles for equipment. Hamrick asked the county to weigh such long-term infrastructure costs against other priorities and suggested focusing resources on targeted public-safety investments (he mentioned the Shot Safe program) rather than widespread subsidies for industrial-scale data centers.
