Data Centers in Georgia: What Changed After Jones County Said No

Last summer, we told the story of how residents in Jones County organized, showed up, and stopped a massive data center from quietly rezoning its way into their community. That post became one of our most-read pieces, and for good reason. It hit a nerve.

Since then, a lot has changed. Not just in Jones County, but right here in Bartow County and under the Gold Dome in Atlanta. What started as scattered neighborhood pushback has turned into a statewide reckoning over who benefits from Georgia’s data center boom, who pays the costs, and who gets a say.

Here’s what’s happened since our original post and what it means for our community.

Bartow County: Ground Zero for Georgia’s Data Center Boom

If Jones County was the canary in the coal mine, Bartow County has become the main event. In the span of about a year, our county has seen multiple multi-billion-dollar data center proposals land on the commissioner’s desk, and residents have had strong opinions about every one of them.

Project Bunkhouse: The $19 Billion Giant

In March 2025, a Development of Regional Impact filing revealed “Project Bunkhouse,” an 876-acre data center campus proposed for Taff Road near Stilesboro. The numbers are staggering: 12 buildings, 8.6 million square feet of data center space, an estimated $19 billion buildout over a decade, and projected annual tax revenue of $40 to $50 million. The developer, Taurus DC SPE LLC (linked to Digital Realty), would need to rezone the land from agricultural to Business Park District.

The Bartow County Planning Commission recommended approval in May 2025, and Commissioner Steve Taylor held a public hearing on June 4 before ultimately approving the rezoning. Taylor later said that projects like this will help the county and its citizens. At full buildout, Project Bunkhouse would be one of the largest data center campuses in the entire Southeast, requiring an estimated 1,830 megawatts of power, roughly the output of a large nuclear plant.

Atlas Development Near Barnsley Resort: Community Says No

Not every proposal got the green light. Atlas Development sought to rezone 588 acres along Barnsley Gardens Road near Adairsville for a six-building data center campus. Nearly 1,700 residents signed a petition against it, and dozens of “Stop the Data Center” signs lined the road. The Barnsley Resort called the project “an existential threat” to its business model.

After a marathon planning commission meeting that lasted past 10 p.m. with two hours of public comment, the board voted 6-1 to recommend denial. Two factors carried the day: the impact on Barnsley Resort and the incompatibility with the surrounding rural character. Commissioner Taylor upheld the denial.

Atlas Development on Euharlee Road: Withdrawn Under Pressure

Atlas Development came back with a second proposal in late 2025: a 260,000-square-foot data center on agricultural land off Euharlee Road, closer to Cartersville. A new petition circulated urging residents to oppose the conditional use permit, citing noise, water consumption, and strain on the power grid.

Before the December 15 public hearing even took place, Atlas withdrew the application. The planning commission posted the withdrawal notice on December 1, 2025. Community pressure, once again, made the difference before a single vote was cast.

Residents Push for a Moratorium

After the wave of proposals, Bartow County residents launched a petition calling for a formal moratorium on new data center approvals until the county can establish clear, enforceable standards for zoning, environmental impact, noise, and water usage. That petition echoes exactly what Jones County did, and what multiple other Georgia counties have now implemented.

Switch KEEP 2.0: Already Under Construction

While the rezoning battles played out, Switch has been quietly building its KEEP 2.0 Atlanta North Campus on 126 acres near LakePoint in southern Bartow County. The $772 million first phase is expected to come online by mid-2026, with a total buildout stretching to 2046. Switch is already a Cartersville-Bartow County Chamber of Commerce member, and this project has faced less resistance, in part because it’s within the City of Cartersville’s jurisdiction and went through a different approval process.

Under the Gold Dome: Georgia Lawmakers Take Action

The 2026 legislative session opened with a flood of bipartisan bills targeting data centers, a sharp reversal from years of rolling out the red carpet. Lawmakers are responding to a groundswell of constituent concern about rising power costs, water depletion, and the sheer pace of development. Here are the key measures on the table.

Protecting Ratepayers from Power Cost Shifts

The most momentum is behind efforts to make sure residential customers don’t foot the bill for massive grid expansions driven by data center demand.

HB 1063 (Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs): Requires that Georgia Power charge data centers, not residential ratepayers, for costs “substantially related” to providing their electricity. This bill passed the House Energy Committee unanimously on February 6, 2026, and is advancing quickly.
SB 34 (bipartisan): A companion measure in the Senate that would codify similar protections, ensuring that new generation and transmission infrastructure built to serve data centers is paid for by those data centers.

Rolling Back Tax Exemptions

Georgia’s generous sales-and-use tax exemption for data center equipment has been a key incentive attracting the industry. Multiple bills now seek to sunset or repeal it.

SB 408 (Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta): Moves the current exemption sunset from 2032 up to January 1, 2027.
SB 410 (Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan): Repeals the data center equipment tax exemption entirely upon the governor’s signature.
Both bills were heard in the Senate Finance Committee in late January 2026 but have not yet been voted on.

Transparency and Moratoriums

SB 436 (Sen. Jaha Howard, D-Smyrna): Suspends new data center sales-and-use tax exemptions from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027 and prohibits local governments from entering nondisclosure agreements about a data center’s electricity or water usage.
SB 421, the “Data Center Transparency Act” (Sen. RaShun Kemp, D-Atlanta): Bans NDAs that hide electricity and water consumption data from the public.
HB 1012 (Rep. Ruwa Romman): Proposes a full statewide moratorium on new data center construction until March 2027, giving the state time to study long-term impacts on energy, water, and communities.

The Bigger Picture: Grid Capacity and AI Demand

Behind all of this is a basic math problem. Late last year, the Georgia Public Service Commission approved Georgia Power’s request to expand generation capacity by nearly 10 gigawatts, most of it to serve current and projected data center demand. That expansion means new methane-burning power plants and billions in transmission upgrades. Meanwhile, some analysts are already warning that utilities in Georgia and the Southeast may be overestimating the AI boom, potentially building excess capacity that ratepayers would be left paying for if demand projections don’t pan out.

Across Georgia: Counties Drawing the Line

Bartow and Jones County aren’t alone. A growing list of Georgia communities has enacted moratoriums, tightened zoning codes, or both.

Jones County passed a 90-day moratorium in late 2025 and is now advancing a text amendment with a 100-acre minimum lot size, 200-foot setbacks, 100-foot vegetative buffers, and a 75-foot building height cap for data centers.
DeKalb County imposed a moratorium through mid-2026 and is drafting an ordinance restricting data centers to industrial zones with special land-use permits.
Social Circle lifted its moratorium only after requiring special-use permits for data centers even in heavy industrial zones, with detailed infrastructure impact reviews.
Coweta and Douglas counties adopted temporary pauses after a surge of large-scale proposals.

Nationally, one analysis estimates that over $64 billion in data center projects have been delayed, blocked, or significantly modified because of community opposition and zoning changes. Georgia is a major part of that story.

What This Means for Bartow County Residents and Businesses

The data center debate isn’t going away. Project Bunkhouse alone will take a decade to build out, and more proposals are inevitable as long as Georgia remains one of the hottest data center markets in the country. Here’s what’s worth watching.

Power bills: HB 1063 and SB 34 are the bills most likely to directly affect your Georgia Power bill. If they pass, data centers would bear the cost of new generation and transmission built to serve them. If they don’t, those costs could get spread across all ratepayers.
Water: Bartow County relies on the Etowah River basin and local groundwater. Large-scale data centers consume millions of gallons annually for cooling. Transparency bills like SB 421 and SB 436 would at least ensure you can see the numbers.
Zoning: Unlike Jones County, Bartow has not yet adopted a formal moratorium or data-center-specific zoning rules. Residents pushing for a moratorium petition are following the same playbook that worked elsewhere.
Tax revenue vs. trade-offs: Data centers generate significant property tax revenue with minimal traffic and few permanent jobs. Whether the trade-off is worth it depends on what the county does with that revenue, and whether the costs to infrastructure, environment, and quality of life are managed.

How PeachByte Can Help

We sit in a unique spot. PeachByte helps small and mid-sized businesses depend on cloud and AI tools every day, the same technology that runs inside these data centers. We also live here. We’re based in Bartow County. These are our roads, our water, and our neighbors.

That means we can help you in two ways:

Cut through the jargon. Megawatts, cooling loads, redundancy tiers. We can translate what developers are proposing into plain-English impacts on power, water, and noise so you can ask informed questions at public meetings.
Keep your business running. Whether your data lives in a hyperscale campus or a small cloud environment, we handle managed IT, network design, cybersecurity, and the tools that keep your operations moving, no matter what happens in the zoning debate.

If you’re heading to a planning commission hearing, a county meeting, or just trying to make sense of the latest proposal, reach out. We’re happy to help our neighbors understand what’s at stake.