It appears that the rumored Irwin County datacenter tax pre-payment proposal is vaporware, speculation, hearsay.
The response from the Irwin County Clerk on July 21 was:
“I have received your request. At this time, there are no documents responsive to your request.”
That was in response to my open records request of July 19, 2026: Continue reading
Here is the 180-day datacenter moratorium that the City of Adel, Georgia, passed on July 6, 2026.
![[Adel, Georgia, Datacenter Moratorium, 180 days, July 6, 2026]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-07-06--adel-ga-datacenter-ordinance/fbmany.jpg)
Adel, Georgia, Datacenter Moratorium, 180 days, July 6, 2026
RESOLUTION No. 26-02
RESOLUTION FOR A MORATORIUM ON THE CONSIDERATION, PROCESSING, AND ACCEPTANCE OF APPLICATIONS OF NEW BUSINESS LICENSES, BUILDING PERMITS, OR OTHER APPROVALS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OR DEVELOPMENT OF DATA CENTERS WITHIN THE CITY OF ADEL
WHEREAS, the Constitution of the State of Georgia provides that the City of Adel enjoys and possesses home rule powers, police powers, zoning/land development powers and the ability to license and regulate certain businesses and occupations within the boundaries of the City; and
WHEREAS, the City of Adel shall have, inter alia, the full power and authority to license, regulate, control, or prohibit all businesses (Adel City Charter, Sec. 26);
WHEREAS, the City of Adel may, in the interest of public health, safety, order, convenience, comfort, prosperity, or general welfare, adopt by ordinance a plan or plans for the districting or zoning of the City for the purpose of regulating the location of trades, industries, apartment houses, dwellings, or other uses of property (Adel City Charter, Sec. 24);
WHEREAS, the City of Adel may define and prohibit nuisances within the corporate limits of said City (Adel City Charter, Sec. 27);
WHEREAS, the Mayor and Council of the City of Adel may enact and revise ordinances to regulate the issuance of licenses and permits for the construction, development, establishment, and operation of data centers within the City;
WHEREAS, the Mayor and Council of the City of Adel find there is a present need to review and revise the ordinances, zoning regulations, land development standards, licensing requirements, and nuisance regulations relating to the construction, location, placement, and operation of data centers within the City;
WHEREAS, data centers are a relatively new and evolving land use consisting of Continue reading
Update 2026-07-23: Madison County BOCC passed the datacenter moratorium 4:0.
Update 2026-07-18: fixed name of county in title.
On July 22, 2026, a datacenter moratorium comes up for second reading at the Madison County, Florida, Board of County Commissioners, when they can also vote to pass it.
They already read it once on July 8, after working on it for some time before that.
The agenda and board packet for their Regular Meeting, July 8, 2026, contains a public notice, a recently-passed state datacenter law with highlights on parts applicable to local ordinances, a Business Impact Estimate for the proposed ordinance, a redline version of the ordinance showing changes since its previous draft, and the nine-page datacenter moratorium ordinance itself.
Every county should be as diligent and transparent, no matter in which state.
The east border of Madison County is the Withlacoochee River downstream from Georgia and upstream from the Suwannee River, with first-magnitue Madison Blue Spring in between. Madison County, like all counties in the Suwannee River Basin, is on top of the Floridan Aquifer from which we all drink for every purpose.
The ordinance does not explicitly name any of the rivers or springs or the aquifer, but it does include these sections, which are relevant. Continue reading
The Irwin County Data Center Ordinance table rows about which zoning districts can have a Data Center Special Exception have made their way into the composite Irwin County Zoning Ordinance.
For those who are not used to this standard practice in county zoning regulations. The Irwin County composite Zoning Ordinance has a table to show what is permissible in each zoning district. The two rows specified by the data center ordinance got into that table. One of them says you can have a special exception for a data center on agricultural land. Which is s. the county commission later approved. Curiously, the composite zoning ordinance does not include the rest of the data center ordinance. Nor apparently about a dozen other ordinances.
For much more about datacenters, see:
https://wwals.net/issues/datacenters
It’s possible that for the Special Exception for Project Arrowhead that the Irwin County Commission passed on May 20, 2026 to be legal, it first needed the Data Center Ordinance they passed on April 6, 2026.
![[Data Center in Land Use table in Zoning Ordinance --Irwin County 2026-04-06]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-04-06--irwin-county-zoning-ordinance/many.jpg)
Data Center in Land Use table in Zoning Ordinance –Irwin County 2026-04-06
Curiously, the actual Data Center Ordinance is not included in the composite Zoning Ordinance that Irwin County sent me on June 29 in response to an open records request of the same day.
The Zoning Ordinance ends with Chapter 16, and the Data Center Ordinance says it is adding Chapter 27. I wonder what are the ordinances in Chapters 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 26?
Anyway, here’s what those table rows look like in the Data Center Ordinance: Continue reading
I keep getting asked for the rezoning application for the potential datacenter site on Coleman Road in Lowndes County.
Please note that there is no application yet for a datacenter in Lowndes County.
The rezoning application for the potential site is in the board packets for the June 30, 2025, Planning Commission meeting and the July 7-8, 2025, Lowndes County Commission meetings.
These were obtained from Lowndes County in response to an open records request from Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE):
In case it’s not obvious, see this file:
Images of each page are below.
They include the relevant pages about the target zoning, M-1 (Light Manufacturing), from the Lowndes County Unified Land Development Code (ULDC). Continue reading
The Local Industrial Development Authority took two Irwin County Commission meetings to approve.
The ordinance says the Authority is limited to the unincorporated parts of Irwin County and that it is to have nine Directors.
For the June 3 meeting where they finally approved that ordinance, we got nothing but a Public Notice: no agenda, no board packet.
But in response to an open records request, we got an extensive board packet for the June 1, 2026, meeting. It also includes a household trash burn ordinance, a solar ordinance, an ordinance limiting appraisals for low-income properties, an employee performance evaluation form, and a job posting for a County Administrator. That last item is not on the agenda, but it is in the packet.
These items are on the WWALS website. Images of each page are below, except I have omitted the 22 blank pages. Continue reading
Congratulations, Citrus County Commissioners, on passing a Datacenter Moratorium, May 26, 2026!
But the big horse was already out the barn: an application by Deltona Corporation to add to the 557.4-acres Holder Industrial Park another 798.6 acres for a total of 1,356 acres, so they can build a hyper-scale datacenter. That’s a bit wet of the Withlacoochee (South) River, the one that runs north from the Green Swamp, then west into the Gulf.
That is not in the Suwannee River Basin, but this is the first Florida datacenter moratorium we’ve heard of, and we’re concerned with Citrus County for other reasons, such as the borrow pit for the toll road extension that if its built could keep going up US 19 across the Suwannee River.
For more about datacenters, see:
https://wwals.net/issues/datacenters
That application will next be heard at 9 AM, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in the Lecanto Government Building, 3600 W. Sovereign Path, Room #166, Lecanto, Florida 34442.
Meanwhile, No Data Center Citrus has scheduled half a dozen rallies against.
Only two state agencies commented on the Development of Regional Impact (DRI) for the Project Arrowhead datacenter near the Alapaha River in Irwin County, Georgia:
In the section of “Comments from Public Agencies” the other two letters are from the Georgia Water Coalition (GWC) and from WWALS, which you have already seen.
Fifteen citizens commented in the section labeled “Comments from the Public – Non-official.” All were opposed to the datacenter.
For much more about datacenters, including who you can contact, petitions, and upcoming meetings, see:
https://wwals.net/issues/datacenters
I thank Irwin County Assistant County Manager Bonnie Kelly, Ed.D. and County Clerk Patricia Battle for each returning a copy of this document within minutes after I sent in an open records request this morning.
This is presumably the same document you can see the Irwin County Commissioners perusing in Videos: Datacenter Special Exception approved at Special Called Meeting of Irwin County BOCC 2026-05-20.
The document is on the WWALS website and images of each page are below. Continue reading
Erin Brokovich has a famous name, and she has started a map of U.S. datacenters.
While hers has more locations, a map by Fracktracker allows drilldown to see what is there.
Numerous other such maps exist, most with less coverage.
For much more about datacenters, see:
https://wwals.net/issues/datacenters
![[Maps of datacenters by Erin Brokovich and Fracktracker, 2026-05-29]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-05-29--datacenter-maps/many.jpg)
Maps of datacenters by Erin Brokovich and Fracktracker, 2026-05-29
Erin Brokovich’s map has the locations of Project Arrowhead in Irwin County near the Alapaha River and of the datacenter rezoning in Lowndes County, near the Withlacoochee River, but you can’t tell that’s what they are by her map.
https://brockovichdatacenter.com
Her map also has the rumored I-75 Exit 13 location in Lowndes County, and the old bitcoin mining operation in Cook County.
Plus something in ZIP 32628, which is Cross City, Dixie County, Florida. I can’t find anything on that location. Continue reading
Here’s a problem with so-called AI, spelled out by Aaron Kostyu, Information Technology Services Director, at the May 11, 2026, Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
Commissioner Michael Smith wondered why there was only one quote for the three servers IT requested.
ITS Director Kostyu answered:
![[AI is sucking up all the disks and memory, ITS Director @ Lowndes County Commission 2026-05-11]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-05-11--lcc-work-datacenter-ai-memory/fbmany.jpg)
AI is sucking up all the disks and memory, ITS Director @ Lowndes County Commission 2026-05-11
It’s because we can’t find hardware anywhere. They have increased over the last two months by 800 to 1000 percent.
None of the drives are available; none of the memory is available, because the AI industry is sucking it all up. They have done something unprecedented, Continue reading
![[Datacenter deal proposal in Ocilla Star 2026-07-01, no documents responsive, Irwin County Clerk 2026-07-21]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-07-01--ocilla-star-datacenter/fbmany.jpg)
![[Datacenter Moratorium Proposed, Hamilton County BOCC, First Reading 2026-07-08, Second Reading & Vote 2026-07-22]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-07-08--madco-datacenter-moratorium/fbmany.jpg)
![[Rezoning application for potential datacenter site, Coleman Road North to Withlacoochee River, Lowndes County 2025-06-30, 2025-07-08]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2025-06-30--coleman-road-lowndes-county-rezoning-datacenter-site/many.jpg)
![[Local Industrial Development Authority @ Irwin Co. BOCC 2026-06-01, 2026-06-03, Burn Ordinance, Solar Ordinance, County Administrator job posting]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-06-01--irwin-county-bocc-packet/igmany.jpg)
![[Citrus County Datacenter Moratorium 2026-05-26, but application in progress, Deltona Corporation, Holder Industrial Park Expansion]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-05-26--citrus-county-datacenter-moratorium/fbmany.jpg)
![[Review, Project Arrowhead, DRI 4689, Irwin County, GA --SGRC 2026-05-14, Comments from Public Agencies, Comments from the Public]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2026-05-14--dri-review-irwin-county/fbmany.jpg)