Lowndes County may start doing a ground study of sinkholes in 2027, after not doing one that should have wrapped up in 2021.

How can the county write an effective datacenter ordinance with no study of sinkholes in the karst-limestone underlying Lowndes County? Sinkholes such as have sunk a county road and forced Valdosta to dig its water wells deeper?

As the county’s recently-adopted Hazard Mitigation Plan says on page 71,

The region immediately north and northwest of the City of Valdosta is an active, heavily documented covered-karst zone. Because the overlying soil and sand layers are relatively thin or permeable here, acidic rainwater and river overflow rapidly dissolve the underlying limestone. This causes high sinkhole susceptibility. Places like Snake Nation Road northwest of Valdosta have suffered severe road-swallowing sinkholes because of this collapsing bedrock.

That is the region with the rezoned M-1 property likely for a hyper-scale AI datacenter.

Lowndes County did no groundwater sinkhole study, yet says there were only five sinkholes in the past 75 years

The new Hazard Mitigation Plan that the county adopted on September 22, 2026, asserts that only five sinkholes have been reported between January 1, 1950, and July 31, 2026.

I have personally seen more new sinkholes than that in the past dozen or so years. Including the Rustic Ridge Road sinkhole that County Manager Paige Dukes refered to as “a cavern” yet is not included in this Plan’s list of sinkholes. Also the Cherry Creek Sink that appeared in the Withlacoochee River within a few months in 2013. And the sinkhole under a garage on Norman Hall Road that formed around 2012.

Yet the Lowndes County Commissioners and Staff plan to complete a datacenter ordinance before their 60-day datacenter moratorium expires on October 16, 2026.

How can Lowndes County write a proper ordinance that takes into account sinkholes when, as the Plan also says:

The risk of developing caverns underground and close to the surface is unknown in Lowndes County. In southern Lowndes County, several sizable lakes formed from sinkholes. Smaller sinkholes have occurred in Valdosta. Because data and analysis are lacking, the true risk is unknown.

On September 25, 2026, I sent an open records request to Lowndes County: Continue reading →