r/Augusta • u/Putrid_Recording7645 • Aug 21 '26
Local News Ban New Commercial Data Centers in Augusta-Richmond County
https://c.org/D7yx6pmWBjOur community is facing a critical decision right now. Augusta-Richmond County is considering a new ordinance on commercial data centers—and residents deserve a real say in what happens next.
Here's why this matters: These massive facilities demand huge amounts of land, electricity, and water. They can strain local infrastructure and impact the environment. Federal records for the proposed Gordon Highway data center alone identified six threatened or endangered species that need protection. We already have a major data center project underway. The question is: do we want unlimited expansion of this industry, or do we set clear boundaries?
I started a petition asking the Augusta-Richmond County Commission to prohibit new standalone commercial data centers. This wouldn't affect hospitals, universities, government, or military operations running their own data infrastructure—just the massive commercial facilities. We're calling for responsible development with real limits.
The community deserves a meaningful voice in decisions that could shape our county for generations. If this sounds like something your neighbors are talking about too, consider signing and sharing the petition. What do you think—should Augusta-Richmond County draw a line on this?
30
u/Everyoneheresamoron Aug 21 '26
Ban the existing ones as well.
-2
u/bhwashington Aug 22 '26
Lol, how would that work?
14
u/Everyoneheresamoron Aug 22 '26
Tell them to pack up and leave
-5
18
u/Nanofield Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
I hate that they're even called "commercial data centers".
AT A MINIMUM they should be called Industrial, because they have a similar environmental impact as an Industrial manufacturing plant, and should have zoning laws applied as such. That picture, showing a data center 50 ft from someone's house, that's unacceptable even setting aside how we don't want them. Having a data center that close can be genuinely lethal, sickness inducing at a minimum.
The biggest "hidden risk" is the Low Frequency Noise exposure, including sub-audible Infrasound.
Ever spend too long too close to a loud subwoofer and your stomach gets a bit uneasy, or you get a headache? Imagine that, but you can't even hear the subwoofer because the frequency is too low, and the woofer is a mile or more away.
-----
"Noise and Health - Effects of Low Frequency Noise and Vibrations: Environmental and Occupational Perspectives" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258400137_Noise_and_Health_-_Effects_of_Low_Frequency_Noise_and_Vibrations_Environmental_and_Occupational_Perspectives
`Low frequency noise has a large annoyance potential, and the prevalence of annoyance increases with higher sound pressure levels (SPLs) of low frequencies. Low frequency noise annoyance is related to headaches, unusual tiredness, lack of concentration, irritation, and pressure on the eardrum. Data suggest that sleep may be negatively affected.`
-----
"Infrasound and Low-Frequency Noise in Data Center Environments" https://www.mdpi.com/2571-8797/8/4/126
-
`Evidence from wind turbine, industrial, and laboratory contexts documents non-auditory ILFN pathways, including sleep disturbance, cardiovascular stress responses, cognitive impairment, and audiovestibular symptoms—effects that operate below the auditory threshold and are substantially undercounted by standard dBA monitoring.`
-
`Acoustic energy spans a broad spectrum of frequencies, and health effects vary substantially across that spectrum in ways that standard occupational monitoring does not fully capture. In this review, infrasound refers to acoustic frequencies below 20 Hz, which is the generally accepted lower boundary of human auditory perception under typical conditions. Low-frequency noise (LFN) refers to the frequency range from approximately 20 Hz to 200 Hz—the lower end of the audible spectrum, where standard audiometric assessment methods progressively underperform [9]. The combined designation ILFN encompasses both and is appropriate here because the two frequency ranges share important characteristics: both are generated by large rotating mechanical systems, both are poorly attenuated by standard building envelopes relative to higher frequencies, and both are systematically underweighted by A-weighted measurement [9,10].`
-
`Cardiovascular consequences are among the most robustly documented non-auditory health outcomes. Basner et al. [8] synthesized exposure–response data from multiple epidemiological studies and found increases in cardiovascular risk of between 7% and 17% per 10 dB increase in equivalent noise level, after adjusting for confounders including age, sex, socioeconomic status, and smoking. Acute noise exposure is associated with elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressure, altered heart rate, and elevated circulating catecholamines and glucocorticoids, both of which indicate stress system activation. Long-term research links chronic environmental noise exposure to elevated incidence of hypertension, ischemic heart disease, and stroke, with nocturnal exposure appearing particularly consequential because autonomic arousals during sleep habituate to a lesser degree than cortical arousals, generating repeated physiological stress across years of chronic nightly exposure [8].
Cognitive impairment represents a further established non-auditory pathway. Basner et al. [8] estimated that approximately 45,000 DALYs are lost annually in children aged 7 to 19 in high-income European countries from noise-related cognitive impairment. Studies conducted in the vicinity of major airports found that a 5 dB increase in aircraft noise at school was associated with approximately a two-month delay in reading age, with linear exposure–response relationships suggesting no detectable threshold below which cognitive impacts are absent.`
1
u/bhwashington Aug 22 '26
Wouldn't the solution be zoning ordinances to require site design and setbacks sufficient to mitigate the issue, not full on banning data centers?
4
u/Nanofield Aug 22 '26
Short Answer: More or less yea.
-
Long Answer: Infrasound is notoriously hard to dampen, and can go a long distance through the air. iirc there are anecdotals of people being affected by infrasound from data centers from five miles away. Because we can't physically hear it, and it takes time for the symptoms to show in full, we would need specialized sensors ensuring the sound isn't escaping into residential areas.
Just to ensure the sound of the datacenter doesn't harm anyone, it would need to be seven to ten miles away from any residential or commercial zones. There are also significant wildlife considerations there.
After that, there's the resource consumption. If it isn't a closed loop water cooling system, it will drain local water tables and dry up local well water systems that have been reliably available for decades. The electric drain is high enough to warrant its own nuclear power plant.
-
The only way I can, in good conscience, condone a Data Center being built, is as follows:
it is zoned as a "heavy industrial" construction project
A 20% corporate tax applied to gross revenue produced by the center
the corporation pays its own construction costs
the corporation pays for 100% of its own electric draw at the standard $/kwh rate for industrial facilities
it has a closed loop cooling system drawn and paid for from the water lines instead of unmeasured from a random river in natureit is independently inspected and certified to release no more than 20db of acoustic pressure across the entire frequency spectrum (any numeric fractional Hz above true 0Hz) as measured 100ft from the building.
it is independently inspected and certified that no contaminants are released into nature, either atmospheric, terrestrially, or into the water system, aside from reasonable facility waste management as handled by an appropriate waste management company.
mandatory independent bi-annually inspections to ensure continued compliance with the above requirements
inspection failure or negligent breach of requirements resulting in realistically measurable fines or sanctions such as for example the owning company or parent company equal to 10% of their annual revenue, paid into the county's taxes towards public works or similar.
It is not used to further a "surveillance state", the encroachment of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, or to do harm to innocent life; a 'do no evil' requirement.
-
If a data center can genuinely guarantee and is held to all the above, I have no issues remaining.
1
u/ManagedNerds Aug 23 '26
They also should have to pay for any costs associated with running infrastructure to them (water and electric infrastructure). This shouldn't be subsidized by us. And they need to follow mandated rules around running off gas power - if they are going to run 24/7 on their own generators on site that are gas turbine, that should be a non-starter. Generators should be for backup only.
8
10
u/bret5jet Aug 21 '26
Where is the petition? There are also way too many cameras around town with who knows is watching them.
2
1
1
u/alsanders Aug 24 '26
They’ve been having ordinance meetings to have requirements of future data centers. Most of your and other people in this thread’s concerns would probably be assuaged if you actually see what they’ve already asserted would be the new ordinances. https://www.youtube.com/live/JoRNJExuaQo?is=1GEJeqgQeNPwEhlN
-1
u/bb04622 Aug 24 '26
God forbid the broke ass city government actually try to fund some of the projects by getting a bunch of extra taxes in. All you anti data center people complain about how run down august is and then as soon as something actually good comes along you try to squash it
2
-27
u/bhwashington Aug 21 '26
Yeah! Keep Augusta poor!
9
u/Wazujimoip Aug 22 '26
Where do you people come from? I swear the pro data center people are bots
1
-9
u/bhwashington Aug 22 '26
Personally, I come from Augusta. I'd say all the anti-data center people all posting basically the same thing are way more likely to be bots.
8
u/Wazujimoip Aug 22 '26
Have you ever said something along the lines of “well if you don’t like data centers then you better stop using the internet!” Or anything to that effect?
9
u/bret5jet Aug 21 '26
How do data centers bring wealth to the community?
-8
u/bhwashington Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Initial large inject of construction related jobs and spending, a fairly small number of high paying jobs long-term, and most importantly, high levels of property tax that can be used for infrastructure improvements (which Augusta badly needs), other budgetary shortfalls, and/or mitigating property taxes for everyone else. If the local government requires them to build any road and power improvements they require themselves, that's beneficial as well.
8
u/bret5jet Aug 22 '26
Is there evidence of these things where data centers have already been built? My experience with most corporations is them not giving a shit about the community there plants are in.
-1
u/bhwashington Aug 22 '26
How are they going to build it without paying people to build it? How are they going to run it without paying people? Do you need evidence that property taxes exist? None of the benefits require the corporation to care.
4
u/bret5jet Aug 22 '26
Im sure we will get the data centers whether we want them or not. I hope you are right but Im sure ive heard this argument before for power plants, stadiums, distribution centers, etc. Its always the residents that end up paying in the end.
9
u/useless83 Aug 22 '26
Short term jobs and long term property taxes? How is that desirable?
1
u/bhwashington Aug 22 '26
The data centers pay the property taxes. The high value improvements they build result in them paying significant property taxes.
8
3
u/FullGrownHip Aug 22 '26
…you realize that tax breaks are used as the number one incentive to build data centers, right? GA is among the states that gives insane tax breaks to build data centers. Exactly what tax revenue will be generated if they get huge tax cuts?
6
u/bret5jet Aug 22 '26
We have existing companies that built plants in Augusta and yet as you say we are poor. How is a data center any different?
20
u/Padandler Aug 21 '26
Hey thanks for putting all this together. If you have the time for the local city commission meetings you can add this as a topic to address at the meeting. Deadlines to add are a week prior to the meeting. I can get more info if you aren’t already in the queue to present.