(The Current) — Proposals for data centers will be subject to state review under new rules the Georgia Department of Community Affairs adopted Thursday at its quarterly board meeting in Savannah.
The board unanimously expanded what constitutes a “development of regional impact” to explicitly include data centers. The addition of a category called “technological facilities” was needed because DCA’s 12 regional councils weren’t in agreement on how to treat data centers, facilities that house servers and other computer equipment increasingly needed to support artificial intelligence.
“If you take the submissions that we have received specific to data centers, some regional commissioners, some regional commissions were processing those as industrial, some were processing them as commercial, and some were not processing them at all because they didn’t seem to fit within the definitions of either of those two categories,” DCA Deputy Commissioner Rusty Haywood said. “So what we have done is created a technological facilities category that would encompass that type of development.”
DCA paused the review of data centers in June. The new rules apply outside of the Atlanta region to data centers of at least 500,000 square feet — equal to the area covered by about nine football fields. Within the Atlanta Regional Commission’s territory, that threshold applies only to rural areas. Data centers in Atlanta’s urban and suburban areas areas are subject to a lower threshold of 300,000 square feet.
The DRI process allows “those in proximity to a proposed development of significant scale have the opportunity to comment and weigh in before a development occurs,” DCA Deputy Commissioner Rusty Haywood told the board.
The developers of data centers, which use massive quantities of water and electricity, will be required to estimate how much of each they’ll need for a new facility.
The DCA doesn’t give projects a thumbs up or down, however.
“The regional commissions are not weighing in positive or negative,” Haywood said. “This board is not weighing in positive or negative. That’s entirely a local decision. This process does not infringe on the local government’s decision-making authority. If they want to approve such a development, they have that right do so. If they wish to oppose it they have that right.”
DCA received 16 written numerous public comments on the proposed changes to the DRI process. Most were in support of the new classifications and modifications, Haywood said. Some urged the board to adopt the more stringent 300,000 square foot threshold for all data centers. The Georgia Water Coalition was among the public commenters weighing in.
“The Georgia Water Coalition is excited to have a clear statement of when data centers must participate in the DRI process,” Amy Sharma, executive director of Science for Georgia and the coalition’s data center committee chair, told The Current GA Thursday. “DRIs are often one of the only windows that planners and the public have into a very opaque process. Since the pause, everyone has been flying blind. While we would have preferred for the DCA to adopt our more stringent definitions and guidelines, we cannot let perfect be the enemy of good. We look forward to continuing the conversation and increasing transparency into this unprecedented development boom.”
Solar farms process added
The DCA board also approved the DRI process for solar farms of 300 acres in urban areas and 500 acres in rural areas.
“We added (solar farms) as a category because some regional commissions said those are developments that are occurring at a large scale and having an impact within the state,” Haywood said.
Solar supporters are taking a wait-and-see attitude about the change.
“We hope it facilitates transparency and more solar farms,” said Jennette Gayer, director of Environment Georgia.
Other changes to the DRI categories include the addition of a traffic element for commercial developments; those expected to generate 10,000 or more vehicle trips per day will require the DRI process.
“If you just take a general Publix grocery store, that’s probably going to be about 4,000 trips a day,” Haywood said. “So it’s not something that a grocery store would qualify as a development of regional impact. It’s got to be something of a larger scale to hit that threshold.”
The Current is an independent, in-depth and investigative journalism website for Coastal Georgia.
